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25 April
2022, 4 pm, virtual event
Human Rights and Democracy in
Class and Identity Politics
Lecture by Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat (University
of Connecticut) as part of The Historicity of Democracy Seminar.
Liberal democracies are
continuously challenged and increasingly in danger. Instability of
democracy has been typically associated with developing countries, since
many democratic systems established in the 1950s and 1960s in newly
independent states gave way to military coups and other authoritarian
take overs. The 1990s’ euphoria about Eastern Bloc countries’ transition
to democracy progressively turned into disappointments. Now, we see
democratic principles and institutions are threatened even in
“established democracies.” This talk examines the decline of democracies
in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, which can be considered as
dominated by class and identity politics, respectively. Noting the close
relationship between human rights and democracy, it presents a human
rights theory of democracy that explains the decline of democracy by the
gap between different types of human rights.
The online seminar is free and open to the public upon registration: https://forms.gle/A8AJDvdaQyUiG5qD8
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28 April
2022, 5 pm, virtual event
An Impossible Promise? Sociology
of Religion in Arab Countries
Lecture by Florian Zemmin (Freie
Universität Berlin) as part of the ZMO Colloquium
Many Arab sociologists have been
criticising the rather weak establishment of sociology in their
countries. This concerns structural issues, especially political
constraints for research and the underfunding of universities, but also
theoretical issues, not least the Eurocentric formation and workings of
sociology. Both structural and theoretical issues are especially
pronounced when it comes to sociology of religion: to position religion
as an object of sociological study faces political constraints and societal
scepticism, also due to its representing a secular, supposedly
particularly European perspective on religion. That being said,
sociological approaches to religion in Arabic do have a longer history
and feature more widely than is often assumed. This talk will provide
glimpses into the history and presence of these approaches and their
characteristics, addressing both structural and theoretical questions.
Please register
here: https://tinyurl.com/mr29m9mp
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