`The American lifestyle is not up for negotiation,' said George H.W. Bush at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. A delegation from of the developing nations had asked him to put on the agenda the over-consumption of resources of the developed nations, foremost the United States. But the U.S. President at the time was not willing to implement changes nationally which may have been beneficiary globally with regards to climate and the environment. Similarly, George W. Bush Jr. stated in 2001 when discussing the pending Kyoto protocol that he would not do “anything that harms [the American] economy, because first things first are the people who live in America.” Facing environmental aspects that addressed the entire community of states as one, both American Presidents followed an argumentative logic of selection and distinction – not everyone was equal in the end.
Climate change debates, terrorist attacks, war, and migration are all issues that made politicians, media and activists frame the global world of the twentieth century truly as one world. At the same time, the implementation of these and other policy issues, such as human rights, gender equality, developmental policies and income distribution have revealed that within this one world, people oftentimes lived worlds apart.
This seminar will look at the discursive and practical framings of global inequality after 1945 from an international perspective. Starting with a theoretical section on what “inequality” has come to mean over the course of the decades, the seminar will look at different thematic fields such as human rights, decolonization and developmental policies, environment, labor, gender and income distribution in which ‘global inequality’ has been discussed. Primary institutional focus will be the family of international organizations that the community of nations has built up throughout the course of the twentieth century.
Students are required to complete the course reading, write two response papers, organize a discussion lead and write a final term paper.
The seminar will be organized as a Blockseminar. Scheduled meetings are October 21 (10-14h), November 18/19 and December 9/10. Schließen