Prof Mukulika Banerjee and Dr Harry Walker

This course is compulsory on the BA in Anthropology and Law, BA in Social Anthropology and BSc in Social Anthropology. This course is available on the Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Cape Town), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Fudan), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Melbourne), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Tokyo) and LLB in Laws. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

The anthropological analysis of political and legal institutions as revealed in relevant theoretical debates and with reference to selected ethnography. The development of political and legal anthropology and their key concepts including forms of authority; forms of knowledge and power; political competition and conflict; colonial transformation of indigenous norms; folk concepts of justice; the theory of legal pluralism; anthropological engagements with human rights.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the AT. 10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the WT.

The contact hours listed above are the minimum expected. This course has a reading week in Week 6 of AT and WT.

Students are expected to prepare discussion material for presentation in the classes, and to submit one essay in the AT and one mock exam question in the WT to their class teacher on which they will receive formative feedback.

Appadurai, A, 2006, Fear of small numbers: an essay on the geography of anger; Blok, A, 1988, The Mafia of a Sicilian Village 1860-1960: a study of violent peasant entrepreneurs; Bryant, R, & Reeves, M, 2021, The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty; Clastres, P, 1987, Society against the state: essays in political anthropology; Mbembe, A, 2001, On the Postcolony; Navaro, Y, 2021, The make-believe space: affective geography in a postwar polity; Englund, H, 2006, Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor; Moore, S F, 1978, Law as Process; Malinowski, B, 1916, Crime and Custom in Savage Society; Foblets, M. Goodale, M. Sapignoli, M. and Zenker, O. (eds.) 2020, The Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology. 

Detailed reading lists are provided at the beginning of the course.

Exam (100%, duration: 3 hours) in the spring exam period.