Grounded Normative Theory in Sites of Struggles

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

Grounded Normative Theory (GNT) derives from a long-standing orientation to political theory that holds that lived experience, practices, institutions, and beliefs reveal what we should do and should value. In different ways, theorists have argued for normative analysis to engage the concrete realities of people’s lives. Importantly, this approach draws attention to the political, ethical, and epistemological relationships between scholars and those people who are engaged in political contest, either through their participation in struggles for justice or because their lives are at stake due to those struggles. This approach, for many of us, is inspired by James Tully, who for some time has been calling for an approach to developing theory in terms of an “interlocutory intervention on the side of the oppressed” (2008, 17). While working with and on the same level of these demos members (2008, 4), he asks theorists to develop a re-description of the struggles, the oppression, and the possibilities for realizing civic freedom that transforms self-understanding and facilitates the visioning of different ways of governing (2008, 16). Theorizing in such a manner can lead to more relevant, comprehensive, rigorous, and accountable academic research on normative principles and frameworks. It can also contribute to methodological innovation and to policy change.

This aim of this roundtable is to bring together a diverse range of scholars to discuss the foundations, commitments, opportunities and challenges that come with grounded normative theorizing in sites of struggles.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 45: Human Rights

Cosponsor

• DIVISION 3: Normative Political Theory

Chair

• Genevieve Fuji Johnson Simon Fraser University

Presenters

• Genevieve Fuji Johnson Simon Fraser University

• Kristi Heather Kenyon University of Winnipeg

• Christine Keating Ohio State University

• Brooke A. Ackerly Vanderbilt University

• Bernardo Zacka Massachusetts Institute of Technology