Supriya Routh receives SSHRC Insight Grant

Supriya Routh received a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for the research proposal Regulating Sustainable Development in Canada: exploring spaces of non-hegemonic legal imagination in collaboration with Alan Hanna. This research aims at addressing the disconnect between the rationale of extractive economic growth and the aspiration of sustainability of nature by questioning the predominant legal narrative on sustainability, which is based solely on the logic of market capitalism. This legal narrative has colonial and imperial intellectual and policy heritage. By examining the idea of sustainable development as contemplated by the Tsilhqot’in nation in British Columbia, this research aims to contribute to non-Eurocentric legal imaginations in regulating sustainable development by generating empirical data and contributing to the theoretical literature on law, postcolonialism, and development.

This multidisciplinary research aims to further our understanding of ways of thinking about development that are not tied to an exploitative economic growth; legal imagination that does not hinge on self-interest-based market exchange logic; and ethical worldviews articulated from a postcolonial position. Employing theoretical analysis and qualitative empirical fieldwork, this research aims to answer the following specific research questions:

1. What constitutes development or prosperity in an indigenous worldview?
2. How is the idea of development reconciled with the aspiration to sustaining non-human nature?
3. In striking this balance, what are the sources of legitimacy for legal rules in an indigenous community? How does such legitimacy relate to, or challenge, Eurocentric legal logic?
4. How might the qualitative evidence generated through the study inform and help rearticulate the theoretical frameworks of postcolonialism and law, and law and development?