Categoria: works

poverty alleviation

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in works, works, projects, publications

South-South Cooperation in Poverty Alleviation and Human Rights Protection

Wednesday, the 17th of March the China Society for Human Rights Studies and Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other International Organizations in Switzerlands will host a conference under the title

南南减贫合作与人权保障 – South-South Cooperation in Poverty Alleviation and Human Rights Protection

as China Side Event of the 46th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. Further information can be found here.

if you want to participate, please, send an email with name and affiliation at your earliest convenience to 1135081517@qq.com – it is needed for approval. Thank you.

皮特·赫尔曼：种族主义：日常致死还是拒绝陌生人的问题 – Racism, a matter of daily killing

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, works, works, projects, publications

(English below)

由中国人权研究会指导，中南大学人权研究中心、阿姆斯特丹自由大学跨文化人权研究中心和国家高端智库武汉大学国际法研究所联合主办的“针对当代形式种族主义：疫情带来的挑战与各国应对”国际视频研讨会7月3日召开，来自中国、美国、荷兰、德国、南非等国家和联合国的近20名人权领域专家学者围绕相关议题展开深入研讨。中南大学人权中心教授，欧洲科学与艺术学院院士皮特·赫尔曼在会上作题为《种族主义：日常致死还是拒绝陌生人的问题》的发言。

　　皮特·赫尔曼认为，我们必须寻找提供公共担保的条件，来塑造我们自己的生活。在社会中，这是关于健康和服务，是关于教育，也是关于提供一个环境，使生活便利。在我们有条件的地方，从生活在不同的国家和在不同国家工作的经验，我们有条件真正展现在社会中。你不会发现种族主义，只有这种限制性的和公共的私人问题。

　视频

Under the direction of the Chinese Society for Human Rights Studies, the Centre for Human Rights Studies of Central South University, the Centre for Intercultural Human Rights Studies of the Free University of Amsterdam and the National Human Rights Commission of China. Against Contemporary Forms of Racism: The Challenge of the Epidemic and States’ Responses”, co-hosted by the Institute of International Law, Wuhan University, a high-level think tank “The international video symposium was held on July 3, with participants from China, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, South Africa and other countries and the United Nations’ Experts and scholars in the field of human rights held in-depth discussions on related topics. Peter Herrmann, Professor of the Human Rights Center of Central South University and member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, made a speech entitled “Racism: everyday life”.

　　Peter Herrmann argues that we must look for conditions that provide public guarantees to shape our own lives. In society, it is about health and services, it is about education, and it is about providing an environment that makes life easier.

Video

the cases we are becoming the other

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in works, works, projects, publications

Last Friday, 3rd of July, the Human Rights Center. Law School at the Central South University, Changsha, PRC organised with our partners a webinar, titled

Addressing Contemporary Forms of Racism: Challenges Posed by the Pandemic and National Responses

It had not least been looking at the different forms and “incidences” where Chinese Identity had been negatively met by afronts, reaching from reservation over hate speech to violence. A longish report can be found here.

who is it? who are we?

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in publications, works, works, projects, publications

Now available – don’t blame me for the price – further info below and even more here

Chinese National Identity in the Age of Globalisation

Editors: Zhouxiang, Lu (Ed.)

  • Examines the transformation of Chinese national identity in the era of globalisation
  • Addresses issues central to national identity in the context of Chinese culture, politics and society, including ethnic identity
  • Considers the birth of Chinese national identity in the late Qing era and the influence of popular culture on national identity

I am George

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, works

It is a while back – already on the 25th of March, George Floyd was brutally murdered. And still it is high on the agenda: the lasting shock, the protests around the world, the impossibility to understand what happened. And it is on my personal agenda, preparing a presentation for the seminar “Best Practices to Combat Contemporary Forms of Racism”. As part of this preparation I came across this statement by the US-president in office, Trump:

‘I could shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters’

It is a statement he made in 2016, supposedly a joke. But listen to the context and you won’t be laughing anymore. And we actually will be able to understand what is impossible to understand.

As many proclaimed in 2015

Je suis Charlie

we have to proclaim five years on

I am George

International Human Rights, Social Policy and Global Development

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in works

now available: the volume “International Human Rights, Social Policy and Global Development”, edited by Gerard McCann and Féilim Ó hAdhmaill.

https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/international-human-rights-social-policy-and-global-development

From the Foreword by Albie Sachs

… Equally, the somewhat bolder ones amongst us can declare comfortably that as a general rule universal human rights are also a contested site, in terms of their articulation, interpretation and implementation. Universal human rights are not simply something handed down to us by the gods or nature; they are the creation of human agency, imagination, creativity, humanity and above all struggle. …

Indeed, an International and Social Topic, requiring new approaches. Policy Press offers special discount if ordered via the Policy Press website.

Brexit, Europe and the Left

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, publications, works, works, projects, publications

The blog titled Brexit, Europe and the Left and edited by the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation Brussels and Trademark Belfast, published recently a short piece they asked me to write – on the German economy.

from the blog, Ivan Radic/Flickr

The teaser they added

Made in Germany or Made for Germany?

  • 25 October 2019

The once “strong tiger” of the German economy might be crumbling. For decades, the Made in Germany strategy pursued by successive governments suggested high quality goods worth paying for. Systemic faultlines, structural conservatism and policies of privatisation have created new lines of conflict domestically. Why this is bad also for the rest of Europe and the world explains Professor Peter Herrmann.

Success

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, works, projects, publications

Having been awarded membership of the Institute for International Political Economy Berlin (IPE) at the Berlin School of Economics and Law has, of course a personal dimension, and looking at the colleagues and also the history of the Institute makes such award a special honour. 

The programmatic statement on the website states that the

IPE  is concerned with the relation between the economy and political power in a globalised world, and the social implications that this raises.

In this light I see myself as member of the Institute as well as support and general encouragement of a very traditional view on economic issues: they are political questions, they are concerned with the core of what society is about and they are not “standing against the social”, the question has always been and will be “Not ‘how much’ economy, but what kind of economy do we want”?

During a recent presentation I referred to a definition of capitalism by Joe Brewer, reading:

Here is how capitalism actually works — use a legal framework of private ownership to extract value from the labor of others. The end game is a system that hoards wealth, stifles innovation, and ultimately destroys the value created by cooperation among those who seek to do things that cannot be done alone.

Leaving various problematic aspects of Brewer’s view aside, it is a fine formulation of the meaning of law. Isn’t it indeed astonishing in which way law is explicitly used tome injustice the accepted foundation and framework of living together? I find this an interesting thought, which possibility culminates in a statement suggesting that law is ideologically the equivalent to what enclosure of land and primitive accumulation are as foundational act and permanent renewal and extension of the socio-material conditions of exploitation whites the expropriation of the actual worker from his/her product? Isn’t it remarkable in which law is becoming increasingly complex and differentiated, the reflecting – and justifying – the separation not only of the worker from the means of production but also the complex mechanisms of “division of labour” and the segregation of production, consumption, distribution and exchange that find they-to-day expression in the fact that (making Marx’ formulation from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

from: https://epeuthutebetes.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/mere-wage-increases-alienate-the-worker/

The worker … feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it.

In the meantime this moved further, IKEA advertising now that you can book the style, though don’t need the location.

it is a about socialisation ..

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in works, works, projects, publications

Before heading to the University of Vienna, teaching about European Integration and its failure, here something about …, well, Europe too, though very different: looking at enterprises as specific forms of socialisation … – Something we often forget: socialisation has to be understood in historical terms and as such it is concrete, also at times high individualist and/or oriented on maximising individual gain.

Moving or Staying – is that the question?

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, publications, works, works, projects, publications


Peter Herrmann Right to Stay – Right to Move ISBN/EAN: 9783990610169, first 1; 2019; http://www.wienerverlag.at http://www.viennaacademicpress.com

This work contains Peter Herrmann’s reflections, an admirable result in terms of time and cultural productivity  of his research stay and material support at the University of Łódź, Poland (2018/2019) and the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, Germany (2017/2018) as he mentions in the following pages. Munich is perhaps the place, that might be considered as a possible common point where international and national experts in Social Law and Social Policy intertwine their destinies in this „labyrinth of lines“.

 Among the main contributions of this work is the sharpness in the use of the author’s knowledge in different disciplines particularly in Economics, Sociology, Social Policy and Law. As well as his academic audacity in resorting to a great ample baggage of sources both of current political conjuncture citing digital media as well as of return to the classics of Economy and Law, pleasant historical narratives and even of literary novels. As well as the use of recent publications identifying clear and provocative ideas of a path dependency and the “development of underdevelopment” for those who are willing to understand the connection between social space and social time of the global village. 

In the first part, with greater emphasis on economics but always keeping faithful to what is known in Germany as Grundlagenforschung. He follows in many respects the thought and academic legacy of Hans F. Zacher whom the author has personally known and who unites in his human warmth, sensitivity an attempt to understand that there is a “black hole” and to find interdisciplinary research questions regarding the relationship between inequality in the Global and the poverty chains. Peter Herrmann has the comparative advantage of being a global researcher – he does not seek to benefit from his competitive or cooperative advantage of coming from the scientific community of the North – trying to paraphrase his lucid explanations in these concepts, Peter Herrmann knows and is able to adapt to the viscitudes that many scientists of the global South must face day by day and in his words that are also taking place in Europe.

The work deals with one of the most relevant and current topics: Migration and Mobility.

In the second part dedicated to human rights, the reading demands a level of abstraction that can reveal that a naked reader in his capacity of magination of certain realities or on the contrary as Löwenstein would compare in his constitutions and forms of government policies that there are different „Kleidungsstücke“ or suits to understand certain realities and the scope of interpretation will depend on each reader.

The classification of human rights into three generations is a discussion that the author takes up again by proposing a fourth generation. A fourth generation of human rights has to acknowledge the responsibility for socio-economic development not in terms of distributive policies but as matter of (re-)productive responsibility. Interestingly, he also proposes to reflect on: “new dimensions of power but also the fundamental structural change which we may classify as ‘socialisation by privatisation of public power’. One of the greatest current challenges in public international law.

As a bridge between the two parts of this work, he uses the very illustrative scheme to understand the order in which States can be classified in the process of globalization: Accumulation Regime/Mode of Regulation/Life Regime/Mode of Living. With a very precise and brilliant explanation of the term “threshold countries” as an idea(l) of modernization, declaring mass consumption as highest stage of socio-human existence – with this he obviously criticises Rostow and the mainstream approach to “development”. In his view, obviously two major issues remain without being problematised: the crucial meaning of the differentiation between public and private is not considered; also, there is no thought directed towards sustainability. The threshold, thus, means capitalist industrialisation, in reality possibly directly moving to the ‘advanced’ stage of finance capitalism.”

The book ends with a very critical quote from internet access as a human right that reminds us of Cristobal Columbus’ initial quote when he used the knowledge of the eclipse to colonize what would be called the Indians in the author’s words “undermining sooner or later the productive foundation, the indigenous mode of production”.

Dr. Lorena Ossio, LLM

Koordinatorin der Forschungsgruppe “Das Soziale im globalen Süden”

Coordinator of the Research Group “Understanding Southern Welfare”

Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung der Universität Bielefeld

Center for Interdisciplinary Research at Bielefeld University

Methoden 1, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany