Deadline:
03/15/22
Event Date:
06/13/22 to 06/14/22
Location name:
Virtual
Organization:
The Minerva Center for Human Rights at Tel-Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Call For Papers
Transitional Justice: A Time for a Material Turn?
13 Jun 2022 – 14 Jun 2022, On-line
The Minerva Center for Human Rights at Tel-Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is organizing an international conference on the ‘material turn’ in transitional justice processes.
The conference will take place on June 13-14, 2022. In light of the continued uncertainty regarding international travel due to COVID-19, the conference will be held in an on-line format.
Submission deadline: March 15, 2022
BACKGROUND: There has been a renewed interest and increasing discussion in recent years regarding the material aspects of justice. Diverse grassroot movements, organizations and individuals are advocating to ensure material justice in addressing the subsistence needs of victims of armed conflicts; recognizing the continuing impacts of slavery and colonization; or in dealing with the destruction of the ecological environment and the climate crisis within the definition of crimes against humanity.
In the multidisciplinary field of Transitional Justice, material aspects have been marginalized until recently. The diverse practices, initiatives, and bodies of transitional justice aim to support processes of political transitions and facilitate the complex dealing with wide-ranging injustices. Nonetheless, as the field focused on atrocities and criminal prosecutions, material abuses and wrongdoings were sidelined. Material aspects of the transition processes – from material reparations, guarantees of non-recurrence and distributive reforms, through cultural restoration and restitution or the material aspects of testimony and remembrance, to the materiality of establishing civic solidarity, friendship or democratic trust – have also received a more limited attention.
TOPICS: The conference seeks to address these material aspects, in order to reexamine and challenge our underlying assumptions of justice, transition, and reparations. Possible questions/topics of discussion may include:
– Material aspects of truth-seeking initiatives, testimony-giving and archives;
– The renewed attention to material abuses, from starvation and forced displacements to corruption or cultural harms as subject of transitional justice processes;
– Individual, collective and social reparation – tensions and dilemmas between the symbolic and the material;
– Restitution and material guarantees for non-recurrence – an underexplored field?
– Memory and the material: memorialization efforts, places, objects, and transitional justice;
– Cultural restoration and restitution within transitional justice;
– The role and engagement of civil society and victims’ organizations with material aspects of transitional justice;
– Material reparations and preexisting inequalities and marginalization – is there a true possibility of ‘transformative’ reparations? How do reparations reinforce tensions between victims’ groups and along class, gender and race?
– The dilemmas of material reparations for historical abuses – from slavery and colonial legacies to longstanding environmental harms; what are the hurdles for civil society’s initiatives within an ongoing colonial situation?
– Peacebuilding and development – does engagement with material reparations open up new avenues for action, particularly in non-Western and non-liberal environments?
– Could the material invite us to rethink the moral assumptions of transitional justice theory?
– Gender and the material turn – what opportunities does the material turn open for women, and what are the symbolic hierarchies it reinforces?
– Post-colonial restitution and reparation struggles – how do they expand or change our understanding of materiality and justice?
– New fields and experts such as Forensic-Archeology and Provenance Research as changing the legal landscape of transitional justice.
The conference organizers invite proposals to present a paper dealing with one or more of the above issues, or other relevant and contemporary issues relating to the topic of the conference. Researchers of all disciplines are invited to apply.
PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Researchers interested in addressing these issues are invited to respond to this call for papers with a proposal of up to 1,000 words for an article and presentation, along with a brief CV.
Proposals should be submitted via the application platform website (http://gss.huji.ac.il/) no later than March 15, 2022.
Note that in order to apply, applicants must first create an account on the application platform website. Once the account has been created, the “Minerva 2022 Transitional Justice Conference” can be found under “Special Programs / Cross-Faculty Applications.”
Applicants should expect notification of the committee’s decision by the end of March. Written drafts of approx. 5-10 pages, based on the selected proposals, will be expected by June 5, 2022.
For questions regarding the application process, contact: [email protected]
PUBLICATION: The Israel Law Review (a Cambridge University Press publication) has expressed interest in publishing selected full length papers based on conference presentations, subject to its standard review and editing procedures.
CONFERENCE COMMITTEE:
Tel-Aviv University: Leora Bilsky, Rachel Klagsbrun, Tamar Luster, Kineret Sadeh
Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Einat Albin, Danny Evron, Areen Hawari
