Why do we need “legal anthropology” or “the anthropology of law”? How can anthropologists study “the social working of law”? And what are the insights we can gain from it? This course aims to answer these questions by familiarizing the students with the history, concepts, and a range of theories that have emerged in the field of legal anthropology. Moreover, this course combines the abstract social theory with concrete ethnographic examples from southern Africa.
In the first block we move ethnographically into the organization of criminal justice institutions in South Africa. How is the everyday working life of judges, police men, and prosecutors organized? How do these institutions function in the still young democracy after they were for a long period central for the maintenance of a repressive apartheid order, perceived as illegitimate and inaccessible by the majority of the population? We discuss questions of state legitimacy, state violence, accountability, trust, and the transnationalization of law. This gives students an introduction into newly emerging themes of legal anthropology in African contexts.
In the second ethnographic block of the seminar we focus on the social working of law in disputes and disputing processes. In this context, state legal institutions constitute only one, though important, component of the plural legal settings in southern Africa. Customary and religious legal systems might be equally important to examine questions of how people deal with social conflicts and how to explore these processes in the field. What kind of role do social relationships, the distribution of power, and the access to the various fora play in people’s management of disputes? We address questions of the emergence, transformation, and management of disputes in African settings of legal pluralism.
This course provides then students with an empirical and theoretical foundation in legal anthropology in order to think creatively and critically about legal norms, practices, and institutions.
