Governing Plurality

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2011:

This subject examines contemporary legal and social problems at the intersection of religion, culture and overlapping domestic and international legal frameworks. The separation between state and religion was the key founding assertion of modern law and a pillar of modern democracies. The large-scale movement of peoples in a global world, the emergence of multi-ethnic and multicultural societies, post-colonial legal orders and transnational legal frameworks such as the European Union (EU) have challenged the coherence of modern legal and democratic institutions as bounded and homogenous and as the ultimate source of legal authority. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives on democracy and recent scholarship in cultural studies, anthropology and political theory, the subject will examine the tension between the modern democratic state and alternative normative frameworks and systems of rules.

Principal topics will include:

• After sovereignty: The case of the EU
• Post-colonial sovereignty and indigenous law: The case of South Africa
• Religion and cultural pluralism: Law in a post-secular word
• Things, matter, animals: Law in a post-human world
• Biotechnology, climate change and the rule of experts: Governing the ungovernable.

A student who has successfully completed this subject should:

• Understand and critically interrogate the limits of modern democratic legal institutions as a mode of governing
• Understand how multiple normative frameworks and systems of rules (religion, culture, law) are in tension in plural democracies
• Integrate recent studies in democratic and political theory with transnational movements of people and technology
• Understand and apply methodologies and perspectives that examine juridical problems presented by religion, culture and globalisation.

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.