Law and Anthropology
About the Book Series
The series is intended as a forum for the publication of outstanding scholarly contributions that strive systematically to involve both lawyers and anthropologists in the study, thinking, and theorizing about the search for justice in contemporary societies. It seeks to give equal weight to anthropological scholarship on the functioning of non-state normative orders – often existing side-by-side with formal state law – and legal scholarship dealing with the pragmatics of practice in a wide variety of circumstances where different normative logics come into conflict with one another.
The series welcomes work that analyses not only the relevant legal sources, but also the ethnographic data that can help provide context and an empirical foundation in the search for concrete solutions. Studies that draw on the methods and conceptual frameworks of anthropology, while staying within the boundaries of the technical and doctrinal tools that the law makes available, are rare. The series offers a venue for nourishing such endeavours and provides the academic anchorage for anthropologists and legal scholars who are straddling the two disciplines to meet, exchange views, and further develop their ideas and analyses.
Biomedical Practices, Religion, and the Law: Perspectives from the Middle East and Europe
1st Edition
Edited
By Federica Sona, Marie-Claire Foblets, Shai Lavi, Hagai Boas
July 03, 2026
This book deepens our understanding of the social, legal, and anthropological issues that arise from the global proliferation of advanced biomedical technologies and how they enable people to use their bodies to express individual and collective identities. The volume approaches these issues ...
Anthropological Expertise and Legal Practice: In Conversation
1st Edition
Edited
By Marie-Claire Foblets, Maria Sapignoli, Brian Donahoe
December 26, 2025
This book draws on concrete cases of collaboration between anthropologists and legal practitioners to critically assess the use of anthropological expertise in a variety of legal contexts from the point of view of the anthropologist as well as of the decision-maker or legal practitioner. The ...
African Witchcraft and Global Asylum-Seeking: Border-Crossing Beliefs
1st Edition
By Katherine Luongo
November 28, 2024
This book analyzes how over the last two decades, immigration regimes in three primary refugee-receiving states in the Global North – Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom – have engaged with allegations about witchcraft-driven violence made by asylum seekers coming from Anglophone countries ...
Redesigning Justice for Plural Societies: Case Studies of Minority Accommodation from around the Globe
1st Edition
Edited
By Katayoun Alidadi, Marie-Claire Foblets, Dominik Müller
May 27, 2024
This volume examines cases of accommodation and recognition of minority practices: cultural, religious, ethnic, linguistic or otherwise, under state law. The collection presents selected situations and experiences from a variety of regions and from different legal traditions around the world in ...
Normative Spaces and Legal Dynamics in Africa
1st Edition
Edited
By Katrin Seidel, Hatem Elliesie
February 01, 2022
African legal realities reflect an intertwining of transnational, regional, and local normative frameworks, institutions, and practices that challenge the idea of the sovereign territorial state. This book analyses the novel constellations of governance actors and conditions under which they ...
State Law, Dispute Processing And Legal Pluralism: Unspoken Dialogues From Rural India
1st Edition
By Kalindi Kokal
March 31, 2021
This book presents an ethnography of dispute processing by non-state forums and actors in rural India. As such it sheds light on a much neglected and contested topic. Arising in the context of recent legal and political debates that question the legitimacy of non-state actors engaged in dispute ...
Personal Autonomy in Plural Societies: A Principle and its Paradoxes
1st Edition
Edited
By Marie-Claire Foblets, Michele Graziadei, Alison Renteln
December 16, 2019
This volume addresses the exercise of personal autonomy in contemporary situations of normative pluralism. In the Western liberal tradition, from a strictly legal and theoretical perspective the social individual has the right to exercise the autonomy of his or her will. In a context of legal ...