Imperial Agendas, Global Solidarities and Third World Socio-legal Scholarship: Methodological Reflections

Radha D'Souza will present a paper which reflects on methodological questions in Third World Socio-legal Studies, a field in search of philosophical foundations and which continues to rely on conceptual categories and analytical frameworks developed through the intellectual, cultural and social histories of Western capitalist societies and projected uncritically on to different intersubjective orders in Third World contexts.

This conference is part of the Annie MacDonald Langstaff Workshop series and is presented by Centre for Human Rights & Legal Pluralism, the Labour Law and Development Research Laboratory, and the Human Rights Working Group.

About the speaker

Radha D'Souza is Reader in Law at the University of Westminster, London. She is in Winnipeg at present as the Association of Commonwealth Universities Research Fellow at the Department of Native Studies, University of Manitoba.

Her research interests include global and social justice, social movements, Law and Development, colonialism and imperialism, social theory, socio-legal studies in the "Third World" and water conflicts.

Radha D'Souza teaches Law and Development and has previously taught in Sociology, Development Studies, Human Geography besides Public Law and Legal Theory.

She holds a B.A (Philosophy, University of Mumbai), an LLB (University of Mumbai) and a PhD (Geography and Law, University of Auckland). Radha practiced as a barrister in the High Court of Bombay and taught at the Universities of Auckland and Waikato in New Zealand before joining the University of Westminster. She is a free lance writer and social justice activist.