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Criminal justice, cultural justice: The limits of liberalism and the pragmatics of difference in the new south africa
Author(s) -
Comaroff John L.,
Comaroff Jean
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.2004.31.2.188
Subject(s) - universalism , liberalism , enlightenment , democracy , politics , state (computer science) , law , economic justice , jurisprudence , sociology , constitutionalism , political science , liberal democracy , epistemology , philosophy , algorithm , computer science
What are the limits of liberalism in accommodating the growing demands of difference? Can a Euromodernist nation‐state, founded on One Law , infuse itself with another, with an African jurisprudence? And how is it to deal with cultural practices deemed “dangerous” by the canons of enlightenment reason? These questions are especially urgent in postcolonies like South Africa, with highly diverse populations whose traditional ways and means are accorded constitutional protection. Here we examine how South Africans are dealing with such “dangerous” practices in an era in which their nation is becoming ever more poli cultural; how, in the process, an Afromodernity is taking organic shape in the interstices between new democratic institutions and the kingdom of custom; how the confrontation between Culture, in the upper case, and a state founded on liberal universalism is beginning to reconfigure the political landscape of this postcolony—as it is, we argue, in many places across the planet.