Power of Law in a Transnational World - Anthropological Enquiries

How is law mobilized and who has the power and authority to construct its meaning? This important volume examines this question as well as how law is constituted and reconfigured through social processes that frame both its continuity and transformation over time. The volume highlights how power is deployed under conditions of legal pluralism, exploring its effects on livelihoods and on social institutions, including the state. Such an approach not only demonstrates how the state, through its various development programs and organizational structures, attempts to control territory and people, but also relates the mechanisms of state control to other legal modes of control and regulation at both local and supranational levels.

List of contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Power of Law

Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Anne Griffiths

POWER OF LAW AS DISCOURSE: CLAIMS TO LEGITIMACY AND HIGHER MORALITY

Chapter 1. The Military Order of 13 November 2001: An Ethnographic Reading

Carol J. Greenhouse

Chapter 2. Law and the Frontiers of Illegalities

Laura Nader

Chapter 3. Selective Scrutiny: Supranational Engagement with Minority Protection and Rights in Europe

Jane K. Cowan

Chapter 4. The Globalization of Fatwas amidst the Terror Wars against Pluralism

Upendra Baxi

Chapter 5. Human Rights, Cultural Relativism and Legal Pluralism: Towards a Two-dimensional Debate

Franz von Benda-Beckmann

AT THE INTERSECTION OF LEGALITIES

Chapter 6. Learning Communities and Legal Spaces: Community based Fisheries Management in a Globalizing World

Melanie G. Wiber and John F. Kearney

Chapter 7. Project Law – a Power Instrument of Development Agencies: A Case Study from Burundi

Markus Weilenmann

Chapter 8. Half-Told Truths and Partial Silence: Managing Communication in Scottish Children’s Hearings

Anne Griffiths and Randy F. Kandel

RELIGION AS A RESOURCE IN LEGAL PLURALISM

Chapter 9. Keeping the Stream of Justice Clear and Pure: The Buddhicization of Bhutanese Law

Richard W. Whitecross

Chapter 10. Balancing Islam, Adat and the State: Comparing Islamic and Civil Courts in Indonesia

Keebet von Benda-Beckmann

Chapter 11. Kings, Monks, Bureaucrats and the Police: Tibetan Responses to Law and Authority

Fernanda Pirie

Notes on Contributors

Index

About the author

Keebet von Benda-Beckmann is head of the Project Group Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. She also is an honorary professor in Leipzig and Halle. Her research in Indonesia and the Netherlands focuses on legal pluralism, social security, governance and on the role of religion in disputing processes.

Franz von Benda-Beckmann is head of the Project Group Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He also is an honorary professor in Leipzig and Halle. His research in Malawi and Indonesia focuses on property and inheritance, social security, governance and legal anthropological theory.

Anne Griffiths has a personal chair in Anthropology of Law at the University of Edinburgh in the School of Law. Her major research interests include anthropology of law, comparative and family law, African law, gender, culture and rights. She has been awarded research grants from the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (USA), the Annenberg Foundation (USA), the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Commonwealth Foundation, the Carnegie Trust and the American Bar Foundation.

Summary

How is law mobilized and who has the power and authority to construct its meaning? This important volume examines this question as well as how law is constituted and reconfigured through social processes that frame both its continuity and transformation over time. The volume highlights how power is deployed under conditions of legal pluralism, exploring its effects on livelihoods and on social institutions, including the state. Such an approach not only demonstrates how the state, through its various development programs and organizational structures, attempts to control territory and people, but also relates the mechanisms of state control to other legal modes of control and regulation at both local and supranational levels.

Additional text

"...essential reading for scholars interested in understanding sociopolitical change under globalization in the early 21st century...I recommend [this volume] for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in legal anthropology, political anthropology, the anthropology of the state, and globalization. Several chapters could also be creatively woven into courses on the anthropology of religion."� �� PoLAR

"...there is much common ground between the contributors, and the variety of contexts and situations are valuable for showing how the unifying themes... work out on different grounds."�����Journal of Legal Pluralism

"This fascinating collection of articles sheds new light on the way law exercises power in a transnational world, from the crises of terrorism to the subtle introduction of new law within development projects. This set of articles provides new evidence of the important insights offered by legal pluralism and anthropological methodologies for understanding the nature of transnational, national, and local systems of law."�����Sally Engle Merry, New York University

Product details

• Authors: Franz Von Benda-Beckmann Benda-Beckmann, Keebet Von Benda-Beckmann Benda-Beckmann
• Assisted by: Franz Von Benda-Beckmann (Editor), Keebet Von Benda-Beckmann (Editor), Anne Griffiths (Editor), Franz von Benda-Beckmann (Editor), Keebet von Benda-Beckmann (Editor)
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.04.2012
• EAN: 9780857456151
• ISBN: 978-0-85745-615-1
• No. of pages: 280
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); Development Studies, Anthropology (General)