Culture in Law and Development: Nurturing Positive Change

This book examines why law and development has failed despite years of rule of law efforts pursued by governments, international agencies, and nongovernmental organizations. Law and development has had many incarnations, but “rule of law” is a core component. The standard law and development template includes predictable prescriptions such as drafting laws, constructing institutions, and promoting legal education. These are important steps towards the development of a market economy and the establishment of a state that is appropriately subject to the constraints of law. However, law and development does not need more laws because law alone is insufficient. Preoccupation with the institutional, legalistic and technocratic dimensions of law and development has created a systemic blind spot to culture. This book traces the acultural tradition of public international law, international relations, private international law and international human rights law. It then argues that despite this deeply entrenched acultural framework, law and development needs to supplement rule of law projects with culture change projects, so that rule of law objectives can be established in a cultural environment that supports broad development objectives such as maximizing human capability and freedom. Law and development is deeply embedded in cultural norms. This book builds on the works of scholars such as Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and Arjun Appadurai. It adopts a holistic view of development and argues that cultural norms that impede the human capabilities of the poor, women and other marginal groups should be changed. Some anti-development norms fall within a human rights framework, such as female genital mutilation, footbinding and caste. Others, such as denying girls access to basic education, straddle both human rights and law and development traditions. Others might fit more within a market-oriented view of law and development. This book urges law and development scholars and practitioners to reject the acultural tradition of related fields such as public and private international law, international relations and even international human rights law and embark instead on a respectful but robust engagement with culture. Using concrete examples and country-specific case studies, the book defends culture change normatively and critically demonstrates how culture change has been accomplished