Deutsche Vereinigung für Politikwissenschaft
Arbeitskreis "Soziologie der internationalen Beziehungen"

Institutionalized Inequalities

Da das Thema der Arbeitstagung 2016 „Institutionalized Inequalities – How International Organizations Shape Global Order“ in einem der Workshops der European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS) aufgegriffen wird, soll die Arbeitstagung 2016 im Rahmen dieses Workshops durchgeführt werden. Der Workshop findet vom 6.-8. April 2016 in Tübingen statt und wird von Caroline Fehl (Hessische Stiftung für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Frankfurt) und Katja Freistein (Käte Hamburger Kolleg, Duisburg) verantwortet.

 

Kurzbeschreibung des Workshops:

The workshop will investigate the idea how studying International Relations through the conceptual lens of “inequality research” can add to our understanding of global order. This order can be understood as societal, i.e. as relations among unequal global subjects. In particular, we seek to draw attention to the manifold ways in which inequality is institutionalized. Inequality among states, non?state groups and individuals, we argue, is never simply a material feature of the system – as a realist perspective on unequal power relations would hold – but is constituted, produced, reproduced and changed through institutional mechanisms.

Examples such as the G20 or the UN Security Council are best?known cases of such inequalities, but almost any other international organization can be involved in the reproduction or transformation of unequal relations – be they material or non?material.

Which inequalities are concerned and how they are brought about will be empirical questions for the workshop.

The individual contributions to the workshop should explore the institutionalization of inequality in international politics across a broad range of policy?areas. By aiming to combining case studies of issue?specific organizations with analyses of broader institutional processes of world order formation, the workshop is meant to reconcile micro, meso and macro perspectives on unequal order with a focus on the reproductive role of international institutions.

The main goal of the workshop will be to identify patterns of (in)equality production throughout a variety of international institutions and across different policy fields, focusing on intra? and interorganizational processes (or mechanisms).