Legal Anthropology

I. Introduction

Cultural Anthropology continues to engage scholarly discourse in legal anthropology from multiple theoretical and paradigmatic angles. Articles address ongoing contemporary debates about theorizing law in society. The following essays deal with such issues as religion, identity, political economy, politics, race and desire in relation to the law. Each has also grappled with the ways that law defines the social environment through legal categories. I have provided a list of some of the legalizing categories of each article as a way of demonstrating how Cultural Anthropology contributes to our understanding of legal knowledge regimes.

To benefit the going project of legal anthropology, this page provides links, interviews, and resources to better understand the theoretical genealogy of the field and the new and exciting directions that it is going in. Like other areas of the discipline, legal anthropology is now turning a critical eye towards Western practices and institutions. Understanding the history of legal anthropology allows us to situate its future as both a continuation of and divergence from the past.

II. Bibliography

Just Writing: Paradox and Political Economy in Yemeni Legal Documents
Brinkley Messick
Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Feb., 1989), pp. 26-50

Methodology and Approach: Uses text analysis of Yemeni legal documents as an entry point into understanding political economy in Yemen, including pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial developments. Pays special attention to sale and lease/hire contracts.
Paradigmatic Influences: Postmodernism, some materialism with regard to political economic analysis
Legal Categorizing: subjectivity, property, the witness, testimony (oral v. written)
Intersections: Situates the Yemeni legal document at the nexus of Islamic theology, law, and political economy. Law & religion, law & political economy
Author Bio: link

Difficult Distinctions: Refugee Law, Humanitarian Practice, and Political Identification in Gaza
Ilana Feldman
Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Feb., 2007), pp. 129-169

Methodology and Approach: Ethnographic look at the historic development of the idea of “refugee” in Gaza after WWII, paying special attention to the period after the 1948 war.
Paradigmatic Influences: somewhat processualist (follows attempts to legally resolve a dispute)
Legal Categorizing: political subjectivity, refugee, internally displaced, resident, citizenship
Intersections: Feldman describes how emerging ideas of refugeedom influenced Palestinian political consciousness, economic organization, international definitions of refugees and the administration of humanitarian aid. Law & identity, law & economics, law & politics, international law.
Author Bio: link

We Were Dancing in the Club, Not on the Berlin Wall: Black Bodies, Street Bureaucrats, and Exclusionary Incorporation into the New Europe
Damani James Partridge
Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Nov., 2008), pp. 660-687

Methodology and Approach: Draws from fieldwork in Germany to understand how German reunification instigated changes in immigration policy and racial structures.
Legal Categorizing: political subjectivity, citizenship, immigrant, guestworker,
Intersections: Looks at how historic practices of race in Germany evolved in the context of political changes, law, and eroticizing the “other”. Law & desire, law & identity, law & race.
Author Bio: link

Mediating Infanticide: Theorizing Relations between Narrative and Violence
Charles L. Briggs
Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 22 (Aug., 2007), No. 3, pp. 315-356

Methodology and Approach: Investigates the relationship between narrative and violence by comparing alternatives constructed by “perpetrators” of infanticide to hegemonic stories.
Paradigmatic Influences: processualism (criminal case), narrative analysis.
Legal Categorizing: political subjectivity, behavior in court,
Intersections: Looks at how the media, judges, and detectives (re)produce stories of infanticide monstrosity, and how this serves as a forum for political discourse. Law & politics, law & media, law & narrative.
Author Bio: link

“Dangerous Instrumentality”: The Bystander as Subject in Automobility
Sarah S. Lochlann Jain
Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 19 (Feb., 2004), No. 1, pp. 61-94

Methodology and Approach: Looks at the rights of pedestrians under historically changing legal categories in US product liability law.
Paradigmatic Influences: Case study method (automobile cases)
Legal Categorizing: Bystander, space (roads), liability, nature of object (normal v. dangerous instrumentality)
Intersections: Shows how law copes with technological and economic change. Law & technology, law & economic.
Author Bio: link

Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics
Christopher Kelty
Cultural Anthropology May 2005, Vol. 20, No. 2: 185-214.
Supplemental Material

Methodology and Approach: Drawing from fieldwork, Kelty investigates how discourse about the Internet among “geeks” sheds light on theorizing publics.
Paradigmatic Influences: Analytic philosophy, processualism (Napster conflict).
Legal Categorizing: technicals (core protocols), copyrights.
Intersections: Discusses how law fits into the discourse of geeks regarding the nature of internet, its protocols, and a rhetoric of accessibility and openness. Law & technology.
Author Bio: link

III. Genealogy and History of Legal Anthropology

Overview and history by William Nixon: http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/theory_pages/LEGAL.htm

Alan Macfarlane’s lectures on the foundations of legal anthropology:

IV. New Directions in Legal Anthropology

Donovan, James. 2008. Legal Anthropology: An Introduction. AltaMira Press.
Description: Both a genealogy and a new paradigmatic proposal, James Donovan recounts the major theories, theorists, and issues preoccupying legal anthropological scholarship. Donovan ends the book by presenting a new approach to anthropology that at once integrates a critical scholarly activist slant (via the fairness approach to law) and a normative clarification of law. Donovan’s model aspires to solve many of the problems past scholars have dealt with, including an explanation for law, the problematics of cross-cultural comparison, and coping with non-state legal orders.

Clarke, Kamari. 2009. Fictions of Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Challenge of Legal Pluralism in Sub-Saharan Africa. Cambridge University Press.
Description: Breaking new ground on several fronts, including an anthropology of int

ernational law, ethnography of powerful supranational institutions, theorizing globalization and law, and the anthropological study of the West, Clarke shows how notions of transnational justice and rule of law are formed in the everyday practices of the International Criminal Court.

An interview with Clarke on her new book:

V. Important Resources

Association for Political and Legal Anthropology: http://www.aaanet.org/sections/apla/index.htm

Political and Legal Anthropology Review: http://www.aaanet.org/sections/apla/polar.html

Legal Anthropology Association (France): http://www.acaj.org/home.htm

Interview with Sally Falk Moore: