scholarly journals Infrastructure and InfraReg: on rousing the international law ‘Wizards of Is’

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedict Kingsbury
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Energy Capture ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Global Scaling ◽  
Economic Development Strategies ◽  
Quantum Step ◽  
Economic Globalisation

Physical, informational and now digital infrastructure features throughout Nation-State consolidation and imperial extension, in war preparedness and war logistics, in resource extraction and energy capture and transit, in each quantum step in economic globalisation, in mass migrations and religious missions, in the global scaling of finance and financialisation, in the global digital economy, in artificial intelligence (AI) and robots, in economic development strategies and in China's vast Belt and Road Initiative. International law has largely aligned with these enterprises, but has seemed not effectively to address massive anthropocenic degradation, AI, new biotech, and the human and planetary consequences of extractive capitalism. Science and technology studies, and work extending from Bruno Latour and Susan Leigh Star to governance-by-prototype and ‘new materialism’, have generated rich insights about infrastructure. These are being extended to ‘infrastructure as regulation’ (the infra-reg project). This paper explores implications for reinvigorating deliberative forward-planning international law projects to address technologically driven transformation, which follow from ‘thinking infrastructurally’.

scholarly journals Ontological Opportunism

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-51
Author(s):  
Anne Dippel
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
High Energy Physics ◽  
High Energy ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge Production ◽  
Energy Physics

Understanding inanimate ‘nature-as-such’ is traditionally considered the object of physics in Europe. The discipline acts as exemplary discursive practice of scientific knowledge production. However, as my ethnographic investigation of doing and communicating high energy physics demonstrates, animist conceptions seep into the ontological understanding of physics’ ‘objects’, resonating with contemporary concepts of new materialism, new animism and feminist science and technology studies, signifying an atmospheric shift in the understanding of ‘nature’. Drawing on my fieldwork at CERN, I argue that scientists take an opportunist stance to animate concepts of ‘nature’, depending on whom they’re talking to. I am showing how the inanimate in physics is reanimated especially in scientific outreach activities and how the universalist scientific cosmology overlaps with indigenous cosmologies, as for example the Lakota ones.

scholarly journals Enclave Governance and Transnational Labour Law – A Case Study of Chinese Workers on Strike in Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 558-586 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifeng Chen ◽  
Ulla Liukkunen
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Equatorial Guinea ◽  
Private International Law ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Chinese Workers ◽  
Economic Globalisation

This article examines deficits in the current legal framework of posted workers in a global setting through a case study involving Chinese posted workers striking in Equatorial Guinea. Posting highlights the challenges that economic globalisation and transformation of the labour market pose to labour law. As a phenomenon whose normativity is deeply embedded in the cross-border setting where it occurs, posting should profoundly affect the transnational labour law agenda. The emergence of transnational labour law should be seen from the perspective of reconceptualising existing normative regimes in the light of an underpinning transnationality and sketching the architecture for the normative edifice of transnational labour protection. The transnational legal context under scrutiny calls for a wider normative framework where the intersections between labour law, international law and private international law are taken seriously. Global protection of posted workers should be a featured project on the transnational labour law agenda.

Private Norms as International Standards? – Regime Collisions in Tuna-Dolphin II

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carola Glinski
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Law Making ◽  
Economic Globalisation

The requirements of free trade and economic globalisation and the respective international legal framework, namely in the context of the WTO, have led to a decrease of the regulatory power of the nation states which cannot be replaced by comparable public international law making – neither in content nor with respect to legitimacy considerations.

Indigenous Self-Government in the Arctic, and their Right to Land and Natural Resources

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-281
Author(s):  
Asbjørn Eide
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
International Law ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Self Management ◽  
Full Independence ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Economic Globalisation

Abstract The article examines the evolution in international law of indigenous self-government and their control over their land and resources, and explores the extent to which this is being followed up at the national level with particular emphasis on Arctic and other Northern indigenous peoples. It starts by discussing the concept of ‘indigenous peoples’, noting that most of them live in areas that have until recently been considered to be marginal by the dominant parts of society, and observes that two contradictory trends can presently be observed: On the one hand a growing pressure, in the context of expanding economic globalisation and intensification of consumption, for access to the natural resources in the areas where they live, but on the other hand a growing resistance through improved organisation by the indigenous peoples themselves and by a growing recognition of their rights under international law. The impact of this general evolution at the global level on specific cases are examined with regards to the Inuit-controlled self-government of Nunavut in Canada, the move towards full independence of Inuit-controlled Greenland, and the evolution of Sámi self-management in Sámi land of Fenno-Scandinavia.

scholarly journals Diffuse subjects and dispersed power: New materialist insights and cautionary lessons for international law

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Jessie Hohmann
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Embedded Power ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article sets out the major tenets of new materialism and maps out its implications for international law. It considers what new materialism might offer for those of us working within international law in the way of new insights, resources, practices or politics. It first sets the contours of new materialism within the broader material turn. It then elaborates three main tenets of new materialism’s methodology, theory, and ontology: its attention to matter in its physicality; the embedded and entangled subject; and the vitality or agency of objects. The article focuses on how new materialist work might help us to understand, first, subjectivity and second, power and accountability in international law. It concludes that new materialist approaches offer important and compelling insights, working against entrenched categories and structures that continue to perpetuate or excuse violence and harm in international law’s doctrines and practices. These insights provide resources for rethinking power and subjectivity, and the role these play in international law. However, those of us working to consider how we can respond to pressing crises of justice and coexistence within international law may find new materialism most powerful when brought into relation, and deep conversation, with more structural methodologies. Notably ‘older’ (Marxist or historical) materialisms grasp embedded power relations and deep-rooted systemic harms in more concrete ways. This is, the article concludes, a conversation that international law scholars are well placed to contribute to, deepening both ‘old’ and ‘new’ materialist insights for international law.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative: The Push for Economic Globalisation

2017 ◽  
Vol 09 (03) ◽  
pp. 69-75
Author(s):  
Hong YU
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Open Economy ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
The West ◽  
Chinese Leadership ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Economic Globalisation ◽  
At Home

There is growing resentment towards globalisation in the West. The Chinese leadership has leveraged on the various international platforms to promote China’s approach to global economic development. Promotion of its “Belt and Road” initiative overseas marks China’s attempt to put its own stamp on globalisation. Nevertheless, China still has much to do domestically in promoting the open economy at home before it could be a credible leader of economic globalisation.

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