Prof. Paul Seabright

Professor of Economics at the Toulouse School of Economics

In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Guido Friebel

Duration of stay: 9th - 16th December

Paul Seabright is Professor of Economics at the Toulouse School of Economics, a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and former Director of the interdisciplinary Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. He is author among other works of The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life (Princeton 2010).

Research Project Title
Conflict and Trust in Religion

Research abstract
This book project is an economist's attempt to understand the way in which religious movements (and individual churches, temples, mosques, synagogues and other organizations within movements) compete for members and resources. Drawing on several disciplines and ranging widely from prehistory through classical and medieval times to the present day, it presents a conceptual approach that understands religious organisations as platforms that create communities bringing together diverse groups of members. It analyzes both what such movements have in common with secular platforms and what is distinctively religious about them - particularly their deployment of ritual, their reliance (to different degrees) on doctrine and belief, and their mastery of narratives that explain their members' place in the world and help them to make sense of suffering in their lives. It shows how different competitive strategies coexist in the overall religious ecosystem, and have enabled religious movements to innovate in response to the pressures of competition from secular society. As a result religion remains robustly capable of mobilizing its adherents in the 21st century, and also wields immense economic and political power. This power can be used sometimes to good and sometimes to bad effect. The presentation will summarize the book's major arguments and open a discussion about how interdisciplinary collaborations can make progress in understanding religion in the world today.

Publications:
“God insures those who pay?  Formal insurance and religious offerings in Ghana” (with Emmanuelle Auriol, Julie Lassébie, Amma Panin and Eva Raiber), Quarterly Journal of Economics 135(4), (2020), pp. 1799-1848,  https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaa015.
“Trust in the Image of God: links between religiosity and reciprocity in Haiti” (with Emmanuelle Auriol, Diego Delissaint, Maleke Fourati and Josepa Miquel-Florensa), Economics of Transition and Institutional Change 29(1), (2021), pp.3-34.
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.12263
“Favoring your in-group can harm both them and you: ethnicity and public goods provision in China” (with César Mantilla, Ling Zhou, Charlotte Wang, Donghui Yang and Suping Shen), Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization185 (2021), pp. 211-233, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.02.016
“Betting on the Lord: Lotteries and Religiosity in Haiti” (with Emmanuelle Auriol, Diego Delissaint, Maleke Fourati and Josepa Miquel-Florensa), World Development, 144 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105441.

Prof. Dr. Roberto Mordacci

Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy

In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Rainer Forst

Duration of stay: From November 2022 to July 2023

Roberto Mordacci graduated in philosophy at the Catholic University of Milan in 1989 and then obtained a PhD in Bioethics at the University of Genoa.
Since November 1, 2002 he has been associate professor (confirmed since November 1, 2004) of Moral Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University.
Since 1 November 2013 he is Full Professor of Moral Philosophy at the same University, where he teaches Moral Philosophy and Philosophy of History.
Since January 2017 he is founder and Director of the International Research Centre for European Culture and Politics (IRCECP) at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University.
From 1 July 2013 to July 2022 he was Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University.
Since July 2021 he is Co-Director of the Journal Filosofia morale / Moral Philosophy (Mimesis) promoted by the Italian Society of Moral Philosophy
Since 1 October 2022 he is Pro-Rector for Humanities and Social Sciences of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University.

Research Project Title
Critical Ethics & Politics. Normative Reasons & Social Practices

Research abstract
Even though the principle of respect for persons is almost universally invoked in moral normative theory, not so many books are entirely dedicated to the idea of respect.
Maybe the first systematic theory of respect for persons is expounded in R. Downie, E. Telfer, Respect for Persons (Allen & Unwin, London 1969), a rather influential but outdated book based on a personalistic interpretation of some of Kant’s ideas on the subject. Quite understandably, also Kantian in their general outlook, with many differences among them, are the attempts of building a moral theory on the grounds of respect: Carl Cranor’s articles in the ‘70s (e.g. Toward a Theory of Respect for Persons, «American Philosophical Quarterly», 1975), Alan Donagan’s well-known The Theory of Morality (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1977), and more recently T.E. Hill’s Respect, Pluralism, and Justice (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000), the highly influential S. Darwall’s The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect and Accountability (Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2006) and a number of good articles by Carla Bagnoli (e.g. The Mafioso Case: Morality, Autonomy, and Self-Respect, «Ethical Theory and Moral Practice», 2009).
Yet, all of these attempts rather seem to take for granted the normative validity of the principle of respect, and do not offer a thorough theoretical foundation for it (with the possible exception of Darwall’s book). Furthermore, none of these theories offers a historical reconstruction of the concept, at least as a supporting argument showing how it happened that this principle is so prominent nowadays. Finally, the Kantian ground assumed as the basis of a theory of respect is often unexplored in both its more radical grounds in Kant’s doctrine of non-contradiction in the will, and in its possible connection with the idea of critical philosophy.
This book attempts to fill this gap in the academic research and to offer a systematic theory of respect as the foundation of critical ethics and politics, overcoming the limitations of the existing studies. Furthermore, exploring the notion of critique in a connection between Kant’s critical philosophy and the methodological suggestions coming from the Critical Theory developed by the authors of the Frankfurt School, this book aims to elaborate a fresh outlook to the ethical and political issues of contemporary society, in both moral and political terms.
The idea of respect is the practical ground of normative theory. It does not depend on or derive from other notions, such as the idea of dignity or the nature of human beings, but it is inscribed in the original structure of intentional action with an evaluative relevance. Any human practice is subject to a judgment in terms of respect and a comprehensive theory is needed to critically assess our individual and social practices.

Publications:
Among his recent publications: Ritorno a Utopia (Laterza, Roma-Bari 2020); La condizione neomoderna (Einaudi, Torino 2017); (ed. with Stefania Contesini), Fare impresa con i valori. Teoria e pratica dell’Identity Shaping (Bruno Mondadori, Milano 2018); Essence et mèthode de l’utopie, Diogène 2021/1 n° 273-274, 7-22; A Short History and Theory of Respect, International Philosophical Quarterly, 59, 2, issue 234 (June 2019), pp. 121-136.

Events during the scholarship (lectures, etc.):
- The idea of critique. A reappraisal, May 16th, 2023, Normative Orders (Kolloquium)
- Respect as a relation of power, May 23rd, 2023, Normative Orders

Prof. Feng-Mei Heberer

Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies, New York University, New York, NY

In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger

Duration of stay: December 2022

Feng-Mei Heberer is Assistant Professor in Cinema Studies at New York University. Her research spans transnational media, ethnic studies, feminist and queer studies, with particular focus on Asian diasporic media cultures. Her work has appeared, among others, in Camera Obscura, Sexualities, and the edited volume Asian Video Cultures. Her book, Asians On Demand: Mediating Race in Video Art and Activism, is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press. Complementing her academic work, she has been a programmer for several film festivals, including the Asian Film Festival Berlin.

Research Project Title
Asian German Media Activisms

Research abstract
This project proceeds from the question, what can we learn about conflict and trust-building from the activist media practices of marginalized groups, in particular when conceived through an intersectional grassroots perspective? With a focus on the Asian Film Festival Berlin as a nodal point of different generations of Asian German activism, it seeks to explore overarching questions of representational practices, collective organizing, and the particular role of distinct media formats in articulating minority politics and advancing a social justice agenda, including film, podcasts, and social media.

Publications:
2023. Asians On Demand: Mediating Race in Video Art and Activism (University of Minnesota Press).
2020. “Scaling Down Workload, Upping Co-Presence. Reflecting on Teaching in the Time of Corona.” Open Media Studies Blog.
2019. “Sentimental Activism as Queer-Feminist Documentary Practice, or How To Make Love in a Room Full of People,” Camera Obscura (Best Publication Award Gender and Media 2020,Gender-/Queer and Media Studies Interest Group, Society for Media Studies).
2017. “The Asianization of Heimat – Ming Wong’s Asian German Video Works,” in Asian Video Cultures: In the Penumbra of the Global (Duke University Press), ed. Bhaskar Sarkar and Joshua Neves (Society for Cinema and Media Studies Award for Best Edited Collection, 2019).

Events:
16 December 2022 Workshop: Asiatisch Deutscher Kulturaktivismus: Medien, Repräsentation, Generationen

Prof Veena Hariharan

Associate Professor of Cinema Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Duration of stay: September 1 2022 to February 29 2024

Funded by Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation

Veena Hariharan is currently Alexander Von Humboldt Fellow at the Department of Theater, Film and Media Studies at the Goethe Universität, Frankfurt. After completing her PhD in Cinema Studies from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA, she taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India where she is Associate Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics. Her articles and chapters on non-fiction film, the environment and non-human animals have appeared in anthologies and journals. Her book, Embers of Reason: Contemporary Indian Documentary and the Secular Imagination is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

Research project title
Entangled Lives: Animals, Humans, and the Moving Image

Research abstract
By shifting the exclusive focus of studies on conflict and trust away from human worlds to include non-human animals, I underline the critical importance of the animal for thinking about human life. The project is located in my disciplinary focus of film and media studies, and I look at the entanglements of animals, humans and the moving image in the figure of the screen animal. Studies about animals are predicated on their fundamental otherness and disappearance under regimes of regulation and sanitization of human-animal boundaries in western industrial modernity. My research challenges this critical move by locating the animal in the feral cities of the postcolonial world where modern technologies of visuality, conservation, and governmentality on the one hand, and religion, mythology, human livelihoods, and traditional ways of life on the other, mediate everyday human encounters with animals. By studying these complex ecosystems where animals and humans coexist amid affective relationships of care, vulnerability and precarity, I hope to explore new, urgent and ethical ways in which to inhabit multispecies-worlds.

Publications
(2014) “At home in the Empire: The Colonial Home Movies of Edgar S Hyde”, Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies. 5(1): 49-61.
(2021) “The Shikar Film and Photograph: Hunting in Colonial India”. In Blackwell Companion to Indian Film edited by Neepa Majumdar and Ranjani Mazumdar. UK: Blackwell.
 (2022) “Contagious Aesthetics: Bios, Politics and Cinema in Contemporary Kerala”. In “Cinema of the Global South: Towards a Southern Aesthetics” CISA (Centre for Indian Studies in Africa) Journal, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Events
Further information will follow