In recent
decades many of the foundational classificatory structures of law have been
challenged by entities that are familiar to law but who appear in new
functions. While robots are revolutionising trade and warfare, animals, embryos
and corporations are knocking the doors of personhood with their multifarious
rights reminiscent to those of natural persons.
At the other end of the
spectrum, many marginal people are transformed into mere objects. When the
European Union makes an administrative decision to relocate 120,000 refugees or
when the United States consider all military-aged males as legitimate targets
in drone warfare, little of humanity remains. Despite of these drastic changes,
many of the conceptual tools used to analyse these new phenomena are vestiges
of past centuries, such as the #Roman_law structure between persona and res—persons
and things.
It is in this
changed world the Persons/Things workshop seeks to explore the present and the
past of persona/res distinction. Are challenges of the present world unheard of
are they simple re-enactments of the past debates held over slaves and women?
Or could there be something genuinely new in the seeming porosity of the border
between things and persons? Whilst there are countless developments worthy of
note, some of the key questions include:
- How does one become Person/Thing in the
first place?
- How does the change of status take place?
- Are there categories where change is more
likely and are there categories unable to attain new status?
- What are the main indicators of a change?
- Who are the actors promoting change?
- Does change of status have permanence or are
there categories, historical or present, that have constantly fluctuated
between the two poles?
The
Persons/Things workshop calls for papers exploring both concrete and
theoretical aspects of changing (legal) personhood. The papers could, for example:
- examine how national or international legal
doctrines act as gatekeepers to personhood
- account if emergence of rights or their
disappearance signals an equal change in Person/Thing status
- map the ways in which courts make
Persons/Things
The
Persons/Things workshop will feature keynote sessions delivered by:
Joshua Barkan
(Associate Professor of Geography, University of Georgia) and
Yoriko Otomo (Lecturer in Law, SOAS).
Yoriko Otomo (Lecturer in Law, SOAS).
The workshop
will take place on 12 and 13 May 2016 in Turku, Finland.
Building on the
success of our former initiative, Imagining post-neoliberal regulatory
subjectivities workshop held in 2014, the Persons/Things workshop promotes
interdisciplinary approaches and welcomes early career scholars from law,
history, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, geography and related fields
of study. Call is open to everyone but a preference will be given to
current doctoral candidates and those who have recently graduated.
Paper proposals
of approximately 500 words are due by Tuesday, March 1 at 10:00 am CET. Please
use webform for submitting your application. Notifications will be sent by
mid-March and those presenting their papers are expected to send their work to
the workshop organizers for circulation by Friday, May 6th. PhD candidates
and junior faculty are particularly encouraged to apply.
For additional
information, please contact either Toni Selkälä (totase@utu.fi) or Mikko
Rajavuori (mijora@utu.fi).
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