"Preface" [2013] ELECD 882; in Frankenberg, Günter (ed), "Order from Transfer" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013) xii

Book Title: Order from Transfer

Editor(s): Frankenberg, Günter

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781952108

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 5

Extract:

Preface
"Order from Transfer" may have an all too positive ring. Order keeps
anarchy at bay and structures social interactions. Transfer moves beyond
the horizon of the national everyday. This, however, is not the reading
intended here. The title is only meant to suggest that normative orders ­
constitutional and legal regimes, etc. ­ are works of construction; and
transferred information is used in the process of their making by whoever
contributes as maker. Order from transfer neither implies that order is
good, nor does it suggest it is evil. Far from precluding or predetermining
any questions regarding the nature of an order, the focus on order is only
meant to prepare them: how power is allocated and wealth distributed in
a society; whether women are discriminated against; which social groups
are disfranchised; whether privilege is camouflaged and the subaltern
silenced, etc.
To grasp the importance and impact of import/export, borrowing,
adaptation, migration, etc. in the constitutional and legal realm it may be
helpful to suspend the ultimate decision on whether an order so designed
and then established is good or evil (for whom) and, first, look at the
situation of transfer ­ military occupation, colonial rule, post-colonial
nation-building, post-socialist reconstruction, economic hegemony or a
plurality of competing legal regimes ­ analyze the transfer process, and
then return to a critical assessment of the order based on transferred
information. Transfer might turn out to be an interesting "take" on the
alchemy of truth and deceit, struggle and deliberation, vision and
...