Intercultural Justice. Cutting Across the Cultural Boundaries of Legal Norms

Abstract

This chapter explores the possibilities of inter-normativity in culturally complex contexts and its relation to the idea of a reflexive or self-critical modernity. The paper looks at the debates on justice in contemporary political philosophy in order to show the shortfalls of a constructivist approach to the normative analysis of culture, while it simultaneously portrays the affinity of the communitarian approach to several pluralist currents in modern legal anthropology. The key to the cultural translation of the principles of justice is to be found in their social and subjective effectiveness and in the affinity among the social goods to be normatively protected. The paper refers to several experiences of legal pluralism with ethno-religious communities and native peoples, and to the demands of Islamic feminism, to demonstrate that it is possible to ‘read’ customary practices through the lenses of state law and to defend ‘modern’ normative intentions with traditional languages and principles.