Cultural and legal logics of religion and secularisation in Europe
- When?
- Wednesday 5 October 2011, 14.00 to 15.30
- Where?
- Room 49AC05, AC Building, University of Surrey
- Open to:
- Staff, Students, Public
- Speaker:
- Dr Prakash Shah
Dr Prakash Shah, Queen Mary, University of London
S.N. Balagangadhara (notably in his book, The Heathen in his Blindness) has explained that Christianity is the ‘root model of order’ of the West and has been fundamentally constitutive of the West’s cultural tradition. This order has specific features, two important ones being (1) its universalisation dynamic and (2) its distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’ religions. Balagangadhara explains that, through its various paradigm shifts, the universalisation dynamic of Christianity is characterised by the two key features of proselytisation and secularisation. As Christianity universalises itself, it loses its specific character and becomes more general while retaining its basic structure. The law is one mechanism whereby this universalisation occurs through secularisation. The West being a religious culture, its dominant religious structure governs its way of ‘going about’ in the world and its encounter with non-Christian cultures and people. While it ‘recognises’ that people of all cultures have religion, Christianity, as with other religious traditions, postulates ‘false’ and ‘true’ religions. In its encounter with non-Christian traditions in ancient times prior to Christian dominance, as well its encounter with Asian (Indian) traditions in the colonial period, it adopted a mechanism of conversion which transforms the native sense of order into accepting the ‘facts’ of disorder and then conversion into the Christian view of the cosmos as an ordered place. Currently, the West remains preoccupied by its own model of law as a generalised and autonomous discipline and practice which can dominate and direct society. In this paper, I try to elaborate the basic form of a hypothesis about the cultural encounter between Western and non-Western legal systems within Europe. I try to demonstrate that the long shadow of the culture which Christianity established hangs over its legal tradition and can be seen in the encounter between Western legal systems and non-Western ethnic minority laws. I also attempt to show that there is a particular cultural logic which the Western law uses in order to engage with its cultural ‘others’ as it attempts to domesticate (convert) them in its own terms through insinuations concerning their inherent deficiencies and implanting the belief in the superiority of Western culture and law.
Dr Prakash Shah specialises in religion and law, ethnic minorities and diasporas in law, immigration, refugee and nationality law, and comparative law with special reference to South Asians. He has published widely and lectured internationally in these fields (see cv). Dr Shah was Lecturer at SOAS, University of London from 1993, and Lecturer at the University of Kent at Canterbury from August 2000. He joined Queen Mary, University of London in 2002, where he is now a Senior Lecturer.