Towards a Relational Sociology of Law: Rethinking Practical Experience and Institutional Design in Asia

As is well known, the cornerstone of modern Western jurisprudence is the autonomous individual.The intellectual origins of the concept of individuality can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy, particularly to the ontological distinction between "matter" and "consciousness," as well as Socrates' sceptical differentiation between earthly, imperfect knowledge (doxa) and heavenly "true knowledge" (epistēmē), which together form a realist category of binary opposition.Since the Renaissance, this line of thought gradually evolved into Descartes' mind-body dualism and the principle of subjectivity in the bourgeois revolutions.Following a reductionist methodology, it gave rise to an atomistic view of the individual, liberal ideas, the legal principle of party autonomy, and a series of institutional designs and axiomatic systems of law aimed at safeguarding natural and fundamental rights inherent in human beings.In sharp contrast, the fundamental principle of traditional Chinese order lies in the unity of Heaven and humanity (tian ren he yi) and reciprocity in social intercourse (li shang wang lai), giving rise to a so-called relation-based society that transcends the dichotomies of matter and consciousness, object and subject. 1 Although the global movement of "law and modernization" and "law and development" made individual rights a basic goal of social transformation in China and other Asian societies, with far-reaching influence, Clifford Geertz argued that this Western conception of the individual also draws boundaries around the person, reducing him to an atomistic particle set in opposition to the natural and social background.Thus, however powerful this individualism may be, from the perspective of the world's major civilizations and diverse cultures, it remains, after all, a particularistic idea (see Geertz, 1974, p. 31).The emergence of this view marks the self-reflection of 20th-century academia (not limited to anthropology and sociology) on the Enlightenment movement that had surged since the 17th century, as well as its search for new ideals of social justice and more inclusive institutional arrangements.For the simple sum of individual rationalities does not lead to collective rationality; indeed, negotiation aimed at maximizing individual interests often excludes the most reasonable public choices from the set of options.It is therefore necessary to break down individual boundaries and, by redefining the status and role of the individual, achieve other-oriented and collectively oriented communicative rationality, as well as social cooperation based on the principle of reciprocity and mutual benefit.