Concepts of Equality and their Limits – Critical Junctures in History and Law

Concepts of Equality and their Limits – Critical Junctures in History and Law

Veranstalter
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Davy; Prof. Dr. Antje Flüchter; Malika Mansouri; Dr. Cornelia Aust; SFB 1288 Praktiken des Vergleichens
Veranstaltungsort
Bielefeld
Ort
Bielefeld
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
29.11.2019 - 30.11.2019
Deadline
15.11.2019
Von
Antje Flüchter

Today, most constitutions of the world affirm the right to equality of their “citizens”, of “human beings” or, simply, of “everyone”. Equality seems a universally accepted (legal) value. Yet, ideas epitomized in the term ‘equality’ have been contested throughout history and they still are contested. The workshop, organized in the context of the SFB 1288 Practices of Comparison, revisits some critical junctures throughout history where, in the field of law, concepts of equality intersected with concepts of order, ranked societies or – in modern parlance – inequality. The workshop aims to find out whether and to what extent concepts of equality and inequality (rank, order) interconnect, based on practices of comparing stressing similarities or differences, according to context. The contributors to the workshop have a background in either law or history.
The idea of equality had a first powerful appearance at the end of the eighteenth century, when the French revolutionaries demanded ‘liberty’, ‘equality’ and ‘fraternity’. These values, characterising the European Enlightenment, were set against the concept of a God-given societal order that had, for centuries, deemed perfect. Why did the idea of equality emerge? And, did the eighteenth century cry for equality extend to all human beings or was the idea inherently limited and, if so, how? In nineteenth century Germany, the Judenemanzipation prevailed over a tradition that conceptualized Jews as being distinct and alien, a threat to Christianity and to Christian states, eventually to a Christian state composed of Germanic peoples. The idea of equality between Jews and Christian Germans was translated into imperial law in 1871, quite a significant development from the point of view of equality. How was the idea of Jews and Christian Germans being equal conceptualized, from the perspective of Jews as well as Germans? And why did the idea eventually prevail, short-lived as it was? Pressed by the demands of abolitionists, nineteenth century (former) colonies also went through a process of emancipation, i.e., the emancipation of slaves from the grip of their slave-holders. Similar questions arise: What arguments had conceived of Blacks as being a legitimate object of property (of Whites)? What arguments undermined that thinking, pressing for emancipation? Did the arguments emphasize ‘humanity’ or ‘equality’ or both? Moving beyond concepts that concentrate on equality before the law, nineteenth century Germany was also fertile ground for debates stressing the perniciousness of social inequality. Political and scholarly attention turned to the phenomenon of pauperism and the debasement of the working class at the very same time as German states, and later the Reich, pressed for industrialization and unification and the forging of a nation state. How did economic development, nationalism and equality interrelate? How did social inequality become a problem to be tackled? Is it possible to identify practices of comparing that bolstered the move toward industrialization, nation state, and (more) social equality? At the end of World War I, concepts of equality became part of international law. In 1919, the Allied and Associated Powers endorsed a system of minority protection (formalised through minority treaties) that strongly built on the idea that minorities needed to be reassured of their right to equality. Why was the minority question construed as a question tightly related to equality? Also, was that ‘equality’ construed as universal? Was the system of minority protection fuelling tensions among European countries? In the 1930’s, Europe, in particular Germany, was the centre of a massive onslaught on the idea of equality. How did the Nazis legitimize what they were doing, in particular, from the perspective of equality? What was their concept of equality, a concept that obviously left room for inequality and unworthiness? What happened to the idea of ‘humanity’?
The birth of human rights after 1945 marked another powerful appearance of the idea of equality at the international level (Universal Declaration of Human Rights; International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination). How was equality conceptualized in the wake of Nazism, re-occurrences of antisemitism and political movements striving for decolonization? What ideas underpinned the focus on race and racial discrimination? Did the United Nations advocate a strong notion of ‘humanity’ encompassing all human beings in an equal manner? Again, if we turn to the national level, post-1945 concepts of equality continue to embrace limitations, and those limitations seem quite diverse.
The workshop will concentrate on some prominent examples: In South Africa, apartheid existed until the early 1990s. What was ‘apartheid’, viewed from the perspective of ‘equality’, and what ideas made (religious) Whites think apartheid was legitimate? And, vice versa, what made apartheid inacceptable? Finally, Israel’s basic laws endorse and affirm ‘human dignity’ and ‘liberty’, but not ‘equality’. If we conceive of Israel as a state whose constitution-makers attempted to strike a compromise between Jewish religious law and state law based on secularism, and between liberal aspirations and ethnic aspirations, how does that blurriness of the constitution translate into concepts of equality (or limited equality, or inequality), given the fact that Jewish religious law discriminates against women and that the citizenry of Israel also comprises Non-Jews, most of them of Arab descent? Against the backdrop of those critical junctures throughout history, the answer to the question ‘Is equality a good endorsed by law and what does it mean’ is not an easy one.
The workshop is meant to explore why the answer is so difficult. We assume that endorsement of equality as well as the rejection of the concept is linked to particular practices of comparing: At some points in time, practices of comparing seem to succeed in suggesting that people are equal and of equal worth. At other points in time, practices of comparing strongly and convincingly may point to differences that then induce thinking in hierarchies and / or disrespect that legitimizes unequal treatment. Is our assumption correct?

Programm

Friday, 29 November 2019
Location: Building X, Room A2-103

8:30 – 8:45 Ulrike Davy, Antje Flüchter: Welcome
8:45 – 10:15 Antje Flüchter, Bielefeld University: Hierarchy as Order – Equality as Chaos? Early Modern Perceptions of Social Differentiation in India and the Mughal Empire

10:30 – 12:00 Lynn A. Hunt, University of California, Los Angeles: Enlightenment and French Revolution: Why Equality?

12:00 – 13:00 Lunch Break
13:00 – 14:15 Rainer Liedtke, University of Regensburg: Emancipation of the Jews in Germany: A Useful Equality?

14:30 – 15:45 Demetrius Eudell, Wesleyan University: Equality: The Peculiar Institution

16:15–17:30 Helmut Walser Smith, Vanderbilt University: 19th Century German Nationalism, Economic Development and Equality

17:45–19:00 David Keane, Middlesex University: The Human Rights Turn: Equality and the Elimination of Ra-cial Discrimination

Saturday, 30 November 2019
Location: Building X, Room A2-103

9:15 – 10:45 Ulrike Davy, Bielefeld University: Minority Protection under the League of Nations: Equality, but not Universalism

11:00 – 12:30 Fabian Wittreck, University of Münster: The NS State: Equality among Equals

13:45 – 15:00 Saul Dubow, University of Cambridge: The South African Case: Apartheid

15:15 – 16:30 Gila Stopler, College of Law and Business, Tel Aviv: The Israeli Case: Balancing Religion, Nationalism and
Liberalism

17:00 – 18:30 Wrapping up

Kontakt

Aust Cornelia

Universität Bielefeld, Universitätsstr 25, 33615 Bielefeld
X A3-203
+49-521-106-3007

cornelia.aust@uni-bielefeld

http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/caust/Forschung.html