Dr. Sanjay Ruparelia awarded fellowship by Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study
Dr. Sanjay Ruparelia, associate professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration, will travel to South Africa to begin his Fellowship in March, 2024. “It is a great privilege to be able to spend time at the Institute for Advanced Study at Stellenbosch,” he shared. “It brings together a wide range of scholars from Africa, across disciplines, as well as researchers whose projects focus on countries and regions within the continent.”
Dr. Sanjay Ruparelia
Provisionally titled, A New Path to Welfare: Rights and Constitutionalism in the Global South, Dr. Ruparelia’s project examines how rights are conceptualized, justified and pursued in moral imaginaries, legal arguments and political strategies. His research asks: what reforms have various rights campaigns won, and where have such efforts been ineffective, and why? His analysis will specifically cover historical developments in India in comparison to those in China, South Africa, and Brazil.
Dr. Ruparelia’s project will contribute to the scope of research in this field as it examines why rights activists in major countries in the Global South, starting in the 1980s, used the courts and the repertoire of law and constitutionalism to expand social welfare entitlements to previously excluded workers.
“This was unusual in two ways,” Dr. Ruparelia explains.” First, it occurred during the neoliberal era, when social welfare retrenched in the advanced industrial democracies of the West. Second, advocates of social welfare protections in the North historically avoided the courts since they protected private property. Understanding this alternative path to social welfare, its advantages and limitations, is important for its own sake. But it can also expand our sense of what is possible elsewhere.”
About the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study
Stellenbosch Institute For Advanced Study (external link) (STIAS) provides and maintains an independent ‘creative space for the mind’ to advance the cause of science and scholarship across all disciplines. It is global in its reach and local in its African roots, and values original thinking and innovation in this context. It encourages the cross-pollination of ideas, giving preference to projects that will tap into, and benefit from, a multi-disciplinary discourse while also contributing unique perspectives to such a discourse.