Abstract

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.

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.

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.

“…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

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.