Parallel to the progressing globalization and concomitant deregulation of national markets there has been a growing judicialization or juridification of different social spheres almost everywhere around the globe. These processes have changed the concept, function and status of law in contemporary societies. This change has in turn given boost to the joint enterprise of the sociology and the anthropology of law and their objectives to gauge the transformation of societies through the lens of law and, conversely, the transformation of law through the lens of certain socio-political and socio-economic dynamics. In this course, we will take disputes as diagnostic events for, or entry points into, salient socio-legal developments and debates, such as what is lost and what is gained in the translation or transplantation of legal norms, concepts, institutions and procedures into different socio-legal spaces, and the socio-political significance of increased legal pluralism caused by growing normative and institutional recognition of religion, ethnicity and indigenous custom. We will discuss cases of project law, cultural defense, and changing property regimes as well as instances of multiple citizenship and the prioritization of individual over collective human rights, and vice versa. Sessions 1. Introduction and Overview 2. Processes of Juridification in the Globalizing World 3. Juridification as Re-embedding: Cases from Different Non-Western Societies 4. Common Historical and Conceptual Foundations of the Sociology and Anthropology of Law Ethnographies of Legal Institutions and Procedures 5. Transplantation of Legal Norms, Concepts, Institutions and Procedures into Different Socio-legal Spaces: Project Law and Changing Development Agendas 6. Transnationalization of Human Rights and Islamic Fatwas: Chances and Challenges 7. Legal Pluralism and State Recognition of Religion, Ethnicity and Indigenous Custom 8. Cases of Cultural Defense in Western Societies.

1. Law and Anthropology
Course Introduction
by Martin Ramstedt
Max Planck Institute for Social
Anthropology
International Master’s in Sociology of Law
Oñati, 23 November-4 December 2015

2. Why “Law & Anthropology” in a
Sociology of Law Programme?
More general reasons:
• Anthropologists & sociologists lay claim to the
same founding fathers, e.g.:
– Emile Durkheim
– Herbert Spencer
– Max Weber
• Under the condition of globalization, the dis-
tinction between urban and rural communities
has become blurred
• Anthropologists and sociologists nowadays en-
gage very similar research questions in the same
social fields

3. Why “Law & Anthropology” in a
Sociology of Law Programme?
More specifically  A number of global trends have boosted
the emergence of “Law & Anthropology” in the wider acade-
mic field of “law & society, for instance:
• The cultural turn in law due to global migration
• Increasing juridification of the lifeworld (as Jürgen Haber-
mas has put it)
• The increasing transplantation of legal concepts, norms
and institutions in the context of accelerated globaliza-
tion
• Increasing accommodation of religious and ethnic norma-
tivities in the laws of the land
• The increasing convergence of the human rights and indi-
genous rights discourses

4. Introduction of the following
general notions
• Law plays an important role in individual and collective identity
formation
• Disputes are diagnostic events, they constitute important open-
ings into the socio-cultural, political and economic fabric of a gi-
ven community or society
• Law co-exists, thrives on and conflicts with the norms of other
“semi-autonomous social fields” (business, familial relations, reli-
gion, custom, etc.)
• “Law” is not only “black letter law” but comes with a certain
culture (cosmology, performativity, and institutional framework)
• The notion of “law” as “state law” can be contested; non-state
normative orders may also be called “law”, given the family re-
semblance between them and state law

5. General structure of the course
• In the first week, our attention is mainly focused
on conceptual issues, like
 The changing notion and role of “law” in the glo-
balized world?
What constitutes a “dispute”, “conflict resolution”, or
“justice” is culturally inflected
Legal vs. normative pluralism and its corollary, inter-
legality
Juridification as a motor of legal pluralism, which in
turn is accelerated by the entitlement discourses and
right claims of the diverse social movements

6. General structure of the course
• In the second week, we zoom in on more
concrete empirical issues, like
The transformation of “tradition” in the transna-
tional indigenous rights movement (particular
reference to ILO Convention No. 169 from 1989 and
the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples from 2007)
The accommodation of religion by the law of the
land. Here we stress the point that “freedom of reli-
gion” hinges on the respective legal definition of “re-
ligion”

7. The ethnography of legal implementation pro-
cesses in the context of development aid, where
we are confronted with a particular kind of legal
transplants called “project law”
The vernacularization of human rights
And the tensions between human rights and the
interventions of the Bretton Wood institutions,
especially the World Bank

8. Teaching style
• The choice of reading and additional material entails
explicit attention to the background of the respective
authors and their positioning in a particular field of
academic discourse
• The readings are presented in conjunction with refe-
rence to certain points of attention and in relation
with specific questions
• In class, lively and “to-the-point” engagement in the
discussions is seen as partial fulfilment of credit (20%
participation / 80% essay)
• Coming on time will be positively refleted in the final
grade
• Contemporary issues are always presented in a histo-
rical as well as comparative perspective