The Role of Law in Counter-hegemonic Globalization and Global Legal Pluralism: Lessons from the Narmada Valley Struggle in India

Abstract

The multiplication of legal orders is characteristic of what one could call an age of globalization and counter-hegemonic globalization. In this age, the relationship between international law and other normative orders is increasingly important. The dominant disciplinary frameworks that provide explanations of such a relationship are focused on compliance with and/or the effectiveness of international norms in domestic legal orders and are derived from international relations. In this article, I examine the limits and possibilities of such approaches through a case study of the use of law (at multiple levels) by one of India's most prominent social movements, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada). The article argues that the use of law by a social movement is a concrete instance of counter-hegemonic globalization in which international law is one of many different legal orders, a situation of global legal pluralism, in which it is impossible to tell in advance which normative order will best advance cosmopolitan goals such as human rights.

Land, Law and Courts in India: Tracing Land Rights Debates through Processes of Judicial Decision Making

“…Employing an activist approach, John (2001) and Rajagopal (2005), for example, have questioned the silence of the court when it comes to violation of rights of land losers in cases of development projects, especially when the court has not been shy to intervene in other instances of criminal justice, human rights or women's rights. Employing an activist approach, John (2001) and Rajagopal (2005), for example, have questioned the silence of the court when it comes to violation of rights of land losers in cases of development projects, especially when the court has not been shy to intervene in other instances of criminal justice, human rights or women's rights.…”

Law and Society Approaches to Cyberspace

“…But with the increasing proliferation of international and transnational tribunals and the growing recognition that many international institutions significantly impact the economic, environmental, human rights and development climate of the world, law and society scholars have 'discovered' the international. Thus, we now see pluralist perspectives that emphasize the interaction of official and non-official bodies at all levels of the international and transnational system (for example, Berman, 2007aBerman, , 2007bde Sousa Santos and Rodriguez-Garavito, 2005;Rajagopal, 2005), a new interest in international bureaucracies (for example, Riles, 2000;Warren, forthcoming), analyses of how 'local' and 'international' discourses intersect and affect each other (for example, Berman, 2006;Goodale, 2002;Merry and Stern, 2005), studies of the interest group politics at work in international and transnational institutions (for example, Keck and Sikkink, 1998;Pollack and Shaffer, 2001;Warren, forthcoming) and so on.…”

Asking the Sovereignty Question in Global Legal Pluralism: From “Weak” Jurisprudence to “Strong” Socio‐Legal Theories of Constitutional Power Operations

“…These radical theories are often driven by a critique of official state law and present themselves as critical theories of state power and sovereign authority enforced on the state's territory and its populations (Galanter ). They also commonly perceive the state and its law as a form of hegemony that needs to be challenged by alternative politics emerging at subnational, national and transnational levels of global society (see, for instance, Rajagopal ). Finally, and most importantly, radical theories of legal pluralism often contrast the concept of constitutional and political sovereignty to spontaneously evolving sectors of society which, instead of being constituted by political force, engage in the parallel processes of self‐constitutionalisation and constitutional fragmentation (Krisch ; Teubner ).…”