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Imperial Agendas, Global Solidarities, And Third World Socio-Legal Studies: Methodological Reflections, Radha D'Souza

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article interrogates the methodological lenses through which law in the Third World is commonly analyzed in socio-legal studies. Third World socio-legal studies, this article argues, is a field in search of philosophical foundations. It continues to rely on conceptual categories and analytical frameworks developed through the intellectual, cultural, and social histories of Western capitalist societies, which it extends uncritically to different intersubjective orders in Third World contexts. The article examines the common grounds shared by two apparently competing discourses about law in the Third World, which I label imperial agendas and global solidarities. It is difficult to speak about …