What do the formal adoption of the Responsibility to Protect Paradigm, human shielding in conflict zones, the continuing refugee crisis around the Mediterranean Sea, climate change and the melting of the Arctic tell us about contemporary world society? Who and what deserves protection? Who is included who is excluded? What do certain choices of language and images do to our understanding of protection and the politics around it?
This course explores new modes of global governance linked to the emergence of an international politics of protection. This politics of protection comes in different forms and is intimately bound up with contemporary human rights, international development, security, law, and culture.
We will reflect upon the forms of power that this politics might give rise to, authorize, delimit, and preclude (Orford 2011). In what ways might it open up new possibilities for greater human rights, international rule of law, and democracy? Or does the politics of protection rather signal a new age of empire, based on Western values, or even a ‘human right to dominate’ (Perugini and Gordon 2015)? Could governance and regulation unintentionally produce new forms of vulnerability and victimization for the people it seeks to protect? And how does our increasing connectedness through online, visually oriented platforms and the increasing challenges of AI and misinformation change the dynamics of protection?
For more information and course details, go to ‘Curriculum’ at the top of the page.