The anthropology of law is concerned with the nature of law as a social form. This project is more analytically focused than much of the scholarship generally classed as ‘legal anthropology’, which includes studies of courts, government, power, domina- tion and resistance, and different types of social norms. These are broadly legal topics, but such studies have not often addressed the nature of law itself. Law is a distinct social form: it may, at times, seem elusive, but the proliferation of law in the modern world, the social ends that it is supposed to achieve, and the widespread faith in the ideal of the ‘rule of law’, provide ample reasons for studying it. We fight wars in the name of democracy and justice, but what assumptions lie behind our reification of the legal?
This book encourages the anthropologist to take law serious- ly as a subject for study. It is also intended for the legal scholar concerned with either the theoretical or the empirical study of law. It demonstrates the potential of using empirical case studies, both historical and contemporary, to reflect upon the nature of law, exemplifying the benefits of including unfamiliar—some- times marginal and peripheral—examples for comparison.