Anthropology and Law: A Critical Introduction

307 Pages·2017·7.24 MB·English

by  Mark Goodale

Advance Praise for Anthropology and L aw
“An updated introduction and overview of the field of legal anthropol-
ogy is long overdue and Anthropology and Law will be welcome in many
quarters. Mark Goodale has done a service to the discipline, and his vol-
ume is likely to become a classic text, required reading in a variety of
courses, and a touchstone for years to come.”
— Rosemary Coombe, Tier One Canada Research Chair in Law,
Communication and Culture, York University, Toronto, Canada
“In Anthropology and Law, Mark Goodale elucidates how anthropology
detaches the concept of law from its western moorings and takes a global
perspective on the various ways that societies resolve disputes, enforce
social norms, regulate power and authority, and articulate ideas of the
person. Goodale’s sparkling prose and brilliant analysis of the history and
most recent developments in legal anthropology will appeal to experts
and students alike.
— Richard Ashby Wilson, Professor of Anthropology and Law,
University of Connecticut
“Anthropology and Law presents a much- needed recent history of the
field, focusing on its shifting contours and concerns in a post– Cold War
era. It shows how tensions and debates amongst scholars have fueled
theoretical innovation and moved research forward in productive ways.
Rich in illustrative case studies and encompassing in theoretical depth
and breadth, the book shows the importance of grounded real-w orld eth-
nographic scholarship to better understand the legal complexities of our
current age.”
— Eve Darian-S mith, author of Laws and Societies in Global Contexts:
Contemporary Approaches
“Mark Goodale uses a global palette to paint a vivid and accessible ac-
count of what contemporary anthropologists have to say about law as
meaning, regulation, and identity. If, as might be expected, his discussion
of human and cultural rights is particularly convincing, the overall thesis
of the path to legal cosmopolitanism and beyond is a stimulating contri-
bution in its own right.”
— David Nelken, Professor of Comparative and Transnational Law in
Context, Vice Dean and Head of Research, the Dickson Poon School
of Law, King’s College London

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“Mark Goodale’s Anthropology and Law is simultaneously an introduction
to the field and a sophisticated exploration of recent developments in le-
gal anthropology that is sure to spark interest among experts in the area.
It combines an erudite review of the history of the field with a creative
and thoughtful synthesis that inventively maps emerging scholarship.”
— Elizabeth Mertz, Senior Research Faculty, American Bar Foundation
“Mark Goodale’s Anthropology and Law is a bold, exhilarating excursion
into what he calls the ‘new legal anthropology,’ a largely post– Cold War
anthropology much broader in scope, much more historically situated
in contemporary world-m aking, much more theoretically agile than its
‘classical’ predecessors. While it is self- confessedly idiosyncratic in its
coverage and its readings of the capacious literatures that it addresses,
it provokes us to think of law anthropologically, from fresh and freshly
critical angles. This is a gem of a book to think and teach with — not sur-
prising, perhaps, since it had its inspirational fons et origo in a master’s
thesis on the history and theory of legal anthropology written by Mark
Goodale in the same (ghostly?) chair in the British Library from which, it
is said, Marx wrote Das Kapital.”
— John Comaroff, Hugh K. Foster Professor of Anthropology and of
African and African American Studies, Harvard University
“By offering a personal account of the interdisciplinary nexus of anthro-
pology and law, Mark Goodale offers something more than an overview
of a sub- discipline. He provides insight into (and through) a personal
quest for knowledge, premised on breaking down the boundaries that
regularly divide disciplines, realms of practice, and schools of thought.
Goodale offers intellectual history, social theory, and politico- legal analy-
sis in an accessible overview of a field that, in his hands, returns to the
most ambitious questions of our time, the place of law in social develop-
ment, political transition, protection of the dispossessed and marginal-
ized, and, the ultimate anthropological question, how identity is shaped,
how law influences who we are and how we belong.”
— Ronald Niezen, Department of Anthropology and Faculty of Law,
McGill University

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Anthropology and Law
A Critical Introduction
Mark Goodale
Foreword by Sally Engle Merry
NEW Y ORK UNIVERS ITY P RESS
New York

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NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
www.nyupress.org
© 2017 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the
author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or
changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Goodale, Mark, author.
Title: Anthropology and law : a critical introduction / Mark Goodale ;
foreword by Sally Engle Merry.
Description: New York : New York University Press, [2017] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016041138| ISBN 978-1-4798-3613-0 (cl : alk. paper) |
ISBN 978-1-4798-9551-9 (pb : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Law and anthropology.
Classification: LCC K487.A57 G66 2017 | DDC 340/.115—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041138
New York University Press books are printed on acid- free paper, and their binding materials
are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppli-
ers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also available as an ebook

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For Simon Roberts, who introduced me— and many
others— to the anthropology of law at the LSE back
in the good old days.

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Contents
Foreword ix
Sally Engle Mer ry
Preface xiii
Introduction: From Status to Contract to Cosmopolitanism 1
Part I. L aw and the P roduction of Meaning
1. Speaking the Law 33
2. History, Heritage, and Legal Mythoi 53
Part II. L aw and A gency, Law as Regulation
3. Justice between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 75
4. Human Rights and the Politics of Aspiration 96
5. Shaping Inclusion and Exclusion through Law 117
Part III. L aw and Id entity
6. Law and the Fourth World 141
7. Law and the Moral Economy of Gender 163
8. Ethnonationalism and Conflict Transformation 184
Conclusion: Law in a Post- Utopian World 203
Notes 223
References 241
Index 277
About the Author 289
vii

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Foreword
Sally Engle Mer ry
Silver Professor of Anthropology, New York University
Despite past predictions of the demise of the anthropology of law, it is
clearly flourishing. As this wonderful book shows, legal anthropologists
are now tackling an amazing range of issues, from legal responsibility for
genocide to rectifying past injuries to indigenous people. Law is every-
where, and so are legal anthropologists. They are working in many different
places—l ocal, national, and transnational— to develop theories that make
sense of the creation of social order, however fragile, in a rapidly chang-
ing world. This book offers a broad and strikingly comprehensive view of
what Mark Goodale sometimes refers to as the “new” legal anthropology,
work of the post– Cold War era. This legal anthropology is far broader
than the legal anthropology of the past, covering relations between law
and language, poetics, indigeneity, and gender, among many other issues.
The book concludes by considering the future of the field, discussing new
issues such as the role of measurement and law, the juridification of poli-
tics, the possibility of a cosmopolitan legality, the potential for universal
conceptions of law, and the implications of law for growing national and
global inequality, both its complicity and its possibilities for redistribution.
Goodale’s synthesis of legal anthropology since the early 1990s shows
how the field has moved from past concerns with the nature of legal
mechanisms in villages and bands to a vast array of new issues such
as human rights, legal sovereignty for indigenous communities, and
international criminal tribunals. While the focus on disputing served
as a valuable method for legal anthropological research in the past, the
contemporary field has moved into a far wider set of theoretical and
methodological frameworks from multisited ethnography to Foucauld-
ian analyses of the production of knowledge.
ix

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