Skip to main content
European Commission logo
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
CORDIS Web 30th anniversary CORDIS Web 30th anniversary

Time to pay up? Reparations and global development challenges

Project description

Studying the sociocultural nature and effects of reparations

Disenfranchised groups and countries from the Global South are advocating for reparations, which include apologies, preventive measures and financial compensation. These reparations address a range of issues such as environmental pollution, climate change, disease outbreaks and terrorism, and seek justice for marginalised minorities. The ERC-funded REPAIR project is the first comparative social science study of the sociocultural nature and impacts of reparations in the development field. It uses economic anthropology as a primary approach to studying reparations for global development challenges, including outbreaks, climate change and violations of minority rights. Its objective is to comprehend reparations payments from economic, moral and political perspectives. The project aims to identify the type of wealth transfer involved in reparations and what this shows about the reparative aspects of economic activity.

Objective

Reparations have become a popular demand in global development contexts. Disenfranchised groups from around the world and countries from the Global South increasingly call for reparations. They ask for apologies for past harm, symbolic and institutional measures that recognize and prevent such harm, and – most controversially – for monetary payments. Reparations are meant to respond to environmental pollution, mitigate the worst effects of climate change, compensate for infectious disease outbreaks and terrorist attacks, and bring some degree of justice for indigenous peoples and other minorities.

REPAIR studies these new calls for reparations that address different global development challenges. It compares reparations for infectious disease outbreaks, climate change, minority rights violations, and toxic environments. The project’s research objectives are: 1. Compare how reparations payments are established, implemented and received as part of addressing these global development challenges 2. Learn what these payments teach us about reparations in development, from an economic, moral and political perspective 3. Identify what kind of wealth transfer reparations constitute, and what this tells us about the “reparative aspects” of economic life more generally.

REPAIR is innovative in that it is the first comparative social-science study of reparations in the field of development. It not only analyses a new and important set of reparations cases, but drastically broadens the comparative frame of their study. Moreover, REPAIR is the first research project to use novel theory and methods from economic anthropology to study reparations. This promises relevant new insights into their sociocultural nature and effects. Lastly, by investigating reparations as a form of wealth transfer and focusing on the “reparative aspects” of economic activity, REPAIR hopes to push the boundaries of our understanding of economic life in general.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Host institution

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Net EU contribution
€ 2 059 661,00
Address
SPUI 21
1012WX Amsterdam
Netherlands

See on map

Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 2 059 661,00

Beneficiaries (1)