Social Hierarchies in Catastrophic Times: International Law, Critique, and Structural Change

This book brings together scholars primarily from the Global South, rooted in critical legal traditions, who reflect on international law and its role in (re-)producing social hierarchies in times of crisis and catastrophe.

How should legal scholars articulate critique in catastrophic times? Should critical voices tone it down, in favour of pragmatism, when faced with deteriorating social conditions, growing inequality, protracted violence, planetary collapse, authoritarianism, and xenophobia? Or are they more urgently needed than ever? Critical scholarship has long warned of the limits of international law and its complicity with structures and relations of domination and the (re)production of social hierarchies. Yet, contemporary catastrophes have led to its revitalisation as a language of both expert counsel and political demand, drowning out calls for structural change for the sake of realism and stability.

This book was inspired by two distinct, yet related, developments. One is the mobilisation of, and against, law by social movements representing the interests of distinct socially constructed groups facing crisis or catastrophe. The other is the reception of, and response to, such mobilisation by international law scholars and practitioners.