Adjudicating Cultural Pluralism, Legislating Cultural Pluralism

Abstract

This article addresses the following question: what insights can the literature on legal pluralism and cultural pluralism written by ethnographers of courts provide analysts interested in studying legislatures? The ethnographic insights developed by anthropologists of courts can not be imported into the study of legislatures wholesale. In this article, I explore the ways analyses of cultural pluralism shift when one changes institutional vantage points from courts to legislatures. I argue that three central analytical shifts occur. First, in courts, contexts are often made cultural as one technique among many to create a suitable interpretation that will lead to resolution. From a legislative perspective, contexts are often made cultural using a demographic imagination, that is, through a form of quantification. Second, in courts, only outsiders tend to embody culture, contributing to a historical account of what culture is. In legislatures, anyone, even representatives themselves, can be cultural, making being cultural into a political tactic centered on rendering historical and social connections visible. Third, in legislatures, law is always a compromise. As law travels out of legislatures and into courts, the agonism at the heart of law is forgotten, and law becomes a contextual.