Jubilee Conference on Legal Pluralism

Description

'Pursuing Legal Pluralism: The Power of Paradigms in the Search for Meaning' Abstract: What constitutes legal pluralism has been the subject of much debate over the years. For how law is perceived, depends upon the models that are employed with regard to its recognition that play a crucial role in formulating questions of jurisdiction, authority, and legitimacy that are brought to bear on claims that people and institutions pursue. In the past models of legal pluralism ranged from grounding the Identification of legal orders from the perspective of the nation-state to a more far reaching and open-ended concept of law that does not necessarily depend on state recognition for its validity. The paper will explore some of the challenges posed by contemporary globalization, with regard to transnational relations and transnational laws, including human rights. It will raise questions about methodology that not only have an impact on conventional legal discourse but that also affect more socio-legal or anthropological approaches to law. For while the latter may provide another perspective on law which differs from that of abstract legal theory, it has also been subject to critique about its claims to knowledge and representation. Anthropological perspectives have promoted ethnography, centered on “the field”, as a site of study. The paper will critically assess the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach, including dilemmas posed by contexts in which there may be said to be no “field” to study.

Period	8 Sept 2011
Event type	Conference
Location	Cape Town, South AfricaShow on map