Call for Papers

The Doctoral Research Triangle Event

LSE, Essex, Cambridge

Human Rights Activism and the Transformation of Social (B)orders. The political
of human rights revisited

Abstract
Recent research on human rights and conflicts has demonstrated that securitization theory with its core,
the discursive positioning of threats and the according ‘self’-‘other’ reference, may portray the effect of
human rights activism on the progression of conflicts. Although indeed innovative, such perspective fails
to grasp how securitization actually establishes conflict order and, consequently, how to achieve a de-
securitizing transformation of such order.
The paper will argue for a perspective on securitization inspired by Ernesto Laclau`s political notion of
post-foundationalism in order to highlight the political effects of human rights activism on the
transformation of conflicts. Securitizing activism reinforces antagonistic social configurations in conflicts
since they re-articulate an ‘other’ representing a threat to the existential rights of a ‘self’, which claims to
represent the social order as a whole. Conflict transformation needs de-securitizing activism that, in turn,
challenges the universalized horizon of the very own social order in conflict.

Gothenburg, 2016/11/04