Forschung

Funding: ERC Starting Grant 2026-2031

PI: Dr. Jevgeniy Bluwstein (UniBe profile, Google Scholar, ResearchGate)

PhD students: to be announced

Project description: LeGo examines repression, securitization, criminalization and rights-based defense of climate civil disobedience in the UK and in Germany. Climate activism through civil disobedience has become a key tactic of the European climate movement to denounce climate inaction by states and corporations. Governments increasingly respond with repression, securitization and criminalization of climate civil disobedience, while NGOs, activists, social movements, and transnational institutions such as UN special rapporteurs defend it. Repression, securitization, criminalization and defense of civil disobedience highlight a growing tension between state efforts to restrict and supress political protests (often by treating protests as a matter of security), and movement, civil society and transnational efforts to legitimize protests (usually treating them as a matter of rights).

Theoretically, the project advances our understanding of how environmental activism is governed through the uses of law and rights. The main research objective is to examine how the use of security frames, criminal law and human rights discourses and legal defenses shapes the legal consciousness and conduct of individual climate activists and movement collectives. To this end, the project examines criminal trials against climate activists; state efforts to pass new laws and mobilize criminal codes and security frames to prosecute activists; efforts of transnational actors, institutions, and movement collectives to counter criminalization; and climate activists’ perceptions of and responses to repression, securitization, criminalization and rights-based defense.

LeGo adopts a mixed method research design, drawing on methods and concepts from political and legal anthropology and geography, social movements and mobilization studies, and critical legal studies. Methods include a textual and discourse analysis of criminal trial proceedings and decisions, a policy and discourse analysis of state efforts to pass new laws and mobilize existing criminal codes and security frames, discourse analysis of interventions in defense of climate civil disobedience, courtroom ethnography of criminal trials, interviews and participant observation with affected groups and individuals subject to repression, securitization, and criminalization.

The project follows ethical standards in anthropological research, prioritizes participant safety and agency, and involves equitable parnerships through a transdisciplinary research design and methodology.

PhD project descriptions: to be announced

Website: MediMath

“Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean Mathematics” (MediMath) is a project on the history of algebra and of its relations to arithmetic and geometry as they were developed in a broader Mediterranean world from the 9^th to the beginning of the 17^th century. MediMath combines conceptual analysis with philological research, while also following the historical trajectories of mathematicians and their texts. It aims to investigate the resonance of mathematical work, and questions the idea of a single and immutable "true" mathematics.

MediMath is an SNSF Starting Grant project. It is hosted at the Unit Middle East and Muslim Societies of the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies.

Website: The Project – Trasisblog

Lead

For centuries, slavery in various forms was an integral part of Islamicate societies. Different manifestations of unfreedom are rooted in different legal concepts and have produced varying social realities for the individuals concerned. For the purposes of this project, slavery is an analytical category that includes various forms of dependency, even if the connections between them are not explicitly reflected in their Arabic terms. 

Content and aim of the research project

Muslim jurists have conceptualised freedom and unfreedom in a range of different ways over time. Of particular interest for historical research is the question of how and to what extent social realities were and still are impacted by these differing conceptions. This project focuses on three legal concepts that can be located beyond the freedom/slavery binary: firstly, the umm al-walad, literally the “mother of the child,” a female slave who bears her master’s child and thereby, according to most Sunni jurists, enjoys a special legal status that entails her release upon the death of her master. 

Secondly, the project explores the kitāba, a contract which allows an enslaved person to purchase their freedom by paying instalments to their owner over a period of time, during which process the enslaved person enjoys an intermediate status somewhere between freedom and slavery. 

Thirdly, there is the kafāla. This concept has its roots in commercial law, where it originally referred to a guarantee. In the 20^thcentury, however, it was established on the one hand as a form of tutelage for children, but also as a system of immigration and labour market control, especially in the Gulf States, Jordan, and Lebanon. Today, this system is linked to unfree labour relations. 

These three concepts are explored with a historical focus on the modern period, aiming at expanding our knowledge of various conceptualisations of slavery in the Arabophone world. The project examines continuities and ruptures in the legal discourse on different forms of slavery in order to explore how these categories have been re-deployed in the modern period. Through this approach, the project challenges the frequently encountered assumption that slavery is a phenomenon confined to the pre-modern era. Finally, an intersectional view of different relations of inequality such as gender, ethnicity, class, and religion adds analytical depth to the project and allows for an innovative approach to exploring the interplay of bondage and other factors in the historical discourse of Muslim jurists.

Scientific and societal context

For a considerable time, the study of slavery has been dominated by approaches rooted in the consideration of Transatlantic slavery. This project weds research on gender (based on intersectionality) with the study of slavery and forced labour. To do so, it explores legal materials using the method of historical discourse analysis. It thus complements existing research while addressing the current Eurocentric bias in the study of slavery. 

Keywords

Slavery, Coerced Labour, Islamic Law, Intersectionality, Gender

Webseite: TraIL. Tracing Labour in Islamicate Legal Traditions.

TraIL investigates the socio-legal history of labour in Islamicate societies from the 10th to the 20th century. Adopting a longue durée perspective, the project explores historical transformations of labour through the lenses of three intersecting fields: global labour history, gender studies, and Islamic legal studies.

By integrating conceptualizations of labour rooted in Islamicate legal traditions—with their distinct logics and dynamics—TraIL contributes to a deeper, more nuanced and less Eurocentric understanding of labour across historical periods and regions.

TraIL is an SNSF Starting Grant project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. It is hosted at the Middle East and Muslim Societies Unit within the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies.

India's youth population is the world's largest, and it is often described as a dividend that could propel the nation to unprecedented prosperity — or become its greatest challenge. Yet we know relatively little about how the aspirations of this vastly heterogeneous group connect to their daily practices and political choices. This project sheds light on this issue by combining evidence from a survey with in-depth ethnographic research among a diverse group of young people in Delhi. The design will generate original empirical evidence on a series of related questions: What are these aspirations and how do they relate to other forms of imagining the future? How do they connect to individual and collective practices? By  comparing young people from different genders and social backgrounds, the project also aims to advance our understanding of what shapes these aspirations and the capacity to realize them. Lastly, India's youth are not only defined by exceptional potential and challenges, but they are also so diverse as to resist simple categorization based on age alone. Beyond examining the aspirations and practices of this varied group, the project contributes to understanding what 'being young' means for them.

Laufzeit

2023 - 2026

Projektverantwortliche

Prof. Dr. Jens Schlieter, Institut für Religionswissenschaft, Universität Bern
Prof. Dr. Andrea Rota, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, Universität Oslo (Norwegen)

Mitarbeiterinnen

Dr. Carla Hagen, Institut für Religionswissenschaft, Universität Bern
Cornelia Niggli MA, Institut für Religionswissenschaft, Universität Bern

Das Projekt

Die Covid-19-Pandemie hat alle Menschen in irgendeiner Weise getroffen. In unserem Projekt geht es darum zu verstehen, welche Erfahrungen Menschen in der Schweiz gemacht haben, und wie sie diese Zeit vor dem Hintergrund ihrer jeweiligen Weltsicht interpretiert haben. Weltsichten helfen, aussergewöhnliche Zeiten wie diese zu deuten und das eigene Handeln sinnvoll zu gestalten. In der Schweiz existiert eine grosse Vielfalt von religiösen wie auch säkularen Weltsichten. Das Projekt untersucht, wie Menschen mit verschiedenen Lebenseinstellungen während der Pandemie mit den neuartigen Lebensbedingungen umgegangen sind, und wie ihre Weltsichten ihre Wahrnehmungen, Haltungen und sozialen Handlungen prägen.
 

Das Projekt ist Teil des Nationalen Forschungsprogramms 80 (Covid-19 und Gesellschaft) und wird unterstützt vom Schweizerischen Nationalfonds (SNF).

Wir wollen von Dir hören – mach‘ mit!

Im Rahmen des Projekts sammeln wir Erzählungen, welche die Vielfalt der Erfahrungen während der Pandemie abbilden können. Aus diesem Grund suchen wir Menschen, die bereit sind, mit uns ein Interview durchzuführen – und zwar sowohl solche, die sich als religiös und / oder spirituell empfinden, als auch solche, für die Religion und Spiritualität keine Rolle spielen, oder die sich als Atheisten oder Agnostiker verstehen.

Das Interview dauert ca. 90 Minuten und wird als offenes Gespräch geführt. Es geht dabei nicht darum, Wissen zu testen, sondern die Weltsichten verschiedener Menschen besser kennenzulernen.

Das Forschungsteam legt grossen Wert auf den Schutz der Privatsphäre. Die Interviewdaten werden ausschliesslich in anonymer Form und für wissenschaftliche Zwecke verwendet.

Wenn Du Interesse daran hast, Deine Geschichte mit uns zu teilen, oder Dir mehr Informationen wünschst, sende bitte eine E-Mail an Carla an covid-stories.relwi@unibe.ch oder kontaktiere uns telefonisch unter +41 31 684 38 50 (Mo–Di; Do–Fr, 10:00–15:00). Wir werden uns mit Dir in Verbindung setzen, um einen Termin zu vereinbaren. 

version française

Gefördert mit einer Doktorats- und einer PostDoc-Stelle vom SNF, 2024-2028.
 
The project will analyze the relationship between vegetarianism, veganism, and religion in two subprojects: (1) Animal’s Sentient Souls: A Systematic Comparison of the Ancient Indian and Greek Origins of Vegetarianism/s; and (2) Vegans and Vegetarians in Contemporary Switzerland: Climate Responsibility, Animal Welfare, and Meatfree Utopia. While both subprojects will follow specific cognitive interests, they will concur in investigating vegetarianism/s as “ethical worldview.” The project aims for a better understanding (1) of the religious-philosophical origins of vegetarianism in Antiquity, and (2), of the views that contemporary vegans and vegetarians hold on matters of religion, ethics, and spirituality. Connecting the contemporary rise of Vegetarianism/s in Switzerland with ancient philosophical justifications follows the rationale to find out how, in terms of global interconnected history, Ancient Greek and Indian ideas of non-violence, animal ethics, and, eventually, karma and rebirth, are received and reenacted. On a systematic level, the project seeks to explore how vegetarianism/s are more properly defined as “ethical worldviews,” taking shape less as a religious identity but as individual spirituality.

Over the last decade India has witnessed growing controversies around the social significance of hate crime legislation. Targeted attacks against Dalits (ex-untouchables) and Muslims have escalated under the current BJP government, which has embarked on a policy of majoritarian Hindu nationalism rooted in traditional caste hierarchies ((Jaiswal et al, 2018; Chatterji et al. 2019). While India’s 1989 Prevention of Atrocities Act (PoA), which punishes discriminatory acts against Dalits and indigenous groups, represents a single legal safeguard against hate crimes, religious minority groups like Muslims lack specific legal protection. Consequently, Indian scholars and activist groups have called for the introduction of comprehensive hate crime legislation to docu-ment, investigate and punish identity-based crimes against all minorities (Citizens Against Hate 2018a)). They argue that such legislation offers a strategic shorthand for legal institutions when addressing identity-based crimes (Perry 2020). However, critics have proposed that hate crime laws can deepen identity-based prejudice (Rao 2009; Swiffen 2018), and may heighten communal antagonisms (Bhat, Bajaj and Kumar 2020). Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic research in urban India, this project investigates how India’s selective implementation of hate crime laws, has influenced judicial responses to, and public interpretations of, attacks against Dalits and Muslims. Firstly, the project examines how judicial readings of ‘hateful’ motivation in crimes against Muslims and Dalits, have been shaped by India’s new public discourse on hate crimes. The project traces how narratives of hate are legally produced, proved, and how this process highlights or silences particular experiences. Secondly, the project explores how judicial interpretations affect the ways Muslims and Dalits narrate experiences of violence when addressing police and courts. Do hate crime frameworks force these groups to emphasize the very markers of identity that make them targets of violence, or do they allow claimants to transcend the identity categories underlying their victimization? Ultimately, the project aims to answer the question: Is hate crime legislation a constructive force in combatting identity-based violence. or does it re-produce marginalization, and victimization?We address these questions by pursuing three lines of inquiry: 1) We examine how victimized communities “name“ their suffering, and how they make themselves – legally – heard. Through comparative ethnographic work with Muslim and Dalit communities, we analyze the respective legal narratives these groups employ. 2) We explore what is deemed proof of hate by India’s investigating agencies like the police and what is dis-counted. 3) We compare how India’s judiciary interprets narratives of discrimination articulated by Dalits and Muslims. We explore if, and how, the PoA as a special hate crime for Dalits shapes judicial interpretations of “hateful motive” and harm compared to Muslim complaints. The project represents the first systematic attempt to comparatively analyze a) how hate crime protections transform social perceptions and judicial arguments around discrimination and identity, b) if, and how, such laws re-shape the narratives that historically marginal-ized groups tell themselves about their own experiences of violence, and finally, c) whether hate crime laws are useful tools against identity-based violence within political landscapes defined by majoritarian government policies, or whether they themselves become complicit in the production of social hierarchies and inequalities. We thereby aim to enrich wider debates about the socially transformative potential of legal anti-discrimination measures (Kok 2008; Gready and Robins 2019), as well as discussion about the potential, and limits of hate crime legislation in counteracting experiences and social practices of prejudice and hate.

In her doctoral research, Making Prisons Work: Officer Practices and Institutional Persistence in Rajasthan (working title), funded through ESKAS, she examines prison officials' work across multiple levels of the Rajasthan prison department. Her ethnographic research investigates a central puzzle: reform and rehabilitation are mandated in prison rules, and officials articulate their commitments through the language of care, yet institutional neglect and resource constraints define daily realities. She explores how officials navigate these tensions and how their everyday practices—shaped by structural constraints yet also constitutive of institutional persistence—reproduce the carceral system. Through this ethnographic engagement, she develops an analytical framework centred on the co-constitution of power and care, using officials' varying definitions of care—ranging from reformative rehabilitation to basic human dignity—as an analytical lens to understand how power operates within and sustains the prison system.

Funding: SNSF Ambizione 2023-2026 (SNF project website)

PI: Dr. Jevgeniy Bluwstein (UniBe profile, Google Scholar, ResearchGate)

PhD student: Lucie Benoit (UniBe profile)

Project description: Drawing on interdisciplinary research across the fields of legal anthropology, political ecology and political economy, and based on methods including courtroom ethnography, participant observation, interviews, and discourse analysis, this project examines how the Swiss climate movement mobilizes the courts to transform climate politics through juridification and judicialization. Empirically, the project focuses on the Swiss climate movement and how it mobilizes legal conflicts through different forms of campaigning, protests, and court cases, including strategic litigation against states (e.g. KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland) and corporations (e.g. Asmania et al v. Holcim), as well as reactive litigation by the state against climate activists who have engaged in climate civil disobedience (e.g. Extinction Rebellion). The project examines what justice claims activists articulate through different forms of campaigning, protests and legal proceedings, what legal strategies climate activists and their lawyers adopt in lawsuits and in litigation trials in the courts, and how the state responds to climate activism (through police, prosecutors, judges, legislative initiatives).

Project keywords: Climate litigation, climate civil disobedience, social movements, climate politics, climate justice, political ecology, legal anthropology

PhD project description (Lucie Benoit):

Lucie Benoit is a PhD candidate within the SNSF Ambizione project. Her research interests lie in the anthropology of law, critical legal studies, and graphic ethnography. Lucie examines the criminal trials of climate activists prosecuted for various forms of disruptive protest—such as unauthorised demonstrations or roadblocks—in Switzerland. Drawing empirically on courtroom ethnography, she explores the affordances and limits of these trials as sites for making sense of disruptive protests through their translation into the discursive and material spaces of law. In doing so, she seeks to complicate dichotomous accounts of criminal trials as either instruments of domination or arenas of resistance.

Lucie holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences and Humanities from the University of Fribourg.

Project outputs

Bluwstein, Jevgeniy (2026): The trouble with exhausted carbon budgets, offsets, and removals in climate litigation against states: the case of KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland at ECtHR. European Journal of International Law 36(4)

Bluwstein, Jevgeniy; Demay, Clémence; Benoit, Lucie (2023). Civil Disobedience on Trial in Switzerland, Verfassungsblog:  https://verfassungsblog.de/civil-disobedience-on-trial-in-switzerland/

Bluwstein, Jevgeniy; Demay, Clémence; Benoit, Lucie (2023). Civil disobedience and climate trials in Switzerland - What are they fighting for in the Swiss courts? Bern: humanrights.ch (available in EN/DE/FR)

Funding: Research Council of Norway Fripro 2023-2026 (RCN project website, CMI project website)

University of Bern Co-Investigator: Dr. Jevgeniy Bluwstein

Other project members: Dr. Anwesha Dutta (PI, Christian Michelsen Institute, Norway), Dr. Amber Huff (Co-I, Institute of Development Studies, UK), Dr. Francis Masse (Co-I, Durham University, UK)

Project desciption: CONLAB advances interdisciplinary research on labor (e.g. labor geographies) and conservation science (e.g. political ecology) by examining how biodiversity conservation policies, initiatives and projects shape labor dynamics in affected communities in the Global South and across the North-South conservation geographies. CONLAB conceptualizes conservation as a mode of production that requires and generates value from different forms of paid and unpaid work. The project situates conservation labor and theorizes it in the broader context of an international conservation labor regime. This labor regime is underpinned by a particular division of labor and labor dynamics in capitalist societies and postcolonial contexts that are characterized by entrenched social hierarchies cutting across gender, class, caste, race and ethnicity. From this vantage point, CONLAB examines the division of labor and labor dynamics i) within and outside of the conservation sector, ii) across social identities of gender, class, caste, and race, and iii) across hierarchies of paid, underpaid and unpaid work for conservation. By analyzing these dimensions, the project seeks to understand how conservation affects livelihood strategies and people's access to work, as well as the resulting impacts on labor markets in related fields such as tourism, transportation, and hospitality. The research is implemented using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates surveys, focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation. The research team includes early- and mid-career scholars with expertise in political ecology, conservation social science, human geography, development studies, and agrarian change.

Keywords: conservation, labor, political ecology, labor geography, conservation labor regime

Project outputs

Simlai, T., Dutta, A., Huff, A., Bluwstein, J., Massé F. (2023). Labour perspectives on frontline conservation work. Current Conservation 17(1), online at https://www.currentconservation.org/labour-perspectives-on-frontline-conservation-work/