Conceptual Experimentation Through Design in Pedagogical Contexts: Lessons From an Anti-hate Crime Project in India

Abstract

This paper explores how modes of thinking and practice that are characteristic of design-based disciplines—‘designerly ways’—might contribute to the migration and integration of legal concepts, by prompting and facilitating conceptual experimentation in pedagogical contexts. It uses the example of a project which invited those working against targeted violence in India to experiment with the concept of ‘hate crime’—that is, of crimes motivated by hostility or prejudice towards the victim’s identity. It concludes that conceptual experimentation is especially useful and urgent when debating the risks and rewards around the migration of globally established legal concepts, such as hate crime, into specific local contexts, such as India; and especially where the sociolegal context renders such debate risky. And it concludes that designerly ways can help to ensure that any such migration is ‘provincialised’, and the concept itself is enriched in the process.

Keywords: Legal design, hate crime, conceptual experimentation, sociolegal design.