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SUMMARY:Pursuing Justice in Africa - Speaker to be confirmed
DTSTART:20150327T090000Z
DTEND:20150327T180000Z
UID:TALK55723@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:24901
DESCRIPTION:In recent decades\, justice has been overshadowed as a subject
  of concern to scholars of Africa by vast literatures centring on rights\,
  crime\, punishment\, policing and social order. This neglect of justice i
 s striking given the increasing presence of international justice institut
 ions\, such as the International Criminal Court\, on the African continent
  and the remarkable diversity of legal structures of justice. Across Afric
 a complex pluralities of ‘customary’\, religious\, state\, and transna
 tional justice regimes interact on what is often contested terrain. This i
 nterdisciplinary conference will place the negotiation of competing notion
 s of justice under scrutiny\, with the aims of:  \n\n1. Moving beyond curr
 ently dominant themes in socio-legal studies of Africa by asking broader q
 uestions about the aims and aspirations of those engaging with formal\, in
 formal or ‘customary’ law\, legal reform\, and legal institutions. \n2
 . Exploring the potential of a focus on justice to overcome limitations as
 sociated with the study of human rights\, not least their questionable res
 onance with the vernacular concerns of African citizens. And at the same t
 ime\, probing the relationship between rights and justice.\n3.Considering 
 the conceptual possibilities of justice as a means of bypassing contested 
 notions of legal pluralism for understanding intersections of local\, nati
 onal and international legalities.\n4. Remaining alert to what a focus on 
 justice might obscure or exclude. How\, for example\, does the language of
  justice relate to concerns about power and inequality?\n5. Gathering toge
 ther scholars from a variety of disciplines whose work converges on issues
  of justice in Africa and whose projects have not previously been brought 
 into conversation.\nThe focus of the conference is on the many and varied 
 actors pursuing visions of justice in Africa – their aspirations\, diver
 gent practices and articulations of international and vernacular idioms of
  justice. We will bring together\, in a coherent format\, topics of resear
 ch that are at the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship across a wide 
 range of disciplines\, including activism\, resource extraction\, internat
 ional legal institutions\, and post-conflict reconciliation. Our engagemen
 t will be both empirical and theoretical: we aim to grapple with alternati
 ve approaches to the concept of justice and its relationships with law\, m
 orality\, and rights.
LOCATION:CRASSH\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge\, CB3 
 9DP
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