LARC Lunchtime Seminar: Custom, capitalism and democracy in Africa

Date: Wednesday, 17 July 2019
Time: 12h00 - 13h30 (lunch will available from 12h00)
Venue:  TBC, Middle Campus, UCT

ABSTRACT: 
This paper considers the continuing relevance and even resurgence of traditional authority structures and customary justice systems in capitalist, democratic societies in a strongly globalized world. It poses questions such as how customary justice systems that used to regulate communal resources in pre-capitalist societies operate in capitalist societies where access to land and natural resources offer huge money-making opportunities; how systems in which leaders used to be constrained in their conduct by people’s mobility function in an era in which mobility is constrained; and whether such a system can operate new checks and balances on its leaders?  This paper aims to analyze these questions through a study of the continuing relevance and even resurgence of traditional authority structures and customary justice systems in capitalist, liberal democracies in Africa, with special reference to the case of South Africa.

BIO: 
Janine Ubink is professor of Law, Governance and Development at the Van Vollenhoven Institute (Leiden University). She has also taught at the Law Schools of University of California, Irvine (UCI), New York University (NYU) and Australia National University, and at the Lim a Po Institute for Social Studies in Suriname. Janine’s research focuses on legal pluralism, traditional authorities, land management, gender, transitional justice and rule of law reforms, with a focus on Ghana, Namibia, Malawi, Somalia, and South Africa. Janine is the President of the international Commission on Legal Pluralism. 

Click here for directions to Middle Campus.

Please RSVP to Amilinda Wilkinson: pbl-larc@uct.ac.za Tel: 021 650 3288.