Birgit Müller has come to the home of the United Nations, New York, to celebrate her new book. Come join her as she presents The Gloss of Harmony: The politics of policy-making in multilateral organizations

Monday November 25, 6:00-8:00pm.
Sociology Lounge, room 6112.

The Gloss of Harmony: The Politics of Policy-Making in Multilateral Organizations

UN agencies have the mandate for being the moral voice in a world increasingly dominated by large multinational corporations and international finance capital. In spite of their precious few resources and serious limitations imposed by diplomatic etiquette they are expected to address the fundamental problems of mankind: hunger, environmental destruction, climate change, violence, torture and the private appropriation of knowledge and resources. What is the work they actually do, and how do they go about it? The Gloss of Harmony explores how international organisations shape the world in often unexpected and unpredictable ways focussing on actors, practices, meanings, and social relations. The chapters describe the production of a depoliticized language of harmony and consensus alongside openings for political struggle and renewed debate. They look not only at the official objectives and unintended consequences of international governance but also at how international organizations involve collective and individual actors in their policy making, absorb critique, attempt to neutralize political conflict and create new political fields in competition and collusion with local actors and national governments. Underlying this analysis is the question: How can we return effective debate into the international arena and come to legally binding solutions for the enormous inequalities and problems that are in front of us?

Birgit Müller is a senior researcher at the CNRS and teaches at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She coordinates the EASA network for the anthropology of international governance. Birgit is also the author of Disenchantment with Market Economics: East Germans and Western Capitalism, 2007 Berghahn Books.