Graduate Seminar John Comaroff University of Chicago. Legal Anthropology: Advanced Seminar

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1 Graduate Seminar John Comaroff University of Chicago Legal Anthropology: Advanced Seminar The seminar will meet weekly. The early weeks will be devoted to (i) classical readings in the field and (ii) theoretical questions, old and new. The later weeks will address the topics of (iii) law and colonialism, (iv) liberalism, difference, and the law in the postcolonial world, and (v) the judicialization of politics across the globe. Throughout, attention will be given to comparative perspectives in both time and space and to the lessons to be learned from legal anthropology for interrogating the present moment in the USA and Europe. Participants in the course will divide the labor of introducing the readings each week, presenting a brief critical review of the works listed. I. CLASSICAL THEMES BACKGROUND READING: In order to derive the greatest possible benefit from the seminar, you would be well advised to read a few orienting texts in each section as soon as possible. Those for the first section of the course are: Moore, Sally F Law and Anthropology. In Biennial Review of Anthropology, 1969, ed. B. Siegel. Reprinted in *Law as Process, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,1978. Collier, Jane Legal Processes. In Annual Review of Anthropology, 4: Roberts, Simon A Order and Dispute. Harmondsworth: Penguin Chanock, Martin Signposts or Tombstones? Reflections on Recent Works on the Anthropology of Law. Law in Context, 1: *Comaroff, John and Simon Roberts Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 1. Just, Peter Dou Donggo Justice: Conflict and Morality in an Indonesian Society. Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield. pp /28 Legal Anthropology: An Overview [Lecture]

2 10/5 Rules and Processes (i) form, content, and the determination of dispute a. Colson, Elizabeth Social Control and Vengeance in Plateau Tonga Society. Africa, 23: bi. Gluckman, Max The Judicial Process among the Barotse. [An excerpt from The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia.] In Law and Warfare: Studies in the Anthropology of Conflict, ed. Paul Bohannan. Garden City, NY: The Natural History Press. ii Gluckman, Max The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia, 2 nd edition. Read ONLY the additional chapter in this edition c. Comaroff, John and Simon Roberts Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 7. 10/12 Rules and Processes (ii): toward a practical hermeneutics of the law a. Geertz, Clifford Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in Comparative Perspective. In Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, C. Geertz. New York: Basic Books, pp b. Bentley, G. Carter Hermeneutics and World Construction in Maranao Disputing. American Ethnologist, 11: c. Just, Peter Let the Evidence Fit the Crime: Evidence, Law, and Sociological Truth among the Dou Dongo. American Ethnologist, 13(1): II. THEORETICAL QUESTIONS, OLD AND NEW Background reading: Jacques Derrida, 2002 [1989]. The Force of Law: The Mystical Foundations of Authority. In Acts of Religion, pp /19 On Law and... (a) violence and sovereignty, (b) hegemony and resistance ai. Benjamin, Walter Critique of Violence. In Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Translated by Edmund Jephcott and edited by Peter Demetz. New York: Schocken Books, pp

3 ii. *Agamben, Giorgio Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press. pp.1-29, bi. Hirsch Susan F. and M. Lazarus-Black Performance and Paradox: Exploring Role in Hegemony and Resistance. In Contested States: Law, Hegemony and Resistance, eds. M. Lazarus-Black and S. F. Hirsch. New York: Routledge, pp ii. Hirsch, Susan F Pronouncing and Persevering: Gender and the Discourses of Disputing in an African Islamic Court. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 4. iii. Vincent, Joan On Law and Hegemonic Moments: Looking Behind the Law in Early Modern Uganda. In Contested States: Law, Hegemony and Resistance, eds. M. Lazarus-Black and S. F. Hirsch. New York: Routledge. III. THE LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF COLONIALISM Background Reading: Merry, Sally Law and Colonialism. Law and Society Review, 25(4): Chanock, Martin Law, Custom, and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *Moore, Sally Falk Social Facts and Fabrications: Customary Law on Kilimanjaro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp Comaroff, John Law, Culture, and Colonialism: a foreword. Law and Social Inquiry, 26(2): /26 On the Creation of Customary Law a. Snyder, Francis G Colonialism and Legal Form: The Creation of `Customary Law' in Senegal. In Crime, Justice and Underdevelopment, ed. C. Sumner. London: Heinemann. b. *Moore, Sally Falk Social Facts and Fabrications: Customary Law on Kilimanjaro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 6 (especially pp ). c. Chanock, Martin Neither Customary nor Legal: African Customary Law in an Era of Family Law Reform. International Journal of Law and Family, 3:72-

4 88. Reprinted in African Law and Legal Theory, eds. Gordon R. Woodman and A.O. Obilade. New York: New York University Press, d. *Mamdani, Mahmood Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Chapter 4. 11/2 Law and the Colonial State a. Cohn, Bernard Law and the Colonial State in India. In Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, B. Cohn. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Chapter 3. bi. Stoler, Ann Perceptions of Protest: Defining the Dangerous in Colonial Sumatra. American Ethnologist, 12: ii. Sweet, C. L Inventing Crime: British Colonial Land Policy in Tanganyika. In Crime, Justice and Underdevelopment, ed. C. Sumner. London Heinemann. c. Comaroff, John Reflections on the Colonial State, in South Africa and Elsewhere: fragments, factions, facts and fictions. Social Identities, 4(3): /9 On Colonial Citizens and Subjects a. *Mamdani, Mahmood Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Chapter 1 (especially pp.16-32). b. Benton, Lauren Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 5. c. Comaroff, John and Jean Comaroff Of Revelation and Revolution, Vol. II, The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 8. IV. POSTCOLONIALITY, LIBERALISM, AND THE PRAGMATICS OF DIFFERENCE Background Reading: *Hansen, Thomas Blom and Finn Stepputat Introduction. In States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State, eds. T. Blom Hansen and F. Stepputat. Durham: Duke University Press.

5 11/16 Law, Disorder, and the Postcolonial State ai. Bayart, Jean-François, Stephen Ellis, and Béatrice Hibou The Criminalization of the State in Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Chapter 1. ii. Chabal, Patrick and Jean-Pascal Daloz Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Chapter 6. b. *Mbembe, Achille On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chapters 1,2. c. Comaroff, John and Jean Comaroff Law and Disorder in the Postcolony: An Introduction. In Law and Disorder in the Postcolony. Chicago: University of Chicago Press [In press.] 11/23 On Liberalism, Law, and the Problem of Culture : analytic themes ai. Geschiere, Peter Witchcraft and the Limits of the Law: Cameroon and South Africa. In Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, eds. J. Comaroff and J.L Comaroff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ii. Minnaar, Anthony Legislative and Legal Challenges to Combating Witch Purging and Muti Murder in South Africa. In Witchcraft Violence and the Law in South Africa, ed. John Hund. Pretoria: Protea. b. Sieder, Rachel Rethinking Citizenship: Reforming the Law in Postwar Guatemala. In States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State, eds. T. Blom Hansen and F. Stepputat. Durham: Duke University Press. ci. Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff Reflections on Liberalism, Policulturalism, and ID-ology: Citizenship and Difference in South Africa. Social Identities 9(4): ii. Comaroff, John and Jean Comaroff Criminal Justice, Cultural Justice: The Limits of Liberalism and the Pragmatics of Difference in the New South Africa. American Ethnologist, 31(2): /30 On Liberalism, Law, and the Problem of Culture: (ii) constitutional court moot a. Comaroff, John and Simon Roberts Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 6.

6 b. Constitutional Court of South Africa: Bhe vs the Mayor of Khayelitsha. See [Read both the full judgment at and the judgement in the Cape of Good Hope Provincial Division at V. TOWARD THE FUTURE 12/07 On the Judicialization of Politics, north and south: an exercise Re-read the section on The Judicialization of Politics in Comaroff, John and Jean Comaroff Law and Disorder in the Postcolony: An Introduction. In Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (pp.46-55). The class will be divided into groups, and each will be assigned to research and analyze an example of its own choosing on one of the following topics: (i) labor relations and conditions; (ii) access to health care and or pharmaceuticals; (iii) the environment; (iv) cultural or land rights; (vi) matters of religious faith. The questions to be addressed are: By what means did a political issue come to be displaced into the legal domain? Why? With what effects on the parties involved? What were the equations of power made manifest in, and affected by, the process? Does judicialization favor or disfavor lilliputian strategies that contest globalization from below, as is sometimes claimed? What are its implications for mass politics and/or democratization? And finally, what analytic/theoretical conclusions are to be drawn from the example?