How to Analyse the History of Normative Orders from a Global Perspective?

Due to long-standing asymmetries in global knowledge production, legal scholars, historians, and social scientists have often analyzed the evolution of normative orders in many parts of the world through the conceptual vocabulary and epistemological foundations of Western legal modernity. Postcolonial theory, global studies, legal theory, and decolonial comparative law have forcefully criticized the Eurocentrism, universalizing tendencies, and methodological nationalism underlying these approaches. Yet comparatively few constructive proposals have been developed to move beyond these limitations.
This lecture introduces a knowledge-historical approach to the study of law and other forms of normativity. It argues that focusing on the production, (cultural) translation, and transformation of normative knowledge allows for a more nuanced understanding of normative orders across different historical and cultural contexts. In doing so, the lecture aims to contribute to ongoing efforts to develop more genuinely global frameworks for analyzing the evolution of normativity.

Further information:

• https://www.lhlt.mpg.de/3511417/historical-regimes-of-normativity-method
• https://www.lhlt.mpg.de/duve/en.html

For further reading:

• DUVE, THOMAS (2022), Legal History as a History of the Translation of Knowledge of Normativity, in: Max Planck Institute for European Legal History Research Paper Series No. 2022-16, 1-12
• DUVE, THOMAS (2022), Legal History as an Observation of Historical Regimes of Normativity, in: Max Planck Institute for European Legal History Research Paper Series No. 2022-17, 1-10