A Plural Juridicality for the 21st Century

Over the past sixty years, colonial legal ethnology has undergone several transformations and now presents itself as an anthropology of juridicality; this volume brings together some notable advances in this field, centered on a renewal of conceptions of law. Drawing on fieldwork in Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Americas, and Europe, on topics such as land policies and amicable dispute resolution, five conference papers written between 2010 and 2014 explore not only how to break with old ethnocentrisms but also how to adopt a forward-looking perspective on contemporary innovations. For complexity dominates the world we are entering, and Hans Kelsen's positive conception of law must adapt to new contemporary challenges, proving too simplistic in the face of human ingenuity and the demands of globalization and cosmopolitanism. Assuming certain epistemological breaks, the concept of juridicity, familiar to sociology, can help us grasp the full scope of this by linking the past of custom to the future of contractual life and by renewing the art of instituting social life.

Pagina's: 88, Paperback, Our Knowledge Publishing