Joel Quirk
University of the Witwatersrand, Political Studies, Faculty Member
- History, International Relations, Critical Theory, Research Methodology, Human Rights, International Law, and 27 moreInternational Relations Theory, Migration Studies, Intellectual History, African Studies, Global Justice, History of Slavery, Forced Migration, Political Representation, Abolition of Slavery, Reparations, Colonialism, Imperialism, Empire, Gender Studies, Gender, Feminism, African History, Post-Colonialism, International Political Economy, Social Movements, Slavery, Critical international political economy, Human Trafficking, Policy Diffusion, Political Studies, International History, and Political Geography and Geopoliticsedit
Contemporary slavery has recently and unexpectedly emerged as a key source of both popular fascination and political mobilization. This volume brings together a cast of leading experts to carefully explore how the history and iconography... more
Contemporary slavery has recently and unexpectedly emerged as a key source of both popular fascination and political mobilization. This volume brings together a cast of leading experts to carefully explore how the history and iconography of slavery has been invoked to support a series of government interventions, activist projects, legal instruments, and rhetorical performances. However well-intentioned these interventions might be, they nonetheless remain subject to a host of limitations and complications. Recent efforts to combat contemporary slavery are too often sensationalist, self-serving, and superficial. The widely held notion that anti-slavery is one of those rare issues that "transcends" politics or ideology is only sustainable because the underlying issues at stake have been constructed and demarcated in a way that minimizes direct challenges to dominant political and economic interests. This must change.
By providing an original approach to the underlying issues at stake, this book will help readers understand the political practices that have been concealed beneath the popular rhetoric and establishes new conversations between scholars of slavery and trafficking and scholars of human rights and social movements.
http://www.ubcpress.ca/search/title_book.asp?BookID=299175289
By providing an original approach to the underlying issues at stake, this book will help readers understand the political practices that have been concealed beneath the popular rhetoric and establishes new conversations between scholars of slavery and trafficking and scholars of human rights and social movements.
http://www.ubcpress.ca/search/title_book.asp?BookID=299175289
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LexisNexis South Africa has mined its newspaper archives to produce a deeply flawed ‘human trafficking awareness index’. This draws upon sensationalised research to create yet more false information on trafficking.
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Governments and activists in Europe and America invoke the immediacy of “modern-day slavery” to sidestep challenging questions regarding the case for reparations. Instead of repairing harm, they promise rescue.
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Modern activists and public officials have frequently reduced the history of anti-slavery to a hollowed out "feel good story," whose chief role is to help legitimate their pre-existing personal beliefs, policies and approaches. The types... more
Modern activists and public officials have frequently reduced the history of anti-slavery to a hollowed out "feel good story," whose chief role is to help legitimate their pre-existing personal beliefs, policies and approaches. The types of historical "lessons" generated from these highly selective historical excursions tend to be fairly generic, as they most commonly relate to either personal virtues (perseverance, faith, etc.) or familiar political strategies that have already been further improved and expanded by later generations of activists (petitions, boycotts etc.). The uncomfortable relationship between anti-slavery and imperialism needs to become part of this conversation, as it is replete with lessons about what not to do. Rather than taking the "humanitarian" credentials of anti-slavery supporters at face value, we instead need to interrogate and reflect upon how, why and where anti-slavery rhetoric aligns with other ideological, economic and political agendas, and what consequences can follow from these alignments. Rather than taking anti-slavery legislation at face value, we instead need to reflect on how and why states that are ostensibly committed to the anti-slavery cause continue to favor legal regimes and policy responses that promote forms of systemic abuse, vulnerability, discrimination and exploitation. Rather than treating slavery as a singular and exceptional category, we instead need to approach slavery as but one manifestation of much larger patterns of exploitation and exclusion. Rather than assuming that "freedom" is always sharply differentiated from slavery, we instead take into account the ideological and political effects associated with declaring a person to be "free," and the types of constraints that "freedom" can gloss over.
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‘Modern-day abolitionists’ frame their activities as part of a shared global struggle, but there is no single anti-slavery or anti-trafficking movement.
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Contemporary abolitionism garners strong bipartisan support because it does not challenge major economic and political interests. But slavery, trafficking and forced labour are rooted in global patterns of injustice. For the movement to... more
Contemporary abolitionism garners strong bipartisan support because it does not challenge major economic and political interests. But slavery, trafficking and forced labour are rooted in global patterns of injustice. For the movement to be effective it must sacrifice some of its support in order to speak truth to power.
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Beyond Trafficking and Slavery editors introduce their first themed issue, which explores how slavery and trafficking have been represented—by public officials, activists, and numerous others—together with the frequently troubling... more
Beyond Trafficking and Slavery editors introduce their first themed issue, which explores how slavery and trafficking have been represented—by public officials, activists, and numerous others—together with the frequently troubling consequences that these popular representations have had upon policy and practice.
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Benchmarking practices have rapidly diffused throughout the globe in recent years. This can be traced to their popularity amongst non-state actors, such as civil society organisations and corporate actors, as well as states and... more
Benchmarking practices have rapidly diffused throughout the globe in recent years. This can be traced to their popularity amongst non-state actors, such as civil society organisations and corporate actors, as well as states and international organisations (IOs). Benchmarks serve to both ‘neutralise’ and ‘universalise’ a range of overlapping normative values and agendas, including freedom of speech, democracy, human development, environmental protection, poverty alleviation, ‘modern’ statehood, and ‘free’ markets. The proliferation of global benchmarks in these key areas amounts to a comprehensive normative vision regarding what various types of transnational actors should look like, what they should value, and how they should behave. While individual benchmarks routinely differ in terms of scope and application, they all share a common foundation, with normative values and agendas being translated into numerical representations through simplification and extrapolation, commensuration, reification, and symbolic judgements. We argue that the power of benchmarks chiefly stems from their capacity to create the appearance of authoritative expertise on the basis of forms of quantification and numerical representation. This politics of numbers paves the way for the exercise of various forms of indirect power, or ‘governance at a distance’, for the purposes of either status quo legitimation or political reform.
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Global benchmarks have grown exponentially over the last two decades, having been both applied to and developed by states, international organisations, corporations, and non-governmental organisations. As a consequence, global... more
Global benchmarks have grown exponentially over the last two decades, having been both applied to and developed by states, international organisations, corporations, and non-governmental organisations. As a consequence, global benchmarking is now firmly established as a distinct mode of transnational governance. Benchmarking chiefly involves the development of comparative metrics of performance, which typically take the form of highly stylised comparisons which are generated by translating complex phenomena into numerical values via simplification and extrapolation, commensuration, reification, and symbolic judgements. This process of translation takes what might otherwise be highly contentious normative agendas and converts them into formats that gain credibility through rhetorical claims to neutral and technocratic assessment. This politics of numbers has far-reaching ramifications for transnational governance, including the dimensions and effects of indirect power, expertise and agenda-setting, coordination, regulation and certification, and norm contestation and activism. This Special Issue draws upon an emerging literature to explore how and why benchmarks both align with and expand upon established models of International Relations theory and scholarship. It does so by critically examining the role of global benchmarks in key areas such as state ‘failure’, global supply chains, disaster management, economic governance, corporate social responsibility, and human development.
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Global benchmarks have grown exponentially over the last two decades, having been both applied to and developed by states, international organisations, corporations, and non-governmental organisations. As a consequence, global... more
Global benchmarks have grown exponentially over the last two decades, having been both applied to and developed by states, international organisations, corporations, and non-governmental organisations. As a consequence, global benchmarking is now firmly established as a distinct mode of transnational governance. Benchmarking chiefly involves the development of comparative metrics of performance, which typically take the form of highly stylised comparisons which are generated by translating complex phenomena into numerical values via simplification and extrapolation, commensuration, reification, and symbolic judgements. This process of translation takes what might otherwise be highly contentious normative agendas and converts them into formats that gain credibility through rhetorical claims to neutral and technocratic assessment. This politics of numbers has far-reaching ramifications for transnational governance, including the dimensions and effects of indirect power, expertise and agenda-setting, coordination, regulation and certification, and norm contestation and activism. This Special Issue draws upon an emerging literature to explore how and why benchmarks both align with and expand upon established models of International Relations theory and scholarship. It does so by critically examining the role of global benchmarks in key areas such as state ‘failure’, global supply chains, disaster management, economic governance, corporate social responsibility, and human development.
Research Interests: International Relations, International Relations Theory, Social Indicators, Governmentality, Global governmentality, and 9 moreGlobal Governance, International Political Economy, Globalisation and Development, Key Performance Indicators, Benchmarking, Ranking, Global Economic Governance, International Rankings, and Global Benchmarking
Now open for registration: New MOOC on Forced and Precarious Labor in the Global Economy: Slavery by another name? Forced and precarious labour cannot be reduced to the grit in the gears of an otherwise legitimate and smoothly... more
Now open for registration: New MOOC on Forced and Precarious Labor in the Global Economy: Slavery by another name?
Forced and precarious labour cannot be reduced to the grit in the gears of an otherwise legitimate and smoothly functioning economic system. They must instead be viewed as an intended outcome of the smooth and regular operations of the global economy.
Taking effective action therefore requires identifying and challenging systems of exploitation, rather than targeting individual ‘bad apple’ employers or deviant criminals.
The course is also free. Go to http://bit.ly/2F2xibY
Forced and precarious labour cannot be reduced to the grit in the gears of an otherwise legitimate and smoothly functioning economic system. They must instead be viewed as an intended outcome of the smooth and regular operations of the global economy.
Taking effective action therefore requires identifying and challenging systems of exploitation, rather than targeting individual ‘bad apple’ employers or deviant criminals.
The course is also free. Go to http://bit.ly/2F2xibY
