Rule-of-Law Ethnography

Cheesman, Nicholas

doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-101317-030900

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 117 publications

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“…Khromeychuk 2022). '[A] conviction tempered by willingness to be proven wrong through inquiries in critical proximity with socially and politically mediated facts' (Cheesman 2018: 168), passionate humility was introduced by Dvora Yanow (2009) to debates on reflective policy practice and developed by Nick Cheesman (2018) for interpretive inquiry of the rule of law. Passionate humility shifts from the language of certainty to a language of reflective inquiry and opens up to meaning-in-use (Wiener 2009;Wittgenstein 1953).…”

Section: Inter-imperial Epistemic Complementaritiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ishchenko 2022), elucidation allows for contextualism that situates the triad of global constitutionalism by provincializing it (cf. Cheesman 2018). Elucidation sees local actors as political beings with experiences that are not determinedalthough they are affectedby the combined structural effects of the western-centric and Russia-centric complementary frames that indeed denigrate other visions of world-making.…”

Section: Passionate Humility and Elucidationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Passionate humility for global constitutionalism in the aftermath of the Russo-Ukrainian war

Kurowska

2023

Glob. Con.

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This essay proposes the epistemic ethos of passionate humility for knowledge production about global constitutionalism in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. By employing the conceptual strategy of elucidation, passionate humility can reveal a counter-intuitively counter-hegemonic use of the global constitutionalist triad of human rights, democracy and the rule of law in the Ukrainian resistance against Russia’s war. As an approach to knowledge production, passionate humility addresses epistemic ignorance by retrieving situated non-imperial knowledges while also confronting the ambivalent politics of such knowledges. It therefore hints at how we can both decentre and make use of resources associated with global constitutionalism, without valorizing western elitist discourses, reinscribing the inter-imperial mode of knowledge production or sanitizing vernacular knowledges. Passionate humility does so in three moves: it problematizes hegemonic epistemic frames (either west-centred or Russia-centred); it foregrounds complex social agency, which resists a fixed theoretical or ideological language; and it reveals the contextual deployment of the Occidentalist language of global constitutionalism in the Ukrainian public discourse as a practice of negotiated subjecthood. Such practice can be counter-hegemonic without being inherently progressive.

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Section: Inter-imperial Epistemic Complementaritiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Passionate Humility and Elucidationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Passionate humility for global constitutionalism in the aftermath of the Russo-Ukrainian war

Kurowska

2023

Glob. Con.

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“…24 See Hirschl (2014); Frankenberg (2018). 25 Scheppele (2004); Latour (2010); Cheesman (2018); Frankenberg (2006). 26 Geertz, supra note 22.…”

Section: Constitutional Ethnography: Deciphering Constitutional Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

A Constitutional Ethnography of Monarchy: Buddhist Kingship, “Granted Constitutionalism,” and Royal State Ceremonies in Thailand

Mérieau

2022

AsianJLS

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This paper defines constitutional ethnography as the cultural study of constitutionalism through its symbolic representations. By focusing on the materiality of constitutionalism as embodied in various state ceremonies such as ceremonies of “royal octroy” (constitution-granting ceremonies) as well as in state monuments honouring the Constitution, it strives to offer an ethnography of a polity’s constitutional identity. In this paper, I argue that in Thailand, Westernized Hindu-Buddhist state ceremonies and monuments using Westernized Hindu-Buddhist symbolism represent the Thai monarch as the ultimate law-giver holding permanent “constituent power” and therefore yielding extra-constitutional customary powers pre-existing the Constitution. This representation, in turn, informs Thai constitutional identity as defined incrementally by courts and jurists since the early twentieth century, which in turn informs present Thai constitutional interpretation. Therefore, this paper argues that the study of state ceremonies can be a useful entry point into the analysis of a “constitutional culture” shaping modes of constitutional interpretation.

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“…We, however, remain sceptical of this possibility. Looking at rights and property as core legal conditions that have shaped the encounter between the Hidroituango project and affected communities, we argue that the rule-of-law ideal is inevitably derived from concrete practices, beliefs and historical pedigrees (Cheesman, 2018) that, in the case of development projects, follow the mainstream blueprint of economic development. Therefore, we are doubtful of the possibility of 'rebooting' institutions such as private-property or procedural rights through a functional definition of the rule of law, given that a pedigree of (neo)liberal economic development remains a powerful and dominant element in rule of law's social and political DNA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A counter-hegemonic rule of law?

Cortés-Nieto

Jokubauskaite

2021

International Journal of Law in Context

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We are sympathetic to the research aims of the two books examined by this symposium and their desire to understand law's role in generating and contesting social injustice. We are also intrigued by the proposal in the Introduction to this symposium, notably to expand the normative reach of the rule-of-law ideal to private actors, in order to transform it into an ally of counter-hegemonic action. In our research, we share a similar research focus (development projects), methodology (case-studies) and concerns (harmful effects of development interventions) with the authors of the two books. Accordingly, in this contribution, we want to think together with the editors of the symposium – by examining the case-study of the Hidroituango project in Colombia (hereinafter, ‘Hidroituango’) – whether the rule of law can indeed be reimagined to limit the arbitrary exercise of power by private actors, and what benefits this might create for dealing with social injustice. However, since neither Bhatt nor Lander advances an explicit account of rule of law in their books, our critique in this piece is addressed not at them, but rather at the theorists and advocates of rule of law as a political ideal.

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Rule-of-Law Ethnography

Cited by 10 publications

References 117 publications

Passionate humility for global constitutionalism in the aftermath of the Russo-Ukrainian war

Passionate humility for global constitutionalism in the aftermath of the Russo-Ukrainian war

A Constitutional Ethnography of Monarchy: Buddhist Kingship, “Granted Constitutionalism,” and Royal State Ceremonies in Thailand

A counter-hegemonic rule of law?

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