Research
The following is an overview of the current research projects of our doctoral students.
The Chair's research research focus is on the scientific analysis of peace processes and conflicts especially on Latin America:
- Commodity-based development models and extraction conflicts
- Social inequalities with an emphasis on education, labor and social policy
- Trasitional justice, politics of the past and th e culture o f m emory
- Development Theory and North-South Relations
With a case study related to Colombia, the PhD-project asks if and how judicial reform projects can give answers to the societal crisis of democratic systems. The work is concerned with the acción de tutela. The tutela is a legal procedure to protect fundamental rights, that was established in the 90ties in the midst of an extensive crisis of the Colombian society. In this work, recent tutelas with educational conflicts will be focused. It will be asked how this example can be helpful to understand the relation between fundamental guarantees and societal transformation.
In this discussion the persistent social inequalities in Colombia challenge the hope for an extensive change of societal reality, which is mainly conducted in legal sciences. Consequently, the main focus on the overcoming of societal crisis causes a research gap when working on the relation of fundamental rights guarantees and societal transformation. Nevertheless, this is a problematic assumption because of the continuity of social disparities, especially in education, even if the tutela is used frequently.
For this reason, the project aims to develop an alternative approach to the relation of social transformation and law. Using recent research on Pierre Bourdieus “legal thinking” (Kretschmann 2019, Bourdieu 1987) and his concept of societal conflicts, law is seen rather as a specific representation than a solution of societal conflicts. This conflict representation is meaningful for the practice of actors. I argue that research on the relations between social transformation and the claims to fundamental guarantees should take into account the thought, perception and acting patterns that (re-)configure when the tutela is used.
With an empiric contribution to the legal representations of educative conflicts this work pretends to show consequences of legal mobilization in Latin America that have not been shown from a sociological viewpoint. This new perspective is supposed not only to amplify the significance of existing debates regarding the “new constitutionalism” and its societal transformations. The thesis’ contribution is also to improve our understanding of the broader relation between law and social inequality.
Team:
- Markus Ciesielski. Doctoral student. Peace Studies at the University of Giessen
- Prof. Dr. Stefan Peters. Chair for Peace Studies at the Faculty of Law at the University of Gießen
Contact:
The academic debate on the so-called “resource curse“ frequently presents social conflicts as a direct consequence of a resource-based development model. By contrast critics of the resource curse thesis argue that the resource abundance itself does not cause the problems but rather the institutional framework in which it is embedded. With this assumption as a starting point, I want to show how different institutional settings in structurally similar countries cause different types of conflicts using the examples of mining policies in Peru and in Colombia.
Extractive activities are often closely related to eruptions of violence, especially in the Andean region. Peru is one of the states with the largest amount of social conflicts caused by extractive industries, while in neighboring Colombia far less violent confrontations occur in the context of those projects. However in the latter case conflictivity exists, too, but takes on a different form: There, systematic violence (displacement, intimidation, killings) against environmental activist and indigenous groups is far more common than in the Peruvian case.
To explain these different outcomes I want to analyze the political, economic and environmental institutions that shape the mining sectors in the two countries, showing how they produce conflictivities (conflictividades).
Team:
- Quincy Stemmler. Doctoral student. Peace Studies at the University of Giessen
- Prof. Dr. Stefan Peters. Chair for Peace Studies at the Faculty of Law at the University of Gießen
Contact:
The Colombian Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición is the first in its kind to include built-in gender and ethnic approaches in its initial design. Being memory a matter of feminist concern, and insofar as the CEV aims to become a vehicle for the transmission of the experiences of women's and sexual/gender minorities in the context of armed conflict in Colombia, the research seeks to examine its work, particularly with regard to its conceptualization and implementation of intersectionality. Theorized by several strands of contemporary feminist theory, intersectionality proves to be a difficult concept to put in practice in empirical investigation. The work of the CEV provides an interesting opportunity to explore the feasibility of implementing intersectional approaches in historical clarification undertakings such as the one underway in Colombia, as much as the interpretation of social conflicts and political violence related to gender, race, class, and sexuality they allow.
Team:
- Juliana González. Doctoral student. Peace Studies at the University of Giessen
- Prof. Dr. Stefan Peters. Chair for Peace Studies at the Faculty of Law at the University of Gießen
Contact:
In the last 30 years, the number of disasters resulting from natural hazards has tripled worldwide. Due to climate change and ongoing urbanization processes, disasters will continue to increase over the next years.
Though climate change presents a risk for all of humankind, not everyone is equally vulnerable to natural hazards. The recurrence of rains, droughts, or wildfires is part of the everyday life of many people who live in high-vulnerable areas due to social and physical conditions.
The present project studies the connections between memories of disasters, social inequalities, and discrimination in Latin American societies. The project reconstructs “collective memories,” individual stories, and the experiences of the people who lived in the areas affected by El Niño during the 20th century in Peru.
With my work, I aim to answer the following questions: How has a hegemonic memory about El Niño been constructed? What does this hegemonic memory about El Niño denies or hides? What determined that some memories were included in this hegemonic memory and others were not?
Team:
- Enrique Arias. Doctoral student. Peace Studies at the University of Giessen
- Prof. Dr. Stefan Peters. Chair for Peace Studies at the Faculty of Law at the University of Gießen
Contact:
In recent decades, there has been a marked increase in political violence in Latin America against critical actors such as human rights organisations, environmental activists, social leaders, journalists and trade unionists. They are faced with attacks on their lives, threats, repressive policies and legislation aimed at restricting and/or criminalising their activities and scope for action. The perpetrators of such attacks are both state and non-state actors, who seek to restrict civil and political liberties through various forms of intimidation and violence. All of these attacks have been characterised by structural impunity.
In attempts to respond to this situation of risk and vulnerability in restrictive contexts and to provide instruments of protection to those who are victims of such violence, various legal instruments and regulations have been created and adopted at international and domestic levels. Among these is the renowned and pioneering United Nations Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognised Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1999.
In this context, over the last 15 years, there has been a gradual development of regulations, declarations, protocols, laws, national protection programmes, and jurisprudence of international courts to protect and safeguard the lives of activists and social leaders and the fundamental right to defend Human Rights. All of these instances highlight the obligation and responsibility of the state in this task.
As a result of the emergence of this legal framework and together with the demands of national and international human rights organisations, several Latin American governments have created laws and protection programmes to protect human rights defenders and other vulnerable groups, such as journalists and trade unionists. These measures have been widely criticised in terms of their scope, objectives and short- and long-term effectiveness. At the same time, due to the shortcomings of state initiatives, activists have sought their own means of protection. Together, these governmental and non-governmental mechanisms and strategies lead to the emergence of the so-called "Protection Regime", composed of various legal and policy instruments based on different perspectives and paradigms of protection and security.
In this context, the project poses the following questions: What are the main dynamics and modalities of violence against human rights defenders and other critical civil society actors that can be identified in the current Latin American context? What are the characteristics, contradictions and challenges of the different protection paradigms in responding to the victims of such violence?
Team:
- Dr. Rosario Figari Layús. Doctoral student. Peace Studies at the University of Giessen
- Prof. Dr. Stefan Peters. Chair for Peace Studies at the Faculty of Law at the University of Gießen
Contact: