Anthropology and Law: A Critical Introduction

Description

An introduction to the anthropology of law that explores the connections between law, politics, and technology. From legal responsibility for genocide to rectifying past injuries to indigenous people, the anthropology of law addresses some of the crucial ethical issues of our day. Over the past twenty-five years, anthropologists have studied how new forms of law have reshaped important questions of citizenship, biotechnology, and rights movements, among many others. Meanwhile, the rise of international law and transitional justice has posed new ethical and intellectual challenges to anthropologists. Anthropology and Law provides a comprehensive overview of the anthropology of law in the post-Cold War era. Mark Goodale introduces the central problems of the field and builds on the legacy of its intellectual history, while a foreword by Sally Engle Merry highlights the challenges of using the law to seek justice on an international scale. The book’s chapters cover a range of intersecting areas including language and law, history, regulation, indigenous rights, and gender. For a complete understanding of the consequential ways in which anthropologists have studied, interacted with, and critiqued, the ways and means of law, Anthropology and Law is required reading. Foreword; Preface; Introduction: From Status to Contract to Cosmopolitanism; Part I. Law and the Production of Meaning; 1. Speaking the Law; 2. History, Heritage, and Legal Mythoi; Part II. Law and Agency, Law as Regulation; 3. Justice between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea; 4. Human Rights and the Politics of Aspiration; 5. Shaping Inclusion and Exclusion through Law; Part III. Law and Identity; 6. Law and the Fourth World; 7. Law and the Moral Economy of Gender; 8. Ethnonationalism and Conflict Transformation Conclusion: Law in a Post-Utopian World Notes; References; Index; About the Author