Anthropology of Law

Catalog description

Law is basic to social life but highly variable in different cultural and historical contexts. This course offers theoretical and methodological tools in legal anthropology for understanding the cultural dimensions of law and the multiple ways law acts and influences a diverse range of social and cultural relationships. With specific attention to law as a form of discipline, power and governmentality, we will also explore legal pluralism, the colonial lives of property law and the legal dimensions of settler colonialism, transnational law and its localization, and the implications of quantitative measurements and standards for global governance and international law. Drawing upon ethnographic studies of everyday legal phenomenon, we will discuss the relationship between theory and method and how an analysis of law can help make visible intricate relationships of power central to the operation of daily life. Permission of Instructor required.