15.11.2017 - 09:49

Research Forum Lecture by Susanne Brandtstädter

Barefoot lawyers and the search for justice in rural China  |  Wed, Nov. 15, 2017, 16–18 h  |  Room SG 183, Campus Duisburg

Based on fieldwork in Shandong province, this talk focusses on a group of peasant or barefoot lawyers that seek to employ the law "as a weapon" and for "giving peasants a voice". It explores their biographical backgrounds, motivations and tactics, and their changing relations with government officials and fellow villagers. It will argue that in order to understand the relation between law and justice in rural China, we need to go beyond the court room and actual court cases. Instead we need to focus on the working of law as a new language of civilisation, as a platform from which to speak truth to power, an ideal of justice against which injustices are being measured, and as a tool for rebalancing relations with authority.