Dr Harry Walker

This course is available on the MRes/PhD in Anthropology, MSc in Anthropology and Development, MSc in China in Comparative Perspective, MSc in Social Anthropology and MSc in Social Anthropology (Religion in the Contemporary World). This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course will be particularly useful for anthropology students who are interested in political/legal issues and political economy perspectives in anthropology. It will also be interesting to law students with an interest in socio-legal, critical, criminological and anthropological approaches to the study of law, and to students from other departments who wish to learn about these topics. The course is an independent half unit which complements the Anthropology of Politics half unit.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to major developments and debates in legal anthropology across time and space. The first part of the course reflects on the origins and early developments of the discipline, including the legacies of colonialism and its impact on the development of customary law; the concept of legal pluralism; and the relationship between law, violence, and the state. The second part of the course explores selected themes and debates in contemporary legal anthropology, including anthropological engagements with human rights; the concept of property; legal documents; and cultures of complaint. The final part of the course surveys emerging debates around indigenous sovereignties, environmental and interspecies justice, and the rights of nature.

10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the WT. 1 hour of lectures in the ST.

The course will be taught through a combination of weekly lectures and seminars. 

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the WT.

Malinowski, B. 1924. Crime and Custom in Savage Society. New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld.

Roberts, S. and Comaroff, J. 1981. Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foblets, M. Goodale, M. Sapignoli, M. and Zenker, O. (eds.) 2020. The Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. 2007. Law and Disorder in the Postcolony. Social Anthropology 15(2): 133-152.

Englund, Harry. 2006. Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Strathern, M. 2006. Losing (Out On) Intellectual Resources. In Pottage, A. and Mundy, M. Law, Anthropology, and the Constitution of the Social: Making Persons and Things, pp. 201-233. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Riles, A. 1998. Infinity within the brackets. American Ethnologist 25(3): 378-398.

Kirsch, S.  2012. Juridification of Indigenous Politics. In J. Eckert, B. Donahoe, C. Strümpell, and Z. Ö. Biner, eds. Law against the State: Ethnographic Forays into Law’s Transformations, pp. 23–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours) in the spring exam period.