Pursuing Justice in Africa Conference and Call for Papers 27-28 March 2014

The Centre For Research In The Arts, Social Sciences And Humanities (CRASSH) is organizing an interdisciplinary conference titled "Pursuing Justice in Africa".

The conference will take place on March 27 and 28 2015 in Cambridge, England.

In recent decades, justice has been overshadowed as a subject of concern to scholars of Africa by vast literatures centering on rights, crime, punishment, policing and social order. This neglect of justice is striking given the increasing presence of international justice institutions, such as the International Criminal Court, on the African continent and the remarkable diversity of legal structures of justice. Across Africa complex pluralities of ‘customary’, religious, state, and transnational justice regimes interact on what is often contested terrain. The conference will place the negotiation of competing notions of justice under scrutiny, with the aims of: 

•Moving beyond currently dominant themes in socio-legal studies of Africa by asking broader questions about the aims and aspirations of those engaging with formal, informal or ‘customary’ law, legal reform, and legal institutions.

•Exploring the potential of a focus on justice to overcome the limitations associated with the study of human rights, not least their questionable resonance with the vernacular concerns of African citizens, at the same time, probing the relationship between rights and justice.

•Considering the conceptual possibilities of justice as a means of bypassing contested notions of legal pluralism for understanding intersections of local, national and international legalities.

•Remaining alert to what a focus on justice might obscure or exclude. How, for example, does the language of justice relate to concerns about power and inequality?

•Gathering together scholars from a variety of disciplines whose work converges on issues of justice in Africa and whose projects have not previously been brought into conversation.

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Papers from a range of disciplines, including - but not limited to - anthropology, history, law, criminology and politics are welcomed.

The CRASSH has limited funding to contribute towards the travel costs of a junior scholar based in an African University, but is otherwise unable to fund delegates’ travel and accommodation. It will cover registration costs and conference meals for all speakers, and can provide advice about accommodation in Cambridge.