The Multidisciplinary Meeting on Indigenous Peoples/Encuentro Multidisciplinar sobre Pueblos Indígenas (EMPI 2024) distinguishes itself by its unique thematic focus on indigenous peoples, its multi- and interdisciplinarity and Europe-wide institutional forms of cooperation. The event shall catalyze and stimulate academic debates on current global crisis contexts and respective vulnerabilities indigenous peoples are facing today.
The envisaged program addresses global challenges and vulnerabilities arising in indigenous peoples’ worlds, ranging from CoVID19, environmental crisis contexts, indigenous-specific genocide or neo-colonial developments to meta questions relating methodologies or legal framework(s).
While EMPI follows common panel formats it also includes a keynote speech, book fare, documentary, museum visit including a follow-up debate on ‘decolonising academia’ and opportunities for junior-senior-peer advice, including dedicated (student) skills sessions. It further provides spaces for interdisciplinary encounters, discipline-specific reflections and dialogue on the field of indigenous studies.
When: June 4–7, 2024
Where: Sciences Po Paris, Law School, Paris, France
The conference is co-funded by Université franco-allemande (ufa) & Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung (DSF).
Call for Papers
Please submit the following information until no later than March 31 2024 to EMPI.June2024@gmail.com:
- Full name,
- Career stage,
- University or institute of affiliation,
- Title of your paper,
- Paper abstract (max 300 words),
- A couple of key words,
- The session of your choice (find below) and
- Stating if you would like to be considered for one of the 10 MA/PhD student grants or the 10 grants for indigenous individuals to participate at this year’s Meeting
Regarding your submission, you will be contacted by April 15 2024. Feel free to submit abstracts in non-English languages (e.g. French or Spanish).
Here you can find the complete Call for Papers.
Conference Sessions
I) Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Justice
- The first panel offers to (re)define the emerging field of environmental justice as shaped and understood by indigenous peoples, emphasizing conceptual issues, criteria and thresholds. It provides possibilities to explore the rights of nature (e.g. biodiversity, agriculture), including intersections with human rights regimes and hard law issues such as procedural law. Indigenous cosmologies may find a place and further articulation in these overlapping claims; Other related chances lie with bio-cultural rights for indigenous peoples to channel their voices into the persisting State-centric legal order, and the value attributable to indigenous environmental activism.
Disciplines potentially represented: Law, political science, legal and political anthropology, geography, sustainability studies, human ecology
II) Multiplicity of Legal Orders
- The second panel will examine how legal orders engage with indigenous peoples’ rights and prove relevant for indigenous peoples, emblematic being neighboring legal orders such as peasants’ rights or minority regimes. How are indigenous peoples’ rights situated in specific orders such as international human rights protection mechanisms, regional safeguards (e.g. the Inter-American human rights framework) or relevant constitutional reform processes? How can the multiplicity of legal orders be contextualized and postulated in other frameworks, for example the right to water? Especially in European contexts, minority rights have proven fundamental as alternative legal venues, spilling over to inspire progressive developments in the field of indigenous rights and vice versa. Comparative work in such group and collective rights contexts promises to provide an interesting space of further conceptual and beyond exploration.
Disciplines potentially represented: Law, legal positivism, theory/philosophy, international relations and political science, possibly legal anthropology
III) Legal Anthropological Encounters and Legal Pluralism
- The third panel explicitly addresses legal anthropology and legal pluralism as proper fields of research, some of the most shaping (sub)disciplines in the field of indigenous studies offering an array of methodological approaches to engage with justice procedures. Namely ethnographic methods or localisation/vernacularisation approaches have been serving as methodological tools across the social sciences. Finally, the panel shall provide opportunities for specific or endemic questions to be discussed in relation to the panel theme, such as conflicts of rights and legal hierarchies, or pre-colonial realities.
Disciplines potentially represented: Legal anthropology, law
IV) Indigenous Methodological Encounters and Decolonial Theory
- The goal of the fourth panel is to uncover a wide range of decolonizing approaches beyond the discipline of history and to consider decolonizing academia as a cross-cutting, mainstreaming exercise across social sciences including law. The necessity of acknowledging the need to decolonize the law, institutions and society has become a prevailing concern in both academia and everyday life, spurring transformative developments at broader levels and alienating us from perspectives that consider indigenous peoples objects of inquiry. Methods such as participatory action research are key, as is including and channeling indigenous voices explicitly and actively.
Disciplines potentially represented: Methods, decolonial studies, history, education, theory/philosophy, relevant social science disciplines
V) Global Crisis Contexts
- The fifth panel will discuss current crisis contexts that impact indigenous peoples’ lives either by ignorance or targeted action, i.e. geno- or ethnocidal policies, lower level persecution or resettlement. Commonly observed are secondary impacts (or collateral damage) caused by resource extraction, deforestation, infrastructure projects and armed conflicts. The panel may also illuminate specific contexts of the recent past including the pandemic, the subsistence and energy crises.
Disciplines potentially represented: Law, international relations/political science
VI) Indigenous Peoples, Vulnerable Groups and Intersectionalities
- When dealing with indigenous peoples as collective wholes, internal vulnerabilities including inequalities may be ignored. The sixth panel engages dedicated grounds of discrimination such as gender, age or disability as well as the intersectional relevance and impact of violations, and aims to give context to these manifestations through insights into relevant law and society debates. These indicators of intersectional violations may be qualitative or quantitative. The panel may heighten scholars’ awareness of power and institutionalism and their shaping of potential vis-à-vis internal differences.
Disciplines potentially represented: Law, socio-political approaches, law and society studies, gender studies, diversity approaches
VII) Indigenous Self-Determination: Approaches and Perspectives
- Self-determination in its collective form may take a variety of directions, including political struggles of self-governance and territorial autonomy or questions of self-determined development. Despite being a powerful collective right, self-determination has been considered a far-reaching umbrella right that channels other demands. Its salience may be traced back to claims for lands and natural resources, which intrinsically relate to participation and the larger context of self-determination. The theme also lends itself for (legal and political) theoretical explorations.
Disciplines potentially represented: Law, political science, legal and political theory, international relations
VIII) Open-Topic Stream
- This stream is open to subjects not hitherto covered, allowing groups of scholars to present on a topic of their choice. Panels must be constituted beforehand, including at least three panelists and a chair and/or convenor; A discussant may or may not form part of the selection of panelists. Topics shall broadly coincide with the conference’s main theme. In case of doubt, the question may be forwarded to the conference convenors before the submission date.