Normative Pluralism Research Articles

The Complexities of Regulating Traders’ Activity: The Case of Small Traders in Ouagadougou's Rood Woko Market (Burkina Faso)

This paper analyses the complexity of regulating the activities of small traders at the Grand Marché in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Markets in Africa are places where small-scale trading takes place par excellence, and the traders who work there are generally considered to be self-employed. The plurality of regulations governing commercial activity observed there seems to be particularly conducive to such an analysis. We examine these complexities within the theoretical framework of “social regulation” as well as that of “normative pluralism,” which encompasses both official and practical norms. We show that the work of traders is regulated both by norms issued by the Régie Autonome de Gestion des Équipements Marchands (Independent Management Board for Commercial Facilities) – an official structure – and by traders’ own practical norms, which have both collective and individual aspects to them. The complexities of the relationship between these official and practical norms lie in the fact that sometimes they are not always articulated and may both co-exist and contradict each other.

Revisiting forum shopping: navigating normative pluralism, navigating sentiments

People live their lives and experience the conflicts in which they are involved in the context of competing normative orders. But how do people navigate this normative pluralism? To understand this, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann’s model of ‘forum shopping’ and ‘shopping forums’, derived from an ethnographic analysis of conflict resolution, remains an indispensable starting point. Building on this approach, I argue that in order to understand the navigation of normative orders more broadly, it is important to bring the analysis of sentiments to the study of normative pluralism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the International Criminal Court’s transitional justice interventions in northern Uganda, I argue that when confronted with different international, national, religious, and indigenous normative options for dealing with mass violence, people navigate normative pluralism by creating, mobilising, maintaining, and transforming sentiments.

Normative Pluralism and Sporting Integrity

ABSTRACT Official documents, such as the Word Anti-Doping Code (WADC), argue that sport can be deemed a homogenous and unitary concept. Even where different sports have varying characteristics, the homogenous view of a given sport (‘a sport’ or ‘the sport’) persists. The WADC, international and national sport associations aim to protect the spirit of (the) sport. In this picture, the intersection of sporting integrity and legal processes occupies a vital place. The article will posit that, from a legal perspective sport is heterogeneous due to its governance, regulation, adjudication, and enforcement structures. International and national associations, such as sport federations and leagues, have separate normative orders. These normative orders lead to differences in ensuring sporting integrity. A plural normative environment is inherent in sport; thus, we need to deal with it. The article will conclude that although harmonising norms and interpretations related to sporting integrity through national and global institutions may be acceptable, these must be achieved by promoting good governance and human rights.

From unity in diversity to culture wars? Aceh women's mastery over Adat, Islam, and the state inheritance laws

This article explores “Asian values” and conflicts purported by normative pluralism in Asia from an anthropological approach. Instead of a zero-sum narrative of culture wars, this article proposes a narrative of social order through public reasoning that takes value plurality into account. This article contextualizes the concept of value in a specific social and cultural context as a query to the abstract, homogenizing nature of the concept itself. What happens when religious and state civil laws prescribe certain family values and behaviors, but the same values and behaviors are nonetheless culturally unjustified? This article is based on an anthropological analysis of Muslim women's perspectives in Banda Aceh. The study of inheritance law aims to provide a forum for evaluating legal engagements in a culture characterized by competing and contradictory values, such as in Aceh. The Acehnese hold legal pluralism: Adat, Shari'a, and state civil laws. Acehnese's choices of Adat, Shari'a, or civil laws are influenced by her social relationships and belongings. From an Acehnese standpoint, no single law has complete control over what is good and improper about inheritance. What is clear from the Aceh context is that the state is not the sole provider and protector of rights and justice. Aceh people use the state law and Shari'a law as a last resort when parties with no mutual interest have conflicting claims regarding inheritance. Further, the Acehnese promote public reasoning in which the plurality of laws are valued equally and one's coercion is consistent with one's respect for others.

Living law, normative pluralism, and “fare dodging” on public transport in Budapest

This paper explores a situation regulated by plural normative orders, which every-day public transport users and ticket inspectors experience and practice in the urban realm of the Hungarian capital city, Budapest. The paper analyses everyday interactions between members of the public and public transport staff (typically ticket inspectors) in ways which are not only regulated by formal rules, but which manifest in a non-state regulated normative order. By doing this, the paper theoretically engages with the interplay between multiple normative orders and the urban dynamics in which they operate. The norms which regulate these practices can exist because of how the public transport system operates in Budapest. The paper is based on twenty-five in-depth interviews conducted between February 2017 and March 2019 with long-term Hungarian residents and British migrants living in Budapest. A synthesis of Ehrlich’s “living law” theory and Moore’s concepts of “semi-autonomous social fields” provide the underlying theoretical framework to examine these informal interactions.

Self-Defending Ordre Public and an Over Protecting Laïcité: The Twin Foundations of ‘Legal’ Discrimination in France Victimize the Muslim Minorities

The emanation of the concept of ordre public or public order in France is based on the principle of self-affirmation, and civil law of the republic against alien infringement. There has been a separation of the temporal and spiritual power in Europe that dates back to the concept of laïcité which was a concept established by the French revolution by its Civil Constitution of the Clergy 1791 and later consecrated into law in 1905. The issue of discrimination against Muslims has arisen because of the cultural discrimination in religious formalism, such as the prohibition against the burkini and rejection of religious dress in schools. This has been achieved by superimposing the code of laïcité upon the communities’ expression of their laws and by upholding the concept of ordre public that is vigorous and stringent against the practices of the Muslim community. The concept of ordre public imposes conformity on the Muslims, reinforcing stereotypes and increasing Islamophobia in France. The argument of this article is that by legally enforcing the imposition of majoritarian customs the French state is ignoring the adoption of the comparative legal method and human rights that acknowledges normative pluralism that serves to eradicate the colonial prejudices that are restricting the understanding and application of tolerant approaches to religious expression.

The (De)normalisation of Smoking Among Apprentices: Plurality of Settings, Norms and Vulnerability Levels.

When it comes to smoking, apprentices are considered a 'vulnerable' population. They have been the subject of targeted approaches based on the assumption of common characteristics. In contrast to most public health studies, that assume homogeneity of vulnerable groups, this article, based on Lahire's 'theory of the plural individual', aims to examine inter- and intra-individual variability in relation to tobacco exposure. It is based on a secondary analysis of 30 interviews with apprentices in France on the stigma attached to their use in their different living environments. Our study confirms that the family and the Centre de Formation des Apprentis, as a whole, encourage smoking. It also provides a better understanding of the mechanisms by which inequalities are perpetuated (permissive rules, loans and gifts of cigarettes, spillover effects, lack of incentives to quit). Nevertheless, it allows us to observe that, in some families and in some companies, smoking is denormalised, even stigmatised. Several apprentice profiles emerge: those who are protected from tobacco and seem to be able to quit easily; those who are permanently confronted with it and for whom it is difficult to consider quitting or reducing; and those who are confronted with a plurality of norms, who seem ambivalent and whose consumption varies significantly. These results will allow us to adapt the interventions according to the profile of the apprentices and by including their entourage. In particular, it will be necessary to propose a 'go-to' approach that goes beyond the school setting and involves the family and the workplace.

Droit et soft ethics dans l’encadrement normatif de l’IA : une perspective pragmatiste

Dans l’objectif de discuter des enjeux associés aux systèmes d’intelligence artificielle (SIA), les publications en éthique de l’IA se sont multipliées récemment. Bien que le droit et l’éthique œuvrent pour un but commun, soit celui de favoriser une utilisation de l’IA qui soit bénéfique et responsable, ces initiatives normatives sont distinctes et doivent être situées adéquatement l’une par rapport à l’autre. Dans le cadre de cet article, partant d’une perspective pragmatiste, nous proposons une réflexion sur le rôle normatif de ce que Luciano Floridi appelle la soft ethics par rapport au droit. Nous réfléchirons aux caractéristiques qu’elle devrait posséder pour jouer un rôle normatif effectif qui soit complémentaire au droit ainsi qu’aux relations internormatives entre éthique et droit dans la perspective du pluralisme normatif.

Klassisch islamische Rechtsmethodik: Prinzipien, Rezeptionen und Divergenzen

The terms sharia (šarīʿa) and ‘Islamic law’ are synonymously used both in a general, colloquial sense and in academic literature. The terms do, however, not always coincide. The term sharia refers to the divine origin of rules and norms, whether they were set by God in his revelation or derived by humans from God’s revelation. Sharia, thus, encompasses the sum of divine judgments of human actions and is therefore normatively broader than the essentially positivist continental European understanding of law. As a doctrine of duties and law, it entails all religious and legal norms, mechanisms for norm-finding and interpretations. Thus, it is also referred to as a religiously based ‘order of law and values’ in the sense of an Islamic normativity that includes one’s relations with the divine authority, fellow human beings, and all creatures created by Allāh. As in the Jewish context, the interpretation of the normative set of rules is not aimed at the institutionalization of an authority, but focuses primarily on the nuṣūṣ. The texts of divine origin constitute the absolute authority. This absolute authority is transferred into the space of this world and thus into the human art of thinking. This then opens up a wide range of legal-methodological alternatives for interpretation. This multiplicity gives rise to a normative pluralism, which is – by the grace of God in the Islamic self-perception – inherent in discourses. The methods and distinctions are outlined in this article with references to legal-historical adoptions.

Arbitrators of safety and authors of law – Legal consciousness, normative pluralism and modulated derogation among European licensed aircraft maintenance engineers

This series collects papers and proceedings related with law and society, and produced at the Onati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, including workshops papers, master tesinas, or research grant productions, in any language.

Good is overrated: on negative altruism as normative foundation for antitheism.

In this article, I want to demonstrate the possibility of a normative theory which, if true, would make it impossible to think of God as morally good and therefore would “disqualify” him as God. I call this theory negative altruism (NA) and regard it as the true basis of social morality, as well as the appropriate normative foundation of antitheism. The article is structured as follows: first, I clarify some basic notions I proceed from (such as antitheism, axiological atheism and normative pluralism), second, I describe the normative logic of NA, and then I show why it makes impossible to present any theoretically conceivable creator of this universe as morally good. Lastly, after some remarks on why I find NA preferable to alternative normative theories, I explain in which sense it leads to antitheism.

The child’s right to freedom of expression in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara

ABSTRACT This paper presents the results of a mixed-methods study on the child’s right to freedom of expression in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara (MCWS). Qualitative data for this paper was obtained by the author and student researcher through covert field research and online interviews. The data is analysed according to three academic perspectives: first a legal doctrinal perspective, which discusses the content of the child’s right to freedom of expression under international law. Second, a normative pluralism perspective, which shows how the child’s right to freedom of expression is protected and/or violated on different social levels in MCWS, such as the state, the school and the family. Third, a narrative theory perspective, which discusses the two dominant narratives in MCWS (the Sahrawi activist and the Moroccan nationalist narrative), both of which are the presentations, the subject, and a cause of the illegal restrictions placed on the child’s freedom of expression for children living in MCWS. The paper ends with a presentation of an alternative, third narrative: a silent narrative, which according to the author has the potential to be a new political space where certain topics can be discussed more freely.

A pluralistic framework for the psychology of norms

Social norms are commonly understood as rules that dictate which behaviors are appropriate, permissible, or obligatory in different situations for members of a given community. Many researchers have sought to explain the ubiquity of social norms in human life in terms of the psychological mechanisms underlying their acquisition, conformity, and enforcement. Existing theories of the psychology of social norms appeal to a variety of constructs, from prediction-error minimization, to reinforcement learning, to shared intentionality, to domain-specific adaptations for norm acquisition. In this paper, we propose a novel methodological and conceptual framework for the cognitive science of social norms that we call normative pluralism. We begin with an analysis of the (sometimes mixed) explanatory aims of the cognitive science of social norms. From this analysis, we derive a recommendation for a reformed conception of its explanandum: a minimally psychological construct that we call normative regularities. Our central empirical proposal is that the psychological underpinnings of social norms are most likely realized by a heterogeneous set of cognitive, motivational, and ecological mechanisms that vary between norms and between individuals, rather than by a single type of process or distinctive norm system. This pluralistic approach, we suggest, offers a methodologically sound point of departure for a fruitful and rigorous science of social norms.

Reflecting about the Past, Present, and Future of UN Mediation

Abstract This thematic issue explores the past, present, and future of UN mediation. Based on in-depth case studies of UN mediation in some of the most intractable contemporary armed conflicts, it shows the challenges related to lacking consensus amongst third parties, disunity in the UN Security Council, and the internationalization of conflicts. At the same time, it highlights the UN’s legitimacy, expertise, and convening power, and its importance in the context of broader international dispute management systems. It also underlines the need to rethink how we measure success of UN mediation efforts and to reflect on the consequences of increasing normative plurality in world politics. Finally, this issue points to some areas for future research, including more critical mediation theory, reflections about the worldviews underlying UN mediation, and innovative approaches related to the UN reform agenda.

Transitional justice from the margins: Collective reparations and Tunisia's Truth and Dignity Commission

The Tunisian revolution of 2011 moved from socio-economic to political concerns, and from the margins and periphery of the South and West of the country to the centre, Tunis, driven by the slogan of “jobs, dignity and freedom”. The goal of this article is to understand the potential of using the spatially informed concept of marginalisation to reimagine transitional justice, using the “victim zone” as a case study. The Truth and Dignity Commission's founding legislation tasked it with identifying victim zones that had “suffered systematic marginalisation or exclusion” and proposing reparation for structural violations suffered. Empirical data collected from two disadvantaged regions of Tunisia are used to provide a bottom-up, victim-centred, look at structural and economic violence. The IVD has largely failed to-date to deliver on its promise in relation to collective reparations, but a combination of theory and empirical data provides a springboard for a discussion of how the margins could unsettle current transitional justice practice, both normatively and practically. The article concludes by outlining an unfinished business agenda for Tunisia and implications for future transitional justice. Specifically, it argues for a transitional justice from the margins that focuses on space as well as time, collectives as well as individuals, a normative plurality rather than a single universalised global framework, decentralised agency rather than centralised institutional primacy, and a new social contract (forms of participation and recognition) rather than the continuity of elite bargains.

The value of official equality: structuring the execution of democratic law

ABSTRACT The executive branch is often conceptualised as a hierarchy in which one official has ultimate authority to carry out the law. In American public law, this is referred to as the ‘unitary’ theory of the executive. That theory is often defended on democratic grounds. However, there are countervailing democratic reasons to give several officials equal authority to implement the law. First, such a condition of ‘official equality’ can remedy the imperfect information about citizens’ judgments any one official holds. Second, official equality respects the plurality of norms that a democratic legal system tends to generate. Third, it gives private persons reason to structure their own relationships on equal terms in ways that support the social foundations of democracy. Fourth, it exhibits the democratic virtues of legislative processes when the implementation of law requires action that is legislative in nature. These reasons together constitute the value of official equality. The value of official equality ought to impact the structures and practices of executive offices within the democratic state.

Na cestě k ideálu: sociální spravedlnost, normativní diverzita a modelování v politické filosofii

Set against the background of the clash between ideal and non-ideal theorising in political philosophy, this review article outlines two complex approaches to the modelling of an ideal of justice. We reconstruct the moderately anti-utopian position championed by Gerald Gaus, who suggests we should give up the efforts to discover a conclusive truth about ideal justice, and confront it with David Estlund’s steadfast belief that unearthing some such ideal is nevertheless a preeminent philosophical goal. Utilising Gaus’s formalised model of what searching for an ideal of justice must encompass, we show why the formulation of the normative ideal depends on the very conditions of and obstacles to the achievement of such an ideal. Under conditions of normative pluralism which is ubiquitous in constitutional democracies, this means that the first desideratum of modelling an ideal should be outlining the ways of productively harnessing the diverse perspectives which populate any reasonably free society. Put bluntly, discovering an ideal requires giving up the philosophical search for the ideal. Ramifications for how best to construe the vocation of political philosophy as such are substantial: Rather than monologically digging deeper and deeper towards an elusive ideal of justice which tells us what we collectively ought to do, we need to figure out how to make cohabitation of contrasting worldviews possible, perhaps even enjoyable. We conclude the article by linking the argument to a defence of convergence public justification we offered in a previous paper.

The Limits of Arbitration Law in Addressing Cultural Diversity: The Example of Ismaili Arbitration in the United Kingdom

This article studies religious arbitration from the perspective of global legal pluralism, which embraces both normative plurality and cultural diversity. In this context, the article considers that UK arbitration law regulates both commercial and religious arbitration while relying on a monist conception of arbitration. It further identifies two intertwined issues regarding cultural diversity, which find their source in this monist conception. Firstly, through the study of Jivraj v. Hashwani ([2011] UKSC 40), this article shows that the governance of religious arbitration may generate a conflict between arbitration law and equality law, the avoidance of which can require sacrificing the objectives of one or the other branch of law. The Jivraj case concerned an Ismaili arbitration clause, requiring that all arbitrators be Ismaili—a clause valid under arbitration law but potentially not under employment-equality law. To avoid such conflict, the Supreme Court reduced the scope of employment-equality law, thereby excluding self-employed persons. Secondly, based on cultural studies of law, this article shows that the conception of arbitration underlying UK arbitration law is ill-suited to make sense of Ismaili arbitration. In view of these two issues, this article argues that UK arbitration law acknowledges normative multiplicity but fails to embrace the cultural diversity entangled therewith.

Normative Pluralism and Multinormativity

The paper deals with the phenomenon of normative pluralism - that of several normative orders coexisting in various spheres of our life - law, morality, politics, etc. It shows the root causes of normative pluralism and the causes of its development and proliferation - both internal (overcoming legal and moral syncretism) and external (globalization and the related growth in the number of regulatory subjects). The authors offer a way of understanding and reconciling norms by building out of potentially conflicting norms a non-contradictory system without any normative collisions.

Homeownership, Legal Administration, And The Uncertainties Of Inheritance In South Africa’s Townships: Apartheid’s Legal Shadows

Abstract Expanded homeownership in Johannesburg’s townships offered the prospect of post-apartheid formal inclusion. Yet allocation of title to former rental homes has been characterized by a profound lack of normative consensus regarding ownership or inheritance. In bitter disputes over houses, appeals to law jostle and interweave with claims in a customary register. In much regional scholarship, normative pluralism provides a point of departure for understanding disagreement of this kind. This article proposes an alternative perspective by examining how dissensus is mediated and given shape by a legal–administrative process. Law becomes inchoate in layers of bureaucratic encounter, while contested claims to custom are sharpened at the interface with bureaucracy. In South Africa, taking administration as a starting point reveals the long shadows of apartheid in concrete experiences of the law, in extra-legal understandings, and in the very terms of contestation among kin. Illuminating the little-explored topic of urban property inheritance, the perspective has broader implications for understanding inequality. Inclusion through homeownership is a form of ‘adverse incorporation’ marked by official opacity, diffidence regarding the law, stratifying administrative dualism, and uncertainty about the parameters of ownership and inheritance.