SA Romania Program (2008 - 2011)- Completed

Material is based upon work supported by the National Research Foundation under

Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials are those of the author(s) and therefore the NRF does not accept any liability in regard thereto.

IFRES sister site (in French)

The Project is part of philosophy network OFFRES (Organisation for French-Speaking Research and Development in the Humanities)

Arches, a journal in cross-disciplinary philosophy, will help disseminate outputs from the Project

The Project's leaders are Professor Ciprian Mihali, Department of Philosophy, University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and Distinguished Professor Philippe-Joseph Salazar, Rhetoric Studies, University of Cape Town.

Main objective of the Project:

A comparative study of Romanian and South African public debate regarding the public perception of social and human justice in terms of its rhetorical means and traditions. What is meant by justice is not the legal system, but how popular notions of fairness, redress, equity, even-handedness are rhetorically constructed by public agencies, how they are relayed by the media, and how they are objects of and for a critical re-evaluation of the principles and concrete manners of construction of the rule of law.

The project takes into account how rhetorical modes are at work in the public deliberative sphere, which impose rethinking of the manner in which societies that had the experience of a totalitarian state and of apartheid deliberate on the rule of law.

The project is innovative inasmuch as it is the first of its kind between Romania and South Africa, and brings together a common thinking on the law, rhetoric and public opinion. Of note, the Project benefits from the extensive network of Francophone philosophy to which the University of Cluj-Napoca is an active participant.

The reporting language of the Project is English. However, commonality of interests and a common philosophical culture between the teams, will make French as a supplementary working instrument, thus bringing South African research in the field closer to its African context and helping a global dissemination of its results.

Background Papers:

Ciprian Mihali, Between sovereignty and precariousness: post-communist daily life condition
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Paul Vasilescu, Dean of Law, Cluj, Inequal status of the subject in private law (in French, previously published in Arches 8, 2005)
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Reports

Report 1
Bridget Kwinda: The South African Justice system since 1994
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Report 2
Themba Ratsibe: Justice in South Africa
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Rhetoric of crisis and Politics of Hope, South Africa- Romania workshop, Cluj, June, 2010

RHETORICS OF JUSTICE IN EMERGING DEMOCRACIES

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