Older news - 2020
News July 2020
New Publication by Prof. Dr. Clemens Albrecht
"Sozioprudenz - Sozial klug handeln", by Prof. Dr. Clemens Albrecht, has just been published.
Conference report on the "Essener Gesprächen"
A conference report by Martin Otto on the 55th Essener Gesprächen on the subject of „Institutionen unter Druck. Europarechtliche Überformung des Staatskirchenrechts?“ has just been published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The author highlights in particular the lecture by Prof. Dr. Clemens Albrecht, Co-director at the Käte Hamburger Center „Law as Culture“:
(Please note that the article can only be accessed via the network of the University of Bonn)
Digital Forum series “Law as Culture”: Podcasts are now available
Due to the current Corona crisis the planned lectures of the Forum series “Law as Culture” will not take place at the Käte Hamburger Center “Law as Culture” as usual. Instead the lectures will be recorded during the digital Fellow meeting of the Center.
The following lectures are now available:
Grischka Petri: Cultural Monopoly and Alternative Communities (July 29, 2020)
Pierre Brunet: Navigating the "Rights of Nature Turns": main issues (June 24, 2020)
Yousra Abourabi: The Normativities of Climate Change: Building New Legal Communities (June 17, 2020)
Justus Heck: Judicial Contact Systems (June 10, 2020)
News May 2020
„Law and 'Gemeinschaft'“: Working Paper and Podcast by Prof. Gephart are now available
The recording of the opening address for the Center’s new thematic year is now available as a podcast. The commentary, which was filmed in the Durkheim Salon, refers to a working paper on the Corona crisis which can be found here.
The lecture is divided into two parts and deals with the following topics:
Part I: General considerations about the relationship of Law and “Gemeinschaft”
In the first part of the lecture, the by no means undisputed, yet indispensable categories of “community” and their limits – from Ferdinand Tönnies to Durkheim and Parsons to Luhmann – is discussed in order to localize them in the legal sphere. In doing so, various levels of community become visible, ranging from the figure of the “legal community” to the “European community” to family and neighborhoods as primordial communities To part I.
Part II: The Corona Crisis in Light of the Law-as-Culture Paradigm: Law and Corona Communities
In the second part, an attempt will be made to illuminate the normative implications and consequences of the Corona crisis in light of the Law-as-Culture paradigm. These will undoubtedly have an extraordinary impact on political, religious, and familial communities – an impact that, under the conditions of a normative state of exception, establishes an extensive realm of the normative (Foucault). To part II.
News April 2020
The Corona Crisis in Light of the Law-as-Culture Paradigm
The current crisis is met with reflection from experts – especially noticeable in official statements, TV show debates, and podcasts related to the natural sciences – upon which political decision-makers rely. And, at the same time, the power to “define” events has shifted into the sphere of science. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that value-based decisions are at stake – decisions which are fundamental in nature and call for ethical and cultural-scientific consideration.
A cultural-scientific perspective on this all-encompassing crisis in light of the Law-as-Culture paradigm can be found in the following debate, which was sparked by a piece by Professor Dr. jur. Dr. h.c. Werner Gephart and is being continued by successive texts from the Center’s former Fellows and friends. From the outset, it was important that the Center address current issues using a research perspective that is rooted in the fundamentals. As such, the normative requirements and consequences of the Arab Spring gained special attention early on at conferences and in publications, problems of normative pluralism were discussed in the context of circumcision, questions of material justice were raised in debates about the restitution of stolen Jewish property, as were provocative inquiries about a legal aesthetic that is reflected in courthouses, films about courts, and portrayals of Justitia. We also discussed the cultural significance of masks at the Art Museum in Bonn when they had masks on exhibit, and we pondered the normative requirements of the flâneur, a type of movement that, when done in large numbers, is currently penalized in many places.
With the project at hand, Professor Gephart would like to utilize the diversity of academic disciplines and backgrounds present at the Center and its associated institutions to analyze the large challenges arising from the current crisis – and to do so not only from a cosmopolitan perspective, but also by using the analysis of norms and law as developed at the Käte Hamburger Center “Law as Culture”.
So far published and available for download:
- Werner Gephart: The Corona Crisis in Light of the Law-as-Culture Paradigm (31.03.2020)
- Thomas Dreier: „Law as Culture“ in Times of Corona (09.04.2020)
- Jacques Commaille: Dans un monde bouleversé: un nouveau régime de connaissance pour le droit? (09.04.2020)
- Maurizio Ferraris: Mobilization (09.04.2020)
- Laurent de Sutter: The Logistics of Pandemic (09.04.2020)
- Upendra Baxi: International Law and Covid Jurisprudence (09.04.2020)
- Matthias Lehmann: Mothballing the Economy: Business Law Hibernating through the Corona Crisis (09.04.2020)
- Markus Gabriel: “We Need a Metaphysical Pandemic” (14.04.2020)
- Clemens Albrecht: Viral Coupling - Society’s Fight for Survival (14.04.2020)
- Caroline Okumdi Muoghalu: Igbo Culture and Corona Virus Pandemic Social Distancing Order of Nigerian Government on a Collision Course (14.04.2020)
- Helga Lell: A Different Kind of “Emergency Law”: The Days of Coronavirus in Argentina (14.04.2020)
- Tiziana Andina: "It's Just a Flu" - What We Can Learn from Our Mistakes (14.04.2020)
- Valentino Cattelan: Sacred Euro: Sovereign Debt(s) and EU’s Bare Credit in the Corona Crisis (20.04.2020)
- Angela Condello: Immersed in a Normative Lab (20.04.2020)
- Valérie Hayaert: Shallow Graves and Empty Tombs: The Architecture of Death under the Chinese Concept of Tianxia (20.04.2020)
- Martin Przybilski: Imagining Infection in the Babylonian Talmud (20.04.2020)
- Alexandre Vanautgaerden:The Return of the Corpses. Nosferatu, Phantom der Nacht (Werner Herzog) (20.04.2020)
- Gianmaria Ajani: Possible Effects of the Pandemic Emergency on the Perception of EU Law (22.04.2020)
- Greta Olson: Being in Uncertainty: Thinking the Coronavirus Pandemic (22.04.2020)
- Raja Sakrani: Religious Co-narration of Corona (23.04.2020)
- Olivier Beaud et Cécile Guérin Bargues: L’état d'urgence sanitaire: était-il judicieux de créer un nouveau régime d’exception? (27.04.2020)
- Sam Whimster: Discovering Society in a Global Age (29.04.2020)
- Marta Bucholc: The Corona Crisis as a Test of National Habitus: The Imperative of Obedience (29.04.2020)
- Mariacarla Gadebusch-Bondio and Maria Marloth: Clinical Trials in Pandemic Settings: How Corona Unbinds Science (29.04.2020)
- Jan Christoph Suntrup: Biopolitical Models and the Hygiene of Tact (02.05.2020)
- Enrico Terrone: The Death of Art by COVID-19 (02.05.2020)
- Pierre Brunet: Nous sommes la raison du virus (11.05.2020)
- Francesca Caroccia: Searching for a vaccine. Rethinking the paradigm of (private) law in times of pandemic crisis (13.05.2020)
- Peter Goodrich: Zoonoses (20.05.2020)
- Hamadi Redissi et al.: La Tunisie face au Covid-19. Penser ensemble, agir de concert (20.05.2020)
- Sergio Genovesi: “Support your local”: The Ethics of Consumption and the Coronavirus Pandemic (20.05.2020)
- Martin Albrow: Has Covid-19 brought globalization to an end? (25.05.2020)
* The views expressed in these publications are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Center “Law as Culture”.
Additional contributions from former Fellows and friends of the Center will follow shortly!
News March 2020
Due to the current risk situation caused by the increasing spread of the corona virus the announced forum events on March 17th and March 24th will be cancelled
Even at events that are not "Großveranstaltungen" (major events) , the possibility of reducing the risk of infection with the corona virus by cancellation is increasingly being used because of condensed communication. Although epidemiologists tell us that only a "through-infection" of society would lead to collective immunisations, there is agreement that a slowing down of the process is desirable. Thus we find ourselves in a similar paradoxical situation, into which Durkheim's thesis of the "normality" of crime leads us: Deviance is functional for the social system, though individually highly detrimental to a victim.
For this reason, the forum evening and reception planned for March 17th will not take place, and since - due to the precarious situation in Italy - a Fellow and participant in the panel discussion with Maria Eichhorn will leave us early, the date set for March 24th for the Rose Valland Institute discussion will unfortunately not take place.
We thank you very much for your understanding, but we can also promise that the juridical-normative questions connected with this kind of "state of emergency" will not be neglected by us!
Werner Gephart
News February 2020
Lecture by Raja Sakrani at Beirut, Lebanon
On April 14, 2020, Dr. Raja Sakrani, Research Coordinator at the Käte Hamburger Center "Law as Culture", will give a lecture entitled "L'autre dans la civilisation islamique: entre l'immanence des cultures et la transcendance divine". With this lecture, she will open the international conference "Islam & Altérité", which will take place from April 14 to 17, 2020, at Saint Joseph University of Beirut, Lebanon.
Further information can be found under activities
Please note: Due to the current coronavirus pandemic the congress will take place from 13 to 16 April, 2021.
New Program “Forum Law as Culture”
Through its homonymous forum, the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities “Law as Culture” offers a space for interdisciplinary and intercultural exchange with international guests and fellows at the Center. The forum events take place on Tuesdays in the Center's Max Weber Lecture Room and are open to the interested public. Admission is free.
The current program of April until July 2020 can be accessed here (PDF).
Detailed information on individual lectures can be accessed under Activities
News January 2020
Workshop "Digital Transformation in Law and Society"
"Digital Transformation in Law and Society: Comparative Perspectives on Families and New Media" on 3 and 4 February 2020.
The Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities “Law as Culture” organizes a workshop entitledFor further Information please note the invitation card (PDF)