GLOBINAR 2020-2021

For the tenth consecutive year of research seminars run under the name of "PILAGG", (Private International Law and Global Governance), the discussion continues on legality in the global turn.

In the course of this period, three books were published (2014, 2018, 2019) to reflect the variety of topics covered, or the methodological innovations deriving from the seminar. Moreover, recent years have seen increasing emphasis on interdisciplinarity. Areas like political theology, legal pluralism, indigenous cultures, religion, social theory, digital law, feminism, translation and psychoanalysis (in legal comparison), and more have occupied an increasing role alongside the more traditional themes of private international legal theory and practice. Seminars ran on a monthly basis in a panel or roundtable format, and an excellent group, including many doctoral students, were happy to meet up at lunchtime with a brown-bag lunch to discuss new developments in a largely critical mode.

This year, the need to find a way of keeping up these intellectual exchanges in virtual form provided a challenge, but also the opportunity for an overhaul in the format. The change is also due to two new arrivals in the team: >Helena Alviar García and Günter Frankenberg.

Multiple conversations among ourselves during the first lockdown (Spring 2020) inspired the idea of exploring the idea of crisis in law. Crisis theory connected us to the political economy and the issue of the sustainability of global neo-liberal capitalism in a context of acute social, sanitary, ecological upheaval - on which we had all read Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi’s work. The concept of a seminar based on the multiple dimensions of capitalism, including many that are not usually included in studies of law and political economy (e.g. epistemology, courts, utopias, bodies, etc.), stemmed from there. What exactly was law’s background role in all this? How was the law present in capitalism’s own “boundary conflicts”? Rahel Jaeggi kindly accepted to share her thoughts for the kick-off session in September.

Having in mind last Spring (2020) that the next academic semester would be taking place largely on Zoom around the world, many of us were finding our days on screen quite tiresome and source of many complications and extra work. Looking for the lightest mode possible, we opted for a book club format. This meant sharing and rediscovering texts relevant to law’s political economy - preferably canonical, sometimes our favourites, not necessarily legal - and relating them to literature or cinema to provide context, narratives, imagery; relief from the dryness of much legal scholarship.

The team of fellows got to work during the Summer 2020, setting up and designing the website, advertising the events on social media, contacting guests and discussing the choices of texts. To our surprise, we found we had a very large number of registrations (registration is required to access the readings) and indeed a fabulous group of faithful followers from all continents who actually did the readings in advance of each Webinar! The events, all recorded, have been very stimulating and highly enjoyable. Our sincere thanks go out to all those involved. We dearly miss our post-seminar Italian pasta, but we are delighted to meet up with so many friends and colleagues whom we would never have been able to assemble otherwise!

We intensely look forward to the upcoming semester of eight sessions, including one, the last, to be shared with the Intensive Doctoral Week. We invite you to join us! For more information on the sessions can be found on our website. It definitely won’t be the end of our fruitful and amicable collaboration as a team, and we are already plotting the follow-up!

The Globinar team (Helena Alviar García, Günter Frankenberg, Horatia Muir Watt and all the Fellows)