“Free Flow of Information”:
Hegemony, Contestation and International Law
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丛万殊
澳大利亚国立大学法学院讲师
Lecturer at the Australian National University College of Law
赖华夏
北京大学国际关系学院助理教授
刘洋
中国人民大学法学院助理教授
Dr. Wanshu Cong is a lecturer at the Australian National University College of Law, an associate editor of the European Journal of International Law, and a book review editor of the Journal of Law and Political Economy. She holds a doctoral degree from McGill University. She specializes in Public International Law, International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law, International Criminal Law, and the intersection of law and technology. Her research focuses on the history and theory of international law, critical legal studies, and law and political economic studies. She was also and a Global Academic Fellow at the University of Hong Kong, and a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute.丛万殊，现任澳大利亚国立大学法学院讲师,《欧洲国际法杂志》的副编辑和《法律与政治经济杂志》的书评编辑。她在麦吉尔大学取得法学博士学位，其专业领域是国际公法、国际人道主义法和人权法、国际刑法和法律、科学与技术，重点专注于国际法的历史与理论、批判法学、法律与政治经济的研究。她还曾是香港大学的全球学术研究员和欧洲大学研究所的马克斯·韦伯研究员。
This talk sketches a historical materialist account of freedom of information in international law. It traces the evolution of this notion from the Second World War to the current process of digitization, asking: How is freedom of information articulated in international law under different technological conditions, and what power relationships are (re)produced and concealed by that articulation? I claim that with the powerful imaginary of “free flow”, freedom of information is largely articulated through a dual-sided framework which sees information as either a matter of a fundamental human right or a trade matter. In my account, this dual-sided framework has become a conceptual hegemony despite various internal tensions and external challenges. Internally, information and freedom mean quite different things for human rights and trade. Yet, human rights and trade are co-constitutive of the liberal world order in which “free flow” has unique ideological import, and they become increasingly mutually dependent. Externally, the liberal conception is challenged by alternative understandings of information and freedom by state and non-state actors of various ideological inclinations, especially those highlighting the material conditions and power relations constituted by and constitutive of information flows.
本次研讨将从历史唯物主义的角度来思考国际法中信息自由的概念。通过追溯这个概念从第二次世界大战到当前数字化进程的演变历程，讲座主要探讨以下问题：在不同的技术条件下，国际法是如何阐述信息自由的？这样的阐述构建或掩盖了怎样的权力关系？主讲人认为，国际法基于对“自由流动”的想象构建了一个双面框架来阐述和规制信息自由。这个双面框架一面将信息视为基本人权问题，另一面将信息视为贸易问题。在主讲人看来，这种双面框架尽管存在各种内部张力和外部挑战已成为一种关于信息治理的概念霸权。就内部而言，人权领域和贸易领域对“信息”和“自由”的概念有截然不同的理解， 但即便人权与贸易之间有矛盾，它们依然共同构成了“自由流动”想象下的自由主义世界秩序，而且它们之间的相互依存性不断加强。从外部来看，自由主义下对信息自由的阐述受到了各种带有不同意识形态倾向的国家和非国家主体的挑战，它们对信息和自由有不同的理解，尤其对信息流所依赖并构建的物质条件和权力关系有不同的认识。
