Anthropology and Law A Critical Introduction [Hardcover]

An introduction to the anthropology of law that explores the connections between law, politics, and technology.

From legal responsibility for genocide to rectifying past injuries to indigenous people, the anthropology of law addresses some of the crucial ethical issues of our day. Over the past twenty-five years, anthropologists have studied how new forms of law have reshaped important questions of citizenship, biotechnology, and rights movements, among many others. Meanwhile, the rise of international law and transitional justice has posed new ethical and intellectual challenges to anthropologists.

Anthropology and Law provides a comprehensive overview of the anthropology of law in the post-Cold War era. Mark Goodale introduces the central problems of the field and builds on the legacy of its intellectual history, while a foreword by Sally Engle Merry highlights the challenges of using the law to seek justice on an international scale. The books chapters cover a range of intersecting areas including language and law, history, regulation, indigenous rights, and gender.

For a complete understanding of the consequential ways in which anthropologists have studied, interacted with, and critiqued, the ways and means of law, Anthropology and Law is required reading.

Mark Goodale's Anthropology and Law is simultaneously an introduction to the field and a sophisticated exploration of recent developments in legal 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. An updated introduction and overview of the field of legal anthropology is long overdue and Anthropology and Law will be welcome in many quarters. Goodale has done a service to the discipline and his volume is likely to become a classic text, required reading in a variety of courses, and a touchstone for years to cl£