The Power of Law in a Transnational World

by Von Benda-Beckmann, Franz; von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet; Griffiths, Anne

• ISBN13: 9781845454234
• ISBN10: 1845454235
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-01
• Publisher: Berghahn Books

Summary

The Power of Law in a Transnational World raises questions about how law is mobilized and who has the power and authority to construct its meaning. It also examines how law is constituted and reconfigured through social processes that frame both its continuity and transformation over time. These questions are addressed in ways that offer fresh insights into these processes. The volume highlights how power is deployed under conditions of legal pluralism, exploring its effects on ways of living and on social institutions including the state. Such an approach not only demonstrates how the state, through its various development programs and organizational structures, attempts to control territory and people, but also relates the mechanisms of state control to other legal modes of control and regulation at both local and supranational levels.

Author Biography

Keebet von Benda-Beckmann is head of the Project Group Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. She also is an honorary professor in Leipzig and Halle. Her research in Indonesia and the Netherlands focuses on legal pluralism, social security, governance and on the role of religion in disputing processes.

Franz von Benda-Beckmann is head of the Project Group Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He also is an honorary professor in Leipzig and Halle. His research in Malawi and Indonesia focuses on property and inheritance, social security, governance and legal anthropological theory.

Anne Griffiths has a personal chair in Anthropology of Law at the University of Edinburgh in the School of Law. Her major research interests include anthropology of law, comparative and family law, African law, gender, culture and rights. She has been awarded research grants from the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (USA), the Annenberg Foundation (USA), the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Commonwealth Foundation, the Carnegie Trust and the American Bar Foundation.