Law and Anthropology

Parallel to the progressing globalization and concomitant deregulation of national marketsthere has been agrowing judicialization or juridification of different social spheres almost everywhere around the globe. These processes have changed the concept, functionand status of law in contemporary societies. This change has in turn given boost to the joint enterprise of the sociology and the anthropology of lawand their objectives to gauge the transformation of societies through the lens of lawand, conversely, the transformation of law through the lens of certain socio-political and socio-economic dynamics.In this course, we will take disputes as diagnostic events for, or entry points into, salient socio-legal developments and debates,such as what is lost and what is gained in the translation or transplantation of legal norms, concepts, institutions and procedures into different socio-legal spaces, andthe socio-political significance of increased legal pluralism caused by growing normative and institutional recognition of religion, ethnicity and indigenous custom. We will discuss cases of project law, cultural defense, and changing property regimes as well as instances of multiple citizenship and the prioritization of individual over collective human rights, and vice versa.

Sessions

• Introduction and Overview • Processes of Juridification in the Globalizing World

• Juridification as Re-embedding: Cases from Different Non-Western Societies

• Common Historical and Conceptual Foundations of the Sociology and Anthropology of Law

• Ethnographies of Legal Institutions and Procedures

• Transplantation of Legal Norms, Concepts, Institutions and Procedures into Different Socio-legal Spaces: Project Law and Changing Development Agendas

• Transnationalization of Human Rights and Islamic Fatwas: Chances and Challenges

 • Legal Pluralism and StateRecognition of Religion, Ethnicity and Indigenous Custom

• Cases of Cultural Defense in Western Societies.