Seminar: Charles Walton, "Social Rights in the Longue durée"

Abstract:
As historians have recently noted, economic and social rights have a long history. Far from being ‘second generation rights’ of the twentieth century, they are now seen as stretching back even further than the civil and political rights of the Enlightenment. This lecture will discuss how social rights since the late medieval period have been caught in a tension between two discourses: redistribution and theories of abundance – two discourses that have often been at odds with each other. Given the vexed nature of redistributive politics, theories of abundance have often been invoked as a panacea and alternative to redistribution. Occasionally, however, theories of abundance have been yoked to social rights, especially in modern revolutions. The lecture concludes by reflecting on how the advent of AI is reshaping this longstanding tension between a just redistribution and promises of abundance.

Bio:
Charles Walton is Reader in History at the University of Warwick, where he has been Director of the Eighteenth Century Centre and of the European History Research Centre over the past decade. His research focuses on the French Revolution and human rights, especially the freedom of expression and social rights. He is co-editor, with Steven L. B. Jensen, of Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History (Cambridge, 2022). He recently co-wrote, with Charly Coleman, ‘Abstract and Embodied: The Political Economy of the French Revolution’ in French History (2024).