Presuming scale, making diversity - On the mischiefs of measurement and the global: Local metonym in theories of law and culture

The 'new essentialism' in both cultural and legal theory is the tendency to treat 'diversity' as a monolithic concept which exists logically prior to law or culture's efforts to engage or reconcile it. By using analogies of s cale and measurement, and borrowing from Luhmann's theory of self-referenti al social systems, the article argues that there is no such thing as a dive rsity which does not emanate from an 'impulse to measure'. Thus, 'global:lo cal' is a presupposition which underpins certain systems' way of imagining the world and not an observation available from an inaccessible God's-eye v iew. Contrary to popular mythology, the article seeks to understand the law as yet another conjurer of difference rather than its great leveller, and to understand the way different legal paradigms might conceptualize diversi ty in very distinct ways.