Synopses & Reviews
Practicing Ethnography in Law brings together a selection of top scholars in legal anthropology, social sciences, and law to delineate the state of the art in ethnographic research strategies. Each of these original essays addresses a particular set of analytical problems and uses these problems to explore issues of ethnographic technique, research methodology, and the theoretical underpinnings of ethnographic legal studies. Subjects explored include the relationship between legal and feminist scholarship, between law and the media, law and globalization, and the usefulness of a wide variety of research techniques: comparative, linguistic, life-history, interview, archival. This volume will serve as a guide for students who are designing their own research projects, for scholars who are newly exploring the possibilities of ethnographic research, and for experienced ethnographers who are engaged with methodological issues in light of current theoretical developments. The book will be essential reading for courses in anthropological methods, legal anthropology, and sociology and law.
Review
“
PRACTICING ETHNOGRAPHY IN LAW opens up to searching scrutiny the ways and means of legal anthropology. But it is much, much more than a primer on method or a
textbook on technique. At once critically acute and creatively wide-ranging, the eleven essays--headed by an unusually thoughtful introduction--also interrogate the epistemic foundations and conceptual scaffolding of the comparative study of law. Drawing on a broad spectrum of ethnographic sites, and addressing an equally broad range of important theoretical and analytical questions, this volume is a must-read.”
--John L. Comaroff, University of Chicago
“This cutting-edge collection of essays on legal ethnography is a fitting tribute to the memory of June Starr, as it does justice to her strongly-held concern about maintaining high methodological standards in legal anthropology. The essays are marked by a searching honesty, which doesn't shrink from acknowledging the dilemmas and compromises necessary to performing good ethnography in unsettling times and circumstances. With feet firmly planted in the time-honored requirements of in-depth ethnographic work, which are not always met by some professing to perform ‘ethnography, these authors nonetheless also deal boldly with the variations, flexibility, and new ethical binds raised by a vigorous engagement with fieldwork and ethnography in today's world.”
--Elizabeth Mertz, Professor, University of Wisconsin Law School
About the Author
June Starr was one of the major figures in the ethnographic study of law and, until her death last year, was Professor at the Indiana University School of Law.
Mark Goodale is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.
Table of Contents
Preface: June Starr, Jane Collier, and Sally Merry * Introduction-Legal Ethnography: New Dialogues, Enduring Methods--June Starr and Mark Goodale *
Part I: Performing Legal Ethnography Feminist Participatory Research on Legal Consciousness--Susan Hirsch * Trekking Processual Planes Beyond the Rule of Law--Philip Parnell * Legal Ethnography in an Era of Globalization: The Arrival of Western Human Rights Discourse to Rural Bolivia--Mark Goodale * Analyzing Witchcraft Beliefs--Jane Collier * Exploring Legal Culture in Law-Avoidance Societies--Robert Kidder * Reconceptualizing Research: Ethnographic Fieldwork and Immigration Politics in Southern California--Susan Coutin * Ethnography in the Archives--Sally Engle Merry * Stories from the Field: Collecting Data Outside Over There--Herbert M. Kritzer * Doing Ethnography: Living Law, Life Histories, and Narratives from Botswana--Anne Griffiths *
Part II: Reflections on Ethnography in Law * A Few Thoughts on Ethnography, History, and Law--Lawrence Friedman * Moving On: Comprehending Anthropologies of Law--Laura Nader