Cultures and Politics of the Transregional: Sovereignty between Empires and States

Description

A Two-Day Interdisciplinary Workshop Co-Sponsored by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (University of Cambridge), EURIAS, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada)

Convener: Dr. Wilson Chacko Jacob (EURIAS Visiting Fellow)
Clare Hall & Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities
University of Cambridge; Associate Professor of History, Concordia University 

Sovereignty has been much discussed and debated in the last decade or two. The end of the Cold War and the emergence of non-national bodies and forces (the EU, al-Qaida, new financial instruments, superbugs, and so on) have compelled political scientists, philosophers, historians, and others to reconsider the fate of sovereignty. Because of this particular background for the return of sovereignty, wherein old borders are being redrawn in dramatic ways, it is perhaps understandable that the state form and law have been the primary axes along which scholarly and non-scholarly discussions have unfolded. However the limitations of such discussions are apparent, particularly for generating new conceptions of the political at a time when that concept seems to have exhausted itself in relation to sovereignty. In this workshop, by picking up the CRASSH theme of “Cultures and Politics of the Transregional,” we will consider other axes along and frames within which sovereignty has been thought historically and in the present. The workshop participants reflect different disciplines—history, anthropology, political science, and law—theoretical leanings, and levels of analysis ranging among the local, global, trans-regional, imperial, international, national, and transnational. The geographical distribution includes Europe, America, Africa, Asia, and spaces in-between, such as imperial borderlands, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea. The expansive scope of research topics and methods promises to generate a wide-ranging conversation on the concept of sovereignty.

The workshop is for invited participants only but if you are interested in attending please contact Dr Wilson Jacob.