ABSTRACT
African legal realities reflect an intertwining of transnational, regional, and local normative frameworks, institutions, and practices that challenge the idea of the sovereign territorial state. This book analyses the novel constellations of governance actors and conditions under which they interact and compete. The work follows a spatial approach as the emphasis on normative spaces opens avenues to better understand power relations, processes of institutionalization, and the production of legitimacy and normativities themselves.
Selected case studies from thirteen African countries deliver new empirical data and grounded insights from, and into, particular normative spaces. The individual chapters explore the interrelationships between various normative orders, diverse actors, and their influences. The encounters between different normative understandings and actors open up space and multiple forums for negotiating values. The authors analyse how different doctrines, institutions, and practices are constructed, contested, negotiated, and adapted in translation processes and thereby continuously reshape Africa’s multidimensional normative spaces.
The volume delivers nuanced views of jurisprudence in Africa and presents an excellent resource for scholars and students of anthropology, legal geography, legal studies, sociology, political sciences, international relations, African studies, and anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of how legal constellations are shaped by unreflected assumptions about the state and the rule of law.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |16 pages
Prologue
part I|63 pages
Constructing normative spaces
chapter 1|22 pages
‘Forensic Fetishism’ and human rights after violent conflict
chapter 2|20 pages
Transitional justice atmospheres
chapter 3|19 pages
The Libyan constitution-making process
part II|67 pages
Contesting normative spaces
chapter 5|15 pages
Contesting normative spaces
chapter 6|26 pages
Protecting groups in Africa
part III|53 pages
Re-negotiating normative spaces
chapter 7|21 pages
Mind the gaps
chapter 8|16 pages
Judicial governance in Ghana
chapter 9|14 pages
Living customary law in South Africa
part IV|92 pages
Adapting normative spaces