Sara Dezalay – författare

Lawyering Imperial Encounters revisits the relationship between the African continent and global capitalism since the 19th century Scramble. Focused on sites of imperial encounters – in London, Paris, Abidjan, Bujumbura, Kinshasa, Johannesburg or the Hague, it provides an unprecedented account of the correlation between the legacy of legal imperialism and British hegemony, and the uneven and unequal expansion of finance and global justice in the current rush for Africa's 'green' minerals. Tracking the role played by legal intermediaries to negotiate and justify Africa's practical and symbolic subaltern position in the global economy, it demonstrates the interconnectedness between political, legal and economic change in capitalism's cores and its so-called peripheries. Embracing the global turn in sociology, history and legal scholarship, it rubs against the functionalist account of global value chains as engines of development. It also constitutes a powerful postcolonial critique of law's double-bind - as both enabler and bulwark against domination.

Taking its cue from theoretical and ideological calls to challenge globalisation as a dynamic of homogenisation – and resistance – as led from, and directed against, the Global North, this volume asks: what can we see when we shift the lens beyond a North–South binary?Based on empirical studies of ‘frontier-zones’ of legal globalisation in India, Pakistan and Latin America, the book adopts an original format. Framed as a relational dialogue between newer as well as more prominent scholars within the field, from various cores through to postcolonial academic peripheries, it questions structural variables in the shadows of legal globalisation and how we as scholars build a space for critique.