Call 2023 Joint Projects
Women in Times of Crisis: Rethinking the Extraordinary and the Everyday
The 21st century (in the western world) has been one of crisis, beginning with 9/11 and other attacks, financial crises, wars, a global pandemic, hardening inequalities, rising populist discourses and the ever-greater impact of global warming. Women have often been especially disadvantaged by these shocks. Researchers and advocates have examined the impacts of these crises on gender relations, and, specifically, on the status of women in relation to the intersectional factors that determine their life chances. The particular crises to which they refer provide a temporal/spatial frame – but the significance of ‘thinking through’ crisis as an episteme is rarely thematized. Turning points that alter pre-existing equilibria and which are located in specific series of events, that we denote as “crises,” are often framing devices whose implications remain unexamined. To analyze the “work crises do,” this project seeks to develop research collaboration, and a potential network, between three Alliance institutions (Columbia, Sciences Po and Paris 1). Several actions will be undertaken before and after an online conference held on October 18, 2024: i) a grant will be attributed to two student researchers recruited to help review the recent literature on the socio-economic impact of crises and write a short concluding summary of the conference; ii) developing the “Women and Gender in Global Affairs” webpages on the website of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights (at Columbia) as a means for promoting the work of the network collaboration; iii) providing translation and editorial support and aid for the preparation of policy briefs and research articles, to be published on-line after the conference; and iv) the organization of two research and communication trips between Paris and New York, in the spring of 2025, for researchers who are willing to take the project of the network forward, and to reach out to policy-makers.
Beaumarchais & America: Business, Political, and Cultural Scripts
This proposal is for a workshop on the relations between Beaumarchais and America. Often mentioned, but rarely appreciated to its full value, the famous 18th century playwright’s involvement in the American Revolutionary War calls for further scholarly consideration, in preparation for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But Beaumarchais’s connection with America ran deeper and longer, through the circulation of his plays in written or performance form in the new republic, as well as through multiple other schemes that he sketched out throughout his life, such for instance as those for the exploitation of Louisiana by the Spanish crown, for transatlantic commerce with New England, or to become the French ambassador in Philadelphia. It is all of those business, political, and cultural scripts that we therefore propose to uncover and analyze in the workshop, with the help of colleagues from French literature and history, but also sociology and law. The imminent opening of a huge trove of previously private Beaumarchais archives in 2024 makes the event even more timely. Besides the involvement of the chief archivist in charge of the new collection at the French national library, the high-profile workshop benefits from the support of an already constituted consortium of Beaumarchais specialists, the departments of French at Columbia and Fordham Universities, the cultural services of the French embassy in NYC (Villa Albertine), and the Morgan Library, which will host an event for the workshop participants. The two organizers, Laurence Marie (Columbia University) and Martin Giraudeau (Sciences Po), bring complementary disciplinary perspectives and academic networks, as well as shared interests in the histories of transatlantic projects and circulations, as well as in the role of scripts of all kinds, well beyond literary ones, in the shaping of society. The combination of the motivation brought by a coming historical anniversary, of the availability of exceptional new data, of the support of elite institutional partners, and of novel interdisciplinary perspectives on this major figure of the relations between France and the United States guarantees the quality of the exchanges at the workshop, and of the publications that it aims to foster.
Comparing the Political Economies of Contemporary Industrial Policymaking in the Federal US and the Federalizing EU
This project compares recent developments in industrial policy in the United States and the European Union. It focuses in particular on the administrative and political capabilities which interact with the formulated goals of technological and digital sovereignty as well as strategic autonomy. In the context of a geo-political rivalry between China and the USA, industrial policy in the fields of chips production, artificial intelligence as well as research and the production of green technologies are implemented to facilitate a decoupling of value chains in industrial production from what are deemed potentially unreliable partners. In the US, these measures are largely governed by federal legislation and thus overseen by the federal bureaucracy, but are complemented by state tax subsidies for local implementation. In the EU, these measures are decreed by a weak federalizing center, but operate mainly by way of forms of national state aid that are orders of magnitude larger than the sums available from Brussels. These differences engender different problems of governance. While the EU is seeking to engender diversified value chains across Europe, rather than merely reinforcing the technological and industrial inequalities in the EU with limited means, the US is seeking to engender regional buy-in and optimally structured production chains.
Facing Historic Injustices: Recognition and Reparations
The project Facing Historic Injustices: Recognition and Reparations aims at organizing a doctoral workshop in Paris, in Spring 2025, and a joint conference in New York, in Fall 2025, in order to constitute a working team of leading experts and young researchers from Alliance partner institutions, and beyond. We thereby seek to initiate a transatlantic conversation on the conceptual, normative, and political relations between recognition and reparations when facing historic injustices. Our aims are: 1) to explore the theoretical possibility and practical necessity of a coherent theory of reparative justice; 2) to assess to what extent such a theory of reparative justice can be normatively grounded on recognition-respect. Are reparations an extension, implementation, reevaluation, of the recognition paradigm, or do they constitute an alternative normative grammar, an entirely new paradigm for justice?
Climate Ethics: Negotiating Values in Climate Science for Adaptation
In response to the escalating challenges of climate change, the necessity for adaptation to accompany mitigation has become increasingly clear. This shift in focus has prompted climate scientists to reassess their roles in conveying scientific. Key questions involve the type of science required, its intended audiences and the scientists’ relationships to them, and how to best construct and communicate the science for effective adaptation. Researchers have explored innovative approaches such as extreme event attribution and the development of storylines to better communicate uncertainties and support decision-making. The rise of the adaptation agenda has also led to the emergence of climate services, institutional structures aiming to provide climate information for decision-makers. Challenges persist, however, including the need for robust evaluation and the integration of social sciences. Concurrently, social scientists have scrutinized the ethical and political dimensions of these new climate science practices for adaptation, highlighting concerns about equity, justice, and the influence of private interests. Despite some interdisciplinary interactions, there remains a gap in fostering meaningful dialogue between different scholarly communities. This workshop seeks to address this gap by providing a platform for physical climate scientists, social scientists, and humanist scholars to explore reflexive perspectives on climate science practice, address ethical challenges, and chart future directions for climate science applied to adaptation.