Law Against the State: Ethnographic Forays into Law's Transformations

A collection of rich, empirically grounded case studies which investigates the conditions and consequences of 'juridification' – the use of law by ordinary individuals as a form of protest against 'the state'. Starting from the actual practices of claimants, the case studies included address the translation and interpretation of legal norms into local concepts, actions and practices in a way that highlights the social and cultural dynamism and multivocality of communities in their interaction with the law and legal norms. In doing so, we challenge the image of homogeneous and primordially norm-bound cultures that has been (unintentionally) perpetuated by some of the more widely accepted treatments of law and culture. This volume highlights the heterogeneous geography of law and the ways boundaries between different legal bodies are transcended in the struggles for rights. Contributions include case studies from South Africa, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Turkey, India and Russia.

Julia Eckert is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern and head of the research group 'Law against the State' at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany. Her research interests are in legal anthropology, the anthropology of the modern state, social movements, the anthropology of crime and punishment and changing notions of responsibility and justice.

Brian Donahoe is an independent researcher, writer and editor. From 2004 to 2010 he was postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. His thematic interests include the dynamics of constructing, maintaining and asserting ethnic identity and indigeneity, and different approaches to guaranteeing indigenous rights to land.

Christian Strümpell is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. His research interests are in the anthropology of labour, economic anthropology and political anthropology, with a regional focus on South Asia in general and the Indian state of Orissa.

Zerrin Özlem Biner is a research associate in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Her research explores new ethnographic sites for the study of the state in documenting the experiences of minority citizens in post-conflict settings in contemporary Turkey.