Research Hour: Diverse Legalities 鈥� Towards a Legal Theory for a Postcapitalist Political Economy
This seminar will be led by , Robert J. Reinstein Chair in Law, Beasley School of Law, Temple University.
七色视频 the Lecture
What questions arise for legal scholars if we begin with the presumption 鈥� that postcapitalist worlds are already here but have been cast into shadow by a singular economic framing that presumes capitalist dominance. Building from actually existing experiments in cooperation and solidarity, we translate conceptual questions about legal indeterminacy into processual and sociolegal inquiries about how indeterminacy works in tandem with social practices of coordination and regularization. We endeavor to make these inquiries visible by examining how people negotiate their interdependence by making decisions about needs, surplus, production, consumption, and the creation of commons, and how these decisions may create new patterns and habits (and subjects) over time. Legalities emerge in these negotiations鈥攕ometimes as the community-generated rules people work out to cooperate; sometimes through how people play with background rules of state law through direct action; and sometimes through more familiar efforts to ask judges and legislators to reform state-enforceable legal rules. What we call 鈥渄iverse legalities鈥� combines legal pluralism, prefigurative legality, and more familiar accounts of legal instrumentalism. As an analytical intervention, diverse legalities suggests that post-capitalism, no less than capitalism, depends on legalities that find their sources of authority beyond the state. As a political intervention, diverse legalities suggests that one way to strengthen postcapitalist economies and legalities is to start by studying the moments in which people have already been successful in their local communities.
This session is for faculty and graduate students only.
Categories
Research, Faculty Interest, Student Interest
Time
Starts:
Ends:
Location
Weldon Law Building, Faculty Lounge, Room W312