Legal Anthropology

This article considers local-level disputing in Papua New Guinea by bringing two theories into play: spatial justice, borrowed from the ‘geographical’ turn in legal theory, and relational justice, from the anthropology of law. Disputes negotiated by means of the country’s village courts system are sometimes characterised by metropolitans as institutions that dispense peace instead of justice. I argue, through a comparison of contemporary and historical examples from local disputing processes, that village courts do exercise a form of justice, but it is not a justice of closure or peace. Rather, it is the justice of opening the space of relations between disputing parties, as a technique of recognising the ongoing potential of such relations.

The essay deals with the judicial activity of a criminal court of the Regno Lombardo-Veneto in the firs half of nineteenth century. It is particularly analysed the legal reasoning of the judges in front of crimes which were submitted to their jurisdiction. Their discussions were about the codex foresight, but also of clues and evidences.

Unlike the bulk of penological scholarship dealing with managerialist reforms, this article calls for greater theoretical and research attention to the often pernicious impact of managerialism on criminal justice professionals. Much in an ideal-typical fashion, light is shed on: the reasons why contemporary penal bureaucracies endeavor systematically to strip criminal justice work of its inherently affective nature; the structural forces that ensure control over officials; the processes by which those forces come into effect; and the human consequences of submission to totalitarian bureaucratic milieus. It is suggested that the heavy preoccupation of present-day penality with the predictability and calculability of outcomes entails the atomization of professionals and the dehumanization of their work. This is achieved through a kaleidoscope of direct and indirect mechanisms that naturalize and/or legitimate acquiescence.

This article argues that the definition of peace from the international agendas on
transitional justice and peacebuilding falls short because it ignores non-humans. Consequently, in the discussions on the environment for peace, non-humans
are simply called “environment”, regardless of non-humans’ relationships that also make peace. Based on an ethnographic case, I explore the relationship between the military from the High Mountain Battalion N.° 1 and the frailejones (espeletia) in the Sumapaz páramo in Colombia to demonstrate how their practices of mutual care become other ways of making and understanding peace.

The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the
“rural-urban gap” in the union budget is limited to high talk and
minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and
peoples’ participation-oriented rural action plan should have
been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is
not to be in this mid-year budget.

The paper deals with the conflicts between groups of young unmarried peasants  of some villages of Veneto in the first half of nineteenth century. Several criminal trials instructed from the local courts concerned homicides or wounds which originated from the amorous rivalries between young unmarried men of bordering villages or hamlets.

Non-discrimination and affirmative action are complex and controversial issues.They aim to speed up the establishment of a representative and unprejudiced workforce and citizenry and assist those deprived by unfair discrimination.Any social or group identity can become a basis of discrimination.This article focuses on an aspect of discrimination peculiar to India,caste-based discrimination,using the debate on caste-based census to illustrate the relationship between affirmative action policy and statistics.We begin by describing how discriminatory practices are set within the history of power relations between caste-groups;and the development of India's anti-discrimination policy through caste-based reservation and the quota system.The interface of statistics and anti-discrimination policy is analysed against this background using caste-based census as illustrative.While Indian census has a long history,comprehensive caste-census was undertaken first in 2011.Being relatively new,this allows us to study the political,socio-economic and practical issues such a statistical exercise throws up in social policy.The objective is to identify ways in which caste-census,and by extension statistical data,support implementation of affirmative action.

In this article, I attend to two forms of hearings (or nonhearings) in two distinctive courtsof law, both involving the persecution of Iranian dissidents in the 1980s. Drawing on myethnographic and archival research, inside and outside of Iran, I ponder the conditionsof possibility of confessions/testimonies and their affects and after-lives. The first caseinvolves the Islamic Republic’s televised trials of a group of leftist prisoners. The secondone is a symbolic court in The Hague, known as the Iran Tribunal, organized by somedissidents in diaspora, where witnesses testified against the Iranian regime. I meditate onthe relationship between these two different spaces of the “law” in their differing milieus,and the divergent modes of speaking and hearing they render possible or impossible. Icontemplate the kinds of ethical subjectivities they produce or shatter and reflect on theconditions and modes of speaking and hearing in relation to these topographies of coerciveand sympathetic courts.[Iran, revolution, people’s tribunals, witnessing, testimony]

Cet article analyse la façon dont les promoteurs de la discipline "anthropologie juridique", ont, dans la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, fait du rejet de l'ethnocentrisme juridique la pierre angulaire de leur fondation disciplinaire. En substituant une nouvelle discipline ("l'anthropologie juridique") à l'ancienne "ethnologie juridique", ils ont déployé des efforts considérables afin d'analyser les droits extra-occidentaux sans recourir aux catégories occidentales (et en particulier romaines) du droit.

"This article aims to highlight the rebellion of citizens to the institutions that are performed in contemporary narratives told in the film medium. In particular it addressed through the case of the production of a filmmaker, Steven Spielberg. This dissertation addresses the position of lack of acceptance of laws by the hero by analyzing some of the popular feature film director.""

El artículo está compilado en la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Berkeley.

This piece had a long gestation. The earliest version of this article was written in 2002, while I was a graduate student at UC Berkeley, as a field statement in preparation for my qualifying examinations. I was planning my dissertation research on policing in France, a topic to which I had come to only lately and indirectly as part of a larger interests in both studying unmarked forms of power (such as whiteness and masculinity) as well as developing anthropological inquiries that, if not quite studying "home," did not rely on an exotic or cultural Other as their core.

Le terme de solidarité, tel que l'entend le droit positif contemporain 1 , est d'apparition relativement récente : peu présent dans l'ancien droit, qui préfère parler de « solidité » 2 , et à l'exception de quelques occurrences * Publié dans Burt KASPARIAN (dir.), Les espaces de solidarité. La famille, l'État et le monde, Rennes (PUR), 2015, p. 53-65.

This article addresses crime and punishment in relation to community and human rights in southeastern Nigeria based on thirty years of observations complemented by additional research. A 1987 crime and its punishment in a rural community are providing a contrast to four violent incidents, their punishment, the absence of a trial, and other human rights violations prevalent in the area. Igbo culture and its socioeconomic and political institutions as well as its religious beliefs and ethics once provided the basis for a person’s identity, economic security, and communal safety; the culture enabled prevention and punishment of crime within the community. This situation has changed drastically; the community has lost its clout; the people are disempowered by transnational corporations in collaboration with the nation-state and within the political economy of oil; the indigenous culture is dismantled, indigenous beliefs and ethics are depreciated, and violent crime is now prevalent and committed without impunity and on all levels of society. Human Rights Watch and other international organizations are pointing to potential solutions on the governmental and administrative levels. However, the socioeconomic situation, political economy, cultural-spiritual and individual issues must also be taken into account and addressed, calling for further research towards finding a way out of the current dilemma.résumé:Cet article aborde la question du crime et de son châtiment en relation avec les droits communautaires et humains dans le sud-est du Nigeria, en se fondant sur trente ans d’observation complétée par des recherches. Le point de départ est l’observation d’un contraste entre le châtiment encouru pour un crime commis en 1987 dans une communauté rurale et les peines infligées ailleurs pour quatre incidents violents, en l’absence de procès et en violation des droits humains prévalant dans la région. Les institutions socio-économiques et politiques de la culture Igbo ainsi que ses croyances et son éthique religieuses ont longtemps constitué pour l’individu le socle de son identité et de sa sécurité économique et communautaire; cette culture permettait la prévention et la punition du crime au sein de la communauté. La situation a radicalement changé. La communauté a perdu de son influence, les populations sont affaiblies par le pouvoir des multinationales soutenues par l’État et par la politique économique pétrolière. Démantelée, la culture indigène voit ses croyances et son éthique dépréciées. À tous les niveaux de la société, la criminalité violente se généralise et demeure impunie. Human Rights Watch et d’autres organisations internationales suggèrent diverses solutions applicables au niveau gouvernemental et administratif. Cependant, il faut aussi prendre en considération la situation socio-économique et l’économie politique, ainsi qu’une série de problèmes culturels, spirituels et individuels qui doivent être résolus. Il en ressort que d’autres recherches sont nécessaires afin de sortir de l’impasse actuelle.

Este artículo reconstruye los elementos simbólicos y prácticos que subyacen bajo la disputa reciente por la tipificación del delito de “desaparición forzada” en México. El análisis parte de la comprensión de un contexto en el que violencia política y violencia criminal se traslapan y confunden, generando nuevos retos
para atender la demanda de las víctimas de este crimen. Los hallazgos derivan en un cuestionamiento sobre los límites y alcances del discurso de los derechos humanos y la necesidad de “vernaculizar” la categoría de desaparición forzada para enmendar las formas de exclusión que plantean los criterios preestablecidos.

Fernanda Pirie's Peace and conflict in Ladakh is an anthropological monograph about rural life in northernmost India. Her book is based on extensive periods of fieldwork in this part of the Himalayan mountain range, supplemented by historical and comparative research on Tibet where she worked previously. The book is well-written and enjoyable to read. It includes two maps and several colored photographs, as well as a glossary and an index. The main questions Pirie tries to answer in her book are laid out clearly in the introduction: First, what are the Ladakhis' constructed ideas of community and social order? Second, how do the Ladakhis maintain their social order? Third, why do the Ladakhis place interests of their community above their own rights? And fourth, what role does Buddhism play in the maintenance of social order? (1-9)

Affective witnessing in the courtroom does not denote a specific mode of giving testimony. I rather argue that courtroom witnessing is always affective. The use of emotional displays plays an important role in processes of witnessing, but their absence does not indicate the absence of affective dynamics. The performance of emotion is rather one mode among others to shape the affective arrangement of the courtroom. Witnesses, be they human or non-human bodies, have performative power not by the ‘credibility points’ they accumulate as individual entities, but with respect to the relational position they occupy inside an affective arrangement. Actors in the courtroom compete with each other by attempting to introduce bodies as witnesses and to relate and position them in specific ways. The degree to which they are able to manipulate the affective arrangement to their advantage determines their chances to successfully establish a version of the past they desire.

Markets is a fascinating book that deserves a wide readership in STS. As an anthropologist, Riles takes us close to the work of global finance, not, as is often the case, by focusing on the action of stock trading or high-level policy discussions but by concentrating on back-office efforts to keep financial transactions on track. From an ethnographic location within the offices of the Bank of Japan, she demonstrates the centrality of mundane backstage efforts to make the finance machine work. She also shows the mutual entanglements between such work and high-level legal, economic, and political theorizing.

The theme running through this analysis is the medium, rather than the content, is the most important aspect of communication and command.

The paper thinks of law through the lens of communication theory and cybernetics.

Law is perceived as a word describing different social instances with specific social rules, and organised into discrete production formats which shape the dynamics of argument and change in the field.

The paper is published as a book chapter in Backstage Practices of Transnational Law, edited by Lianne Boer and Sofia Stolk.

https://www.routledge.com/Backstage-Practices-of-Transnational-Law/Boer-Stolk/p/book/9780367086572

Attempting to contribute to a more critical understanding of the role of technology in humanitarian action, this article explores the topography of the ´humanitarian cyberspace` as it has emerged since the mid-1990s.  As an analytical term, this is a composite of ´cyberspace`, and ´humanitarian space`. The article reflects on the relationship between the persistent features of humanitarian action, and new developments brought on by ICT technology.  While much remains the same, the emergence of a humanitarian cyberspace also brings about a set of changed conditions. Technology – and the attendant idea that access to information constitutes relief – alters the modes of intervention, the relationship between actors, and the nature of relief.  In order to develop a deeper understanding of the humanitarian cyberspace as a concept in its own right, the article explores this field through the prism of the ´shrinking humanitarian space narrative` and reflects critically on the future of the shrinking space narrative.

I developed this bibliography over a number of years in teaching a 2 semester course. Any interested academic is free to download and use it, although perhaps s/he would be good enough to acknowledge it if used. It is not intended to be comprehensive, but to include what I found the most interesting and insightful books and articles and most suitable for teaching a course and engaging the interest of students.

This article deals with a neotraditional institution: the aksakal courts (courts of elders, or "whitebeards") in Central Asian Kyrgyzstan. Founded in 1993 by the first president of the country, and based on an elaborate law enacted in 2002, the newly appointed aksakal judges were supposed to judge according to what were considered to be the customs and traditions of the Kyrgyz. In this article I show in what ways the judges' way of "being aksakals" often accords neither with the letter nor intent of the law, but reflects a more fundamental way of ordering the world, here referred to as customization. I argue that the ways in which the court members in rural and urban Kyrgyzstan link themselves to traditionalist imagery and state trappings reveal a more general point about how people in contemporary Central Asia engage with their being-in-the-world. This is particularly relevant in times of social change such as those initiated after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Cultural, religious and social traditions (hereafter we will talk only about " culture ") greatly influence the behavior of everyone. In this article we analyze conflicts that evolved because of different cultural and religious background of Germans and Turkish immigrants coming to Germany. We try to explain some aspects of possible cultural influences concerning Turkish immigrants on the base of linguistic and ethnological research. Special attention in this sense is devoted to the question of honor killings and the applicable case law of the Federal Court of Justice, formed over the issue of cultural differences (and especially concerning honor killings).

Focusing on the history of US anthropology between World War II and the high point of the Vietnam War protests in the late 1960s, this paper aims to historicise the assumed epistemological divide between anthropological and legal thinking. It is shown how anthropology as a discipline in the US has restructured some of its basic assumptions and changed its institutional structure in the context of legal interventions in larger struggles, specifically the court-based battles against racial segregation and the legal proceedings related to indigenous land rights before the Indian Claims Commission. Special consideration is given to an analysis of how objectivity is conceptualised in the literature on anthropological expert witnessing: from mechanical objectivity before 1970 to critical objectivity after 1970. The paper concludes with a caveat against exaggerating existing epistemological differences between anthropology and law, and suggests a more pragmatic approach to interdisciplinary communication.

Table of contents special issue in Citizenship Studies 19(2), 2015 'Citizenship agendas in and beyond the nation-state' Guest-editors: Martijn Koster, Rivke Jaffe & Anouk de Koning Citizenship agendas in and beyond the nation-state: (en)countering framings of the good citizen Anouk de Koning, Rivke Jaffe & Martijn Koster pages 121-127 Between ballots and bullets: elections and citizenship in and beyond the nation-state Rivke Jaffe pages 128-140 Of ordinariness and citizenship processes Catherine Neveu pages 141-154 Citizenship agendas for the abject: the production of distrust in Amsterdam's youth and security domain Anouk de Koning pages 155-168 Muslim sound, public space, and citizenship agendas in an American City Alisa Perkins pages 169-183 Post-conflict reconstruction and citizenship agendas: lessons from Beirut Najib B. Hourani pages 184-199 Vigilantes, gangsters, and alcohol: clashing citizenship regimes in postwar Guatemala Ellen Sharp pages 200-213 Citizenship agendas, urban governance and social housing in the Netherlands: an assemblage approach Martijn Koster pages 214-228

In December 2015, Germany implemented its first official law regulating organized assistance to suicide. Prior to the imple- mentation of the §217 of the criminal code, assisted suicide was already regulated by 18 different sets of mutually contra- dictory medical norms, but despite their coexistence within the federal jurisdiction, these norms did not overlap at state level and were binding only to registered members of each medical association. After the implementation of the §217 StGB, however, the new legal pluralism on assisted suicide turned into one of overlaps, where medical norms and official law were oftentimes on opposing sides. This new plural legal landscape became a source of doubts and suspicions for those involved with assisted suicide on the ground level, shrouding assisted suicide with an affective perception of illegality and making the state be perceived through a general sense of mistrust and uncertainty. In this sense, this article first presents the production of a new legal pluralism on assisted suicide following the implementation of the §217 StGB to, subse- quently, discuss how this legal landscape obscured the ques- tion of legality by enhancing uncertainties on the ground level and constituting an affective mode of governance.

O estupro carcerário de estupradores é um problema real, noticiado e, ainda assim, muito pouco ou nada reconhecido pelas autoridades competentes. Os direitos e garantias individuais dos presos por estupro são marginalizados, enquanto os estupradores do cárcere permanecem impunes, em pleno Estado Democrático de Direito. Com base na situação existente, este estudo vem tentar compreender e denunciar a situação de forma crítica e racional, tentando apontar soluções realmente eficazes para o problema, fazendo uso do estudo da literatura do tema, assim como de associações e estudo de relatos e casos.

No ano de 2008 uma lei alterou diversos artigos do Código de Processo Penal de modo a inserir elementos considerados “acusatoriais” no procedimento criminal. A referida modificação, afetou as previsões legais sobre o funcionamento do rito do Tribunal do Júri. O presente artigo trata, então, de como tais mudanças foram incorporadas pelas práticas judiciais, a partir da observação da realização de audiências de instrução e julgamento e sessões plenárias em uma Vara do Júri da Comarca do Rio de Janeiro. Assim, descreve como as mudanças têm (ou não) sido implementadas na prática. Para tanto, trata da inquisitorialidade identificada no sistema de justiça criminal, descreve como as audiências e as sessões de julgamento têm sido conduzidas e analisa em que medida as práticas permanecem inquisitoriais.

Book Reviews / 253 Contributions to Indian Sociology 52, 2 (2018): 230-261 of unique historical circumstances and coupled with an emancipative theory of a future roadmap out of the present impasse. This book's case studies leave the reader without compelling theoretical insights that transcend the cases and apply to other Indian states. Ultimately, the book appears dated not merely because of its focus on violence in the 1990s leading up to 2002 but due to its inability to offer new insights to a rather time-worn question that does not speak to significant shifts in democratic politics in India today. With the unprecedented victory of the BJP in the 2014 parliamentary elections, it is perhaps time to adopt fresh analytical frames that locate the question of Hindu-Muslim violence within larger issues about the crisis of liberal democracy and capitalism in India and the world at large. REFERENCES Brass, Paul. 1997.