Itineraries of Liberalism in the Global South

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

What is liberalism? Who does it speak for? With the proliferation of historical and contextual readings of liberalism in recent times, these key questions about what makes up liberalism seem far from settled. Moreover, the rise of populist movements across the world can no longer be read as a pre-modern, anti-liberal resistance to liberalism if the universal tenets of liberalism themselves appear shaky. Instead, this presents an opportunity as well as an urgent necessity for liberal theorists to reflect on the new limits or the lack thereof of liberalism. Moreover, the process of vernacularisation of liberal categories impels us to examine afresh the relationship between liberalism and democracy. Does the vernacularisation of liberalism prompt a rethinking about its role as a bulwark against majoritarian assertion of power?
An interpretive focus on global itineraries of liberalism will be a useful theoretical endeavour in this direction. Recent historical literature on liberalism and rights discourses has illuminated the contested terrain of a deeply chequered tradition so much so that it is difficult to envisage a core of ‘liberal’ ideals. (Bayly 2011, Mantena 2010, Moyn 2010, Bell 2014) Around the same time, there has been an upsurge of literature on vernacularisation of rights discourses in the global south, both historical and contemporary, which talks about hybrid cultural identities and political categories in relation to liberalism. (Madhok 2017, Kapila 2012) Enquiries premised on contingency and situatedness of contexts expand our understanding of rights discourses. While political philosophers continue to uphold the significance of universalist paradigms of cosmopolitan justice (Benhabib 2011), there is an emerging scholarship on vernacular conceptions of justice beyond rights in the global south which draws upon alternative conceptions of personhood and agency in anthropology and social theory. (Asad 2003, Mahmood 2004, Iqtidar 2016) Yet the project of vernacularisation lends itself to conceptual overstretching and extension. How might we understand this project of parochializing rights in terms of its theoretical import? If liberalism is reduced to a mere ‘contextual’ understanding of people’s articulation of rights, might that lead us to reconceptualise the relationship between liberalism and democracy?
This panel invites papers to reflect on these pressing concerns in political theory. These questions have a bearing on gender, minority rights, secularism, citizenship, and democracy where mainstream political discourse often lapses into binaries of liberal and ‘illiberal’.
This panel seeks to examine the varied itineraries of liberalism in the global south to address some of the above concerns. Contributions from political theorists (both critical theorists and historians of political thought), intellectual historians, and political anthropologists will help us deliberate on these questions. Papers can broadly speak to religion and rights discourses, global imaginaries of democracy, itineraries of constitutions and constitutionalism, embodiment, agency and rights discourses etc both from a historical and a contemporary perspective.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• Religious Freedom and Public Order: Fundamental-Rights Lawfare - Matthew J. Nelson, University of London, SOAS

• The Liberal Universalism of Young Turks - Banu TURNAOGLU, University of Cambridge

• The Anti-liberalism of Neoliberalism - Sharon R. Krause, Brown University

• Rights as Ethical Duty: The Quran, Constitution, and the Fragile Family - Sagnik Dutta, University of Cambridge

Chair

• Jennifer Pitts University of Chicago

Discussants

• Rochana Bajpai University of London, SOAS

• Lisa Wedeen University of Chicago