Ethnographic legal studies: reconnecting anthropological and sociological traditions

IF 0.6 Q2 Social Sciences

Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law Pub Date : 2018-09-02 DOI:10.1080/07329113.2018.1559487

Jonas Bens, Larissa Vetters

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引用次数: 15

Abstract

Abstract Legal anthropology and legal sociology have much in common. Traditionally, however, these approaches have tried to maintain disciplinary boundaries toward each other. Latest since the 1990s, these boundaries have become more and more porous and the academic practices of boundary-making do seem to convince practitioners of these fields less and less. The recent emergence of a subfield of the anthropology of the state situated at the interface of legal anthropology, legal sociology, ethnographic studies of bureaucracies and organizational sociology attests to this development. In this introduction, we propose to consciously transgress the traditional boundaries between legal anthropology, legal sociology and the anthropology of the state when it comes to the ethnographic investigation of official law. Based on the contributions to this special issue—consisting of empirical articles and commentaries—we map several avenues for boundary transgressions and the theoretical reconceptualizations these may engender. Among them are: looking at legal institutions of the state as practicing both informal formality and formal informality; moving from socio-spatial metaphors to investigating official law-places and -spaces as ethnographic objects; and studying norm-making within official law as a wider field of practice.

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民族志法律研究:重新连接人类学和社会学传统

法律人类学与法律社会学有许多共同之处。然而，传统上，这些方法试图保持彼此之间的学科界限。最近，自20世纪90年代以来，这些边界变得越来越多孔，学术上的边界划定实践似乎越来越不能说服这些领域的从业者。最近在法律人类学、法律社会学、官僚机构民族志研究和组织社会学的交汇处出现的国家人类学的一个子领域证明了这一发展。在这篇导论中，我们建议在官方法律的民族志研究中有意识地跨越法律人类学、法律社会学和国家人类学之间的传统界限。基于对这一特殊问题的贡献-由经验文章和评论组成-我们绘制了边界越界的几种途径以及这些可能产生的理论概念化。其中包括:将国家法律机构视为既实行非正式正式又实行正式非正式的机构;从社会空间隐喻转向作为民族志对象调查官方法律场所和空间;将官方法律中的规范制定作为一个更广泛的实践领域来研究。

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来源期刊

Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law LAW-

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期刊介绍： As the pioneering journal in this field The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law (JLP) has a long history of publishing leading scholarship in the area of legal anthropology and legal pluralism and is the only international journal dedicated to the analysis of legal pluralism. It is a refereed scholarly journal with a genuinely global reach, publishing both empirical and theoretical contributions from a variety of disciplines, including (but not restricted to) Anthropology, Legal Studies, Development Studies and interdisciplinary studies. The JLP is devoted to scholarly writing and works that further current debates in the field of legal pluralism and to disseminating new and emerging findings from fieldwork. The Journal welcomes papers that make original contributions to understanding any aspect of legal pluralism and unofficial law, anywhere in the world, both in historic and contemporary contexts. We invite high-quality, original submissions that engage with this purpose.