Territories: the illusion of identity

On April 12 2021 we had the great pleasure of hosting a virtual CRASH conference with political scientist and sociologist Karen Akoka, fresh from her publication in November of “Asylum and Exile. A History of the Refugee/Migrant Distinction" (La Découverte, 2020). The author described and analyzed the trajectory of OFPRA, the French institution founded in 1952 and responsible for granting refugee status; she provided an insight into how the history of the distinction between migrants and refugees was established in France.

Pierre Chirac, pharmacist and editor of the journal Prescrire, presented his analysis of the pharmaceutical industry's influence strategies and the special interests of university hospital researchers, their consequences on the reliability of drug information and the means now required to rectify a harmful situation.

Combining historical research and ethnographic investigations, the Africanist historian Joël Glasman plunges us into the factory of the homo humanitarianus, the average individual, on the basis of which "needs" and aid projects today are assessed. This conversation took place on December 10th 2020, during a conference-debate at Crash.

Conference-debate on Monday 16 December 2019, 6-8pm in the 1st floor meeting room at MSF, 14-34 avenue Jean Jaurès 75019 Paris. Streaming and simultaneous translation into English available.

Can we talk about the specificities of the Middle East, Iran or the Mediterranean without reducing these territories to a culture or religion? On December 16, 2019, the CRASH team organised a conference-debate with Jean-François Bayart, a French political scientist who has devoted his work to the sociology of the State and identity illusions.

Conference – debate, Thursday, 3 October 2019, 6-8pm, 1st floor meeting room at MSF, 8 rue Saint Sabin. Streaming and simultaneous translation into English available.
 
What turns ordinary men into killers? The CRASH team invited you to a conference – debate with the sociologist and historian, Nicolas Mariot, author of an article entitled « Faut-il être motivé pour tuer?  Sur quelques explications aux violences de guerre » (Genèses, n°53, 2003, p. 154-177) and books such as  “Face à la persécution. 991 Juifs dans la guerre" (with Claire Zalc, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2010), “Tous unis dans la tranchée ? 1914-1918, les intellectuels rencontrent le peuple" (Paris, Seuil, 2013). Nicolas Mariot presented two different interpretations of motivations for mass violence in the 20th century, drawn from a series of studies and surveys on the subject.

Eleanor Davey, historian of ideas and humanitarianism, senior lecturer at the Humanitarian and Conflict Research Institute, University of Manchester, discusses her book, Idealism Beyond Borders. The French Revolutionary Left and the Rise of Humanitarianism, 1954-1988, devoted to the intellectual history of sans-frontiérisme and Third-Worldism, in France, from the Algerian war to the early years of Médecins Sans Frontières.