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Abstract

This thesis investigates the impact that culture plays on individual criminal responsibility in international criminal law. Culture is often thought of as irrelevant to criminal trials, and potentially even as a challenge to the universality of the international criminal justice project. However, this study will borrow from findings in the social sciences, in particular anthropology, to prove that culture is fundamental to the construction of the identity of the individual, and that it is a determinant factor in individual decision-making, including when it comes to criminal conduct. As a result, it will be proposed that such interplay ought to be accounted for in the law. In order to justify this position, culture will be conceptualized in its multiple dimensions. It will be understood in this study as enculturation, a process and construct through which cultural norms are internalized by the individual and, resultingly, determine the way in which the individual interprets the world, including legal obligations. It will follow that culture can be viewed as an analytical tool with which to analyze the individual, that is at once a signifier of diversity and universality. Given this productive interpretation of the notion of culture, the study will investigate doctrinally the regime of individual criminal responsibility in order to prove that it is malleable to an expansive reading to account for culture. The study concludes that accounting for culture is not only beneficial to an accurate understanding of individual culpability, but crucially also to an accurate understanding of the international criminal justice project more broadly.

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