Cambridge Studies in Law and Society: Law and Globalization from Below: Towards a Cosmopolitan Legality

This book is an unprecedented attempt to analyze the role of the law in the global movement for social justice. Case studies in the book are written by leading scholars from both the global South and the global North, and combine empirical research on the ground with innovative sociolegal theory to shed new light on a wide array of topics. Among the issues examined are the role of law and politics in the World Social Forum; the struggle of the anti-sweatshop movement for the protection of international labour rights; and the challenge to neoliberal globalization and liberal human rights raised by grassroots movements in India and indigenous peoples around the world. These and other cases, the editors argue, signal the emergence of a subaltern cosmopolitan law and politics that calls for new social and legal theories capable of capturing the potential and tensions of counter-hegemonic globalization.

Notes on the contributors; 1. Law, politics, and the subaltern in counter-hegemonic globalization Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Cesar A. Rodriguez-Garavito; Part I. Law and the Construction of a Global Economy of Solidarity: 2. Beyond neoliberal governance: the World Social Forum as subaltern cosmopolitan politics and legality Boaventura de Sousa Santos; 3. Nike's law: the anti-sweatshop movement, transnational corporations, and the struggle over international labor rights in the Americas Cesar A. Rodriguez-Garavito; 4. Corporate social responsibility: a case of hegemony and counter-hegemony Ronen Shamir; 5. Campaigning for life: building a new transnational solidarity in the face of HIV/AIDS and TRIPS Heinz Klug; 6. Negotiating informality within formality: land and housing in the Texas colonias Jane E. Larson; 7. Local contact points at global divides: labor rights and immigrant rights as sites for cosmopolitanism legality Fran Ansley; Part II. Transnational Social Movements and the Reconstruction of Human Rights: 8. Limits of law in counter-hegemonic globalization: the Indian Supreme Court and the Narmada Valley struggle Balakrishnan Rajagopal; 9. The Movement of the Landless (MST), juridicial field, and legal change in Brazil Peter P. Houtzager; 10. Indigenous rights, transnational activism, and legal mobilization: the struggle of the U'wa people in Colombia Cesar A. Rodriguez-Garavito and Luis Carlos Arenas; 11. Defensive and oppositional counter-hegemonic uses of international law: from the International Criminal Court to the common heritage of humankind Jose Manuel Pureza; Part III. Law and Participatory Democracy: Between the Local and the Global: 12. Political and legal struggles over resources and democracy: experiences with gender budgeting in Tanzania Mary Rusimbi and Marjorie Mbilinyi; 13. Two democracies, two legalities: participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil Boaventura de Sousa Santos; 14. Life, life world and life chances: vulnerability and survival in Indian constitutional law Shiv Visvanathan and Chandrika Parmar; 15. Bottom-up environmental law and democracy in the risk society: Portuguese experiences in the European context Joao Arriscado Nunes, Marisa Matias and Susana Costa; Index.