The Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology is a ground-breaking collection of essays that provides an original and internationally framed conception of the historical, theoretical, and ethnographic interconnections of law and anthropology. Each of the chapters in the Handbook provides a survey of the current state of scholarly debate and an argument about the future direction of research in this dynamic and interdisciplinary field. The structure of the
Handbook is animated by an overarching collective narrative about how law and anthropology have and should relate to each other as intersecting domains of inquiry that address such fundamental questions as dispute
resolution, normative ordering, social organization, and legal, political, and social identity. The need for such a comprehensive project has become even more pressing as lawyers and anthropologists work together in an ever-increasing number of areas, including immigration and asylum processes, international justice forums, cultural heritage certification and monitoring, and the writing of new national constitutions, among many others. The Handbook takes critical stock of
these various points of intersection in order to identify and conceptualize the most promising areas of innovation and sociolegal relevance, as well as to acknowledge the points of tension, open
questions, and areas for future development.
Author Biography:
Marie-Claire Foblets is Director of the Law & Anthropology Department at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Honorary Professor of Law & Anthropology at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, both in Halle/Saale, Germany. Trained in law and anthropology, she taught law as well as social and cultural anthropology at the universities of Antwerp and Brussels and the Catholic University of Leuven, where she headed the Institute
for Migration Law and Legal Anthropology, before joining the Max Planck Institute. She has also been a member of various networks of researchers focusing either on the study of the application of Islamic law in Europe
or on law and migration in Europe, paying particular attention to family law. Her numerous publications include Family, Religion and Law: Cultural Encounters in Europe (Ashgate, 2014). Mark Goodale is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Lausanne and Series Editor of Stanford Studies in Human Rights. He studies the intersections of culture, rights, ethics, and justice and is the author or editor of many volumes, including Anthropology and Law: A Critical
Introduction (NYU Press, 2017), Human Rights at the Crossroads (ed., Oxford UP, 2013), Human Rights: An Anthropological Reader (ed., Blackwell, 2010), Surrendering to Utopia: An Anthropology of Human Rights
(Stanford UP, 2009), and The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law Between the Global and the Local (coed. with Sally Engle Merry, Cambridge UP, 2007). He is currently writing a new book on justice, ideology, and practice in Bolivia based on nine years of ethnographic research. Maria Sapignoli is an Assistant Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Milan and cooperation partner in the Law & Anthropology Department at the Max Planck Institute for Social
Anthropology. Sapignoli has spent the past ten years conducing ethnographic fieldwork in southern Africa as well as in several international organizations, including the United Nations, on topics of institutional
reform, indigenous and minorities rights, social movements and advocacy and, ultimately, justice. Most recently she has started a new project that engages, critically and collaboratively, with the legal and social challenges and opportunities presented by the use of AI technologies and big data in society and in environmental governance. She is the author of Hunting Justice: Displacement, Law, and Activism in the Kalahari (Cambridge University Press 2018), as well as numerous articles and book
chapters. Olaf Zenker is Professor of Social Anthropology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Focusing on Southern Africa, Northern Ireland and Germany, his research has dealt with
politico-legal issues such as conflict and identity formations, plural normative orders, statehood, bureaucracy and the rules of law. His publications include The State and the Paradox of Customary Law in Africa (coed. with Markus Hoehne, Routledge, 2018), South African Homelands as Frontiers: Apartheid's Loose Ends in the Postcolonial Era (coed. with Steffen Jensen, Routledge, 2016) and Transition and Justice: Negotiating the Terms of New Beginnings in Africa (coed. With Gerhard Anders,
Wiley-Blackwell, 2015). He is currently working on a book on land restitution and the moral modernity of the new South African state.
