Contested States

by Lazarus-Black, Mindie; Hirsch, Susan F.

• ISBN13: 9780415907804
• ISBN10: 0415907802
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-12-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Contested Statesexamines how hegemony is created and facilitated through law as well as how people use legal arenas to resist oppression. The essays, written by anthropologists and historians, offer rich historical and ethnographic detail as they engage these themes in such contexts as: colonial and post-colonial courts in Kenya, India, Uganda and the Caribbean; bureaucracies in Tonga and Turkey; and judicial processes in the historical and contemporary United States. Contested Statescontributes to the new focus on power and social process in legal studies and argues that while states encode and enforce law, a crucial part of the power of law is its very contestability. The book demonstrates that theoretical insights learned in legal arenas can deepen one's overall understanding of sociocultural order and the processes of historical and legal change.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction/Performance and Paradox: Exploring Law's Role in Hegemony and Resistance	p. 1
Courts as Performances: Domestic Violence Hearings in a Hawaii Family Court	p. 35
Local Legal Hegemony in the Tongan Magistrate's Court: How Sisters Fare Better than Wives	p. 59
Law's Patriarchy in India	p. 89
On Law and Hegemonic Moments: Looking Behind the Law in Early Modern Uganda	p. 118
"Kidstuff" and Complaint: Interpreting Resistance in a New England Court	p. 138
Battling Over Motherhood in Philadelphia: A Study of Antebellum American Trial Courts as Arenas of Conflict	p. 153
Standing at the Gates of Justice: Women in the Law Courts of Early-Sixteenth-Century Uskudar, Istanbul	p. 184
Kadhi's Courts as Complex Sites of Resistance: The State, Islam, and Gender in Postcolonial Kenya	p. 207
When Empires Meet: European Trade and Ottoman Law	p. 231
Slaves, Masters, and Magistrates: Law and the Politics of Resistance in the British Caribbean, 1736-1834	p. 252
Enacting Law through Social Practice: Sanctuary as a Form of Resistance	p. 282
Index	p. 305
Contributors	p. 315
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