Workshop at University of Aberdeen, UK
Tuesday 25th – Wednesday 26th August 2009
in the Old Senate Room

Academic coordinator: Trevor Stack (t.stack@abdn.ac.uk)
Workshop administrator: Lloyd Dodd (l.dodd@abdn.ac.uk)

Citizenship, civil society and rule of law have each received abundant attention in recent years, both in theoretical debates and in empirical studies of how they are understood and play out in particular contexts. However, there has been rather less analysis of the relationship between them. How do citizenship, civil society and rule of law differ from each other, both in theory and in practice? And in what particular ways do they relate to each other? Citizenship, civil society and rule of law often get packaged together under the label of “good governance”, but arguably they have rather different histories and the relationship between them – both in theory and in practice – is a complex and sometimes contradictory one. We will explore that relationship by combining approaches from sociology, anthropology, political science, history and law.

Confirmed participants include:
James Holston: Professor of Anthropology, UC-Berkeley, and author of Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi: Professor, Hertie School of Governance, chair of Romanian Academic Society think-tank, and author of books and articles on democracy and rule of law promotion in Eastern Europe
Nandini Sundar: Professor of Sociology, Delhi University, co-editor of Contributions to Indian Sociology, and author of Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar 1854-2006
Pilar Domingo: Research Fellow, Overseas Development Institute, author of books and articles on judicial politics and rule of law in Latin America
Matyas Bodig: Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Aberdeen, and author of books and articles on legal theory and political philosophy including The Theory of State: The Idea and the Elements of the Moderated State

Some specific questions to be addressed:
Do citizenship, civil society and rule of law always involve the state, and if so, are they necessarily linked through the state?
How do ideas of civility play out in relation to citizenship, civil society and rule of law?
How do the formal equality of citizens and equality before the law relate to each other, as well as to other kinds of equality and inequality, such as the substantive distribution of rights, access to the justice system, and socioeconomic disparities?
Do citizenship, civil society and rule of law make for justice, and if so, what kind of justice?
Are citizenship, civil society and rule of law necessarily democratic? Do civil and human rights have different relationships to citizenship and rule of law? How does legal pluralism relate to notions of pluralism in citizenship, such as multiculturalism, and in civil society?

Full details of the workshop, including how to register, are available at http://cisrul.ning.com Contact the workshop administrator Lloyd Dodd (l.dodd@abdn.ac.uk) with any further queries.