Call For Chapters: Reader on Cultural Expertise

From the mailbox:

Reader on Cultural Expertise - Call for Chapters Cultural expertise is an emergent concept defined as special knowledge provided by various fields in the social sciences for conflict resolution in the form of cultural expert witnessing or cultural argumentations that help deciding authorities for better decision-making (Holden 2011 and Holden 2019).*

Cultural expertise connects with the great debates of anthropology regarding the concept of culture, race, ethnicity, gender and allows for a new scrutiny of the potential of social sciences, in particular anthropology, to problem solving. I am planing a collection of essays designed as a trajectory starting from theory to praxis and using socio-legal and critical studies for a reader on cultural expertise whose target audience is undergraduate students in the social sciences. This reader connects with the collaborative design of a course on cultural expertise within the framework of EURO-EXPERT.

Contributors to this reader may be invited to participate to the upcoming workshop to be held on the first week of October in Oxford.  5000 words chapters are solicited on the following non-exhaustive list of topics: current representations of culture and law, race and ethnicity, gender, regulations concerning cultural expert witnessing and mediation from a national and comparative perspective, patterns of litigation involving a sample of multicultural-settings, and more (other topics can also be proposed). Both theory and praxis oriented contributions will be accepted. Theory-chapters should provide a state-of-the-art survey of one of the great debates in the social sciences and highlight how the notion of cultural expertise connects with those as umbrella concept including anthropological experts witnessing, mediation in court and out of court, cultural defence, and more. Praxis-chapters should focus on the application of cultural expertise to a particular field (such as gender rights, migration, indigenous rights, detention, education, health, and more) and offer quantitative and/or qualitative data that support the analysis. Both theory- and praxis- chapters should be accompanied by a list of further readings and can include boxed contents for exercises, multiple choice questions, definitions, and long extracts from leading scholarship. 

Prospective authors are requested to send a 800 words proposal and a 250 words BIO to Livia Holden at livia.holden@csls.ox.ac.uk by the 3rd June 2019. Preliminary enquiries are welcome. Readings on cultural expertise are available on request.  Holden, L. ed. (2011) Cultural Expertise and Litigation, Aldershort: Routledge.Holden, L. Ed. (2019) Cultural Expertise and Socio-Legal Studies, Bingley: Emeraldinsight.  

Anker on Law As...Forest: Eco-Logic, Stories, and Spirits in Indigenous Jurisprudence

Kirsten Anker, McGill University Faculty of Law, has published Law As… Forest: Eco-Logic, Stories and Spirits in Indigenous Jurisprudence at 21 Law/Text/Culture 191 (2017). Here is the abstract.

This paper was presented as part of the Law As... Symposia series at Berkeley in 2016, this one on "Minor Jurisprudence." Taking up the suggestion that minor jurisprudence may consist either in the perpetual critique of the outsider to major jurisprudence or in the initiation of new grounds for jurisprudence, the essay wonders whether some forms of Indigenous jurisprudence – with a focus on the articulations of North American scholars – might do both. Emerging out of embodied relations with sentient forests, mountains, rivers and other non-humans, practices of Indigenous jurisprudence are at once a living critique of the disenchanted character of modern law, as well as a literal grounding of jurisprudence in relationships to place. The essay takes Indigenous jurisprudence on its own terms, particularly through ecologies as teacher, place-based stories and a participatory consciousness that experiences the spirit of the land, while attempting to articulate this jurisprudence in the idiom of the author’s own intellectual tradition, such as through the scientific foundations of Earth jurisprudence, through metaphor in the analysis of myth, and through semiotics as a way of comprehending a sentient landscape.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Mark Goodale on Anthropology and Law, a new book from NYU Press @NYUPress

ICYMI:

Mark Goodale, University of Lausanne, Anthropology and Law (NYU Press, 2017).  Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

From legal responsibility for genocide to rectifying past injuries to indigenous people, the anthropology of law addresses some of the crucial ethical issues of our day. Over the past twenty-five years, anthropologists have studied how new forms of law have reshaped important questions of citizenship, biotechnology, and rights movements, among many others. Meanwhile, the rise of international law and transitional justice has posed new ethical and intellectual challenges to anthropologists. Anthropology and Law provides a comprehensive overview of the anthropology of law in the post-Cold War era. Mark Goodale introduces the central problems of the field and builds on the legacy of its intellectual history, while a foreword by Sally Engle Merry highlights the challenges of using the law to seek justice on an international scale. The book’s chapters cover a range of intersecting areas including language and law, history, regulation, indigenous rights, and gender. For a complete understanding of the consequential ways in which anthropologists have studied, interacted with, and critiqued, the ways and means of law, Anthropology and Law is required reading. 

Comparative Law and Anthropology: New From Edward Elgar Publishing @ElgarPublishing

New from Edward Elgar: Comparative Law and Anthropology (James A. R. Nafzier, ed., 2017).

The topical chapters in this cutting-edge collection at the intersection of comparative law and anthropology explore the mutually enriching insights and outlooks of the two fields. Comparative Law and Anthropology adopts a foundational approach to social and cultural issues and their resolution, rather than relying on unified paradigms of research or unified objects of study. Taken together, the contributions extend long-developing trends from legal anthropology to an anthropology of law and from externally imposed to internally generated interpretations of norms and processes of legal significance within particular cultures. The book's expansive conceptualization of comparative law encompasses not only its traditional geographical orientation, but also historical and jurisprudential dimensions. It is also noteworthy in blending the expertise of long-established, acclaimed scholars with new voices from a range of disciplines and backgrounds.

 

Tuori on Ancient History and Legal History in the Making of Legal Anthropology

Kaius Tuori, Research Fellow, University of Helsinki, Lawyers and Savages: Ancient History and Legal Realism in the Making of Legal Anthropology (Routledge, 2015).  Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

Legal primitivism was a complex phenomenon that combined the study of early European legal traditions with studies of the legal customs of indigenous peoples. Lawyers and Savages: Ancient History and Legal Realism in the Making of Legal Anthropology explores the rise and fall of legal primitivism, and its connection to the colonial encounter. Through examples such as blood feuds, communalism, ordeals, ritual formalism and polygamy, this book traces the intellectual revolution of legal anthropology and demonstrates how this scholarship had a clear impact in legitimating the colonial experience. Detailing how legal realism drew on anthropology in order to help counter the hypothetical constructs of legal formalism, this book also shows how, despite their explicit rejection, the central themes of primitive law continue to influence current ideas – about indigenous legal systems, but also of the place and role of law in development.

Written in an engaging style and rich in examples from history and literature, this book will be invaluable to those with interests in legal realism, legal history or legal anthropology.

Bunikowski on Sámi Reindeer Husbandry and Its Legal, Philosophical, and Cultural-Anthropological Dimensions

Dawid Bunikowski, University of Eastern Finland Law School; Cardiff University, Centre for Law and Religion; and University of the Arctice, has published Sámi Reindeer Husbandry - Legal-Philosophical and Cultural-Anthropological Dimensions. Here is the abstract.

In this short statement, I claim that it is impossible to understand what reindeer husbandry means for the Sámi people without good understanding of the Sámi laws, culture, philosophy, and cosmology. The aim is to shed some light on Sámi reindeer husbandry from the point of view of philosophy, anthropology, culture, and law. However, my point of view is Western and legal-philosophical-anthropological. As a non-Sámi but Western scholar, the philosopher of law, I may only try to understand them, their culture, and their understandings. Thus, as much as possible, Western scholars should follow narratives and language of some chosen Sámi scholars and herders in this respect. However, in this paper I also follow my reason, which is deeply rooted in Western traditions and intellectual heritage, and this kind of way of interpretation of facts.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Pope Francis and the Natural Environment

John Copeland Nagle, Notre Dame Law School, is publishing Pope Francis, Environmental Anthropologist, in volume 28 of the Regent University Law Review (2016). Here is the abstract.

In June 2015, after much anticipation and a few leaks, Pope Francis released his encyclical entitled “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. “Laudato si’” means “praise be to you,” a phrase that appears repeatedly in Saint Francis’ Canticle of the Sun poem. The encyclical itself has been widely praised and widely reported, far more than one would expect from an explicitly religious document. The encyclical is breathtakingly ambitious. Much of it is addressed to “every person living on this planet,” while specific parts speak to Catholics and others to religious believers generally. It surveys a sweeping range of environmental and social problems. Along the way, it relies on anthropology, theology, science, economic, politics, law, and numerous other disciplines. Especially anthropology. The popular response often described Laudato Si’ as a “climate change” encyclical. It’s not: only five of the 180 pages specifically address climate change, about the same as the discussion of the noise and ugliness, crime, housing, and transportation that affect the “ecology of daily life.” It is not really even an environmental encyclical, for the natural environment does not play the starring role. Rather, it is an encyclical about us. Francis contends that the natural environment suffers because we misunderstand humanity. This Article examines the encyclical from the perspective of Christian environmental thought more generally. It begins by outlining the development of such thought, and then it turns to the contributions of the encyclical with respect to environmental anthropology, environmental connectedness, environmental morality, and environmental governance. As the article explains, Pope Francis is a powerful advocate for a Christian environmental morality but a less convincing advocate for specific regulatory reforms. His greatest contribution is to encourage more people, religious believers and non-believers alike, to engage in a respectful dialogue about how we can better fulfill our responsibilities to each other and the natural world that we share.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Gender Justice and Legal Pluralities

Gender Justice and Legal Pluralities: Latin American and African Perspectives (Rachel Sieder and John Andrew McNeish eds.; Routledge Publishing, 2012) is forthcoming in paperback next month ($49.95 US).  Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

Gender Justice and Legal Pluralities: Latin American and African Perspectives examines the relationship between legal pluralities and the prospects for greater gender justice in developing countries. Rather than asking whether legal pluralities are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for women, the starting point of this volume is that legal pluralities are a social fact. Adopting a more anthropological approach to the issues of gender justice and women’s rights, it analyzes how gendered rights claims are made and responded to within a range of different cultural, social, economic and political contexts. By examining the different ways in which legal norms, instruments and discourses are being used to challenge or reinforce gendered forms of exclusion, contributing authors generate new knowledge about the dynamics at play between the contemporary contexts of legal pluralities and the struggles for gender justice. Any consideration of this relationship must, it is concluded, be located within a broader, historically informed analysis of regimes of governance.

Images and Imagination in Theorizing About Law: A Workshop at Wolfson College, Oxford

From Maksymilian Del Mar, Queen Mary College, University of London, news of a workshop on images in legal scholarship, to take place at Wolfson College, Oxford, on May 20, 2015. Here's a description. If you are interested, sign up soon: only a few spots are left.

Images and Imagination in Theorizing about Law Workshop

20 May 2015

Time: 10:30am - 7:00pm 
Venue: Haldane Room, Wolfson College, Linton Road, Oxford, OX2 6UD

This one-day workshop will examine the role of images in legal scholarship, both theoretically and historically. By bringing together legal and art history academics, it will establish a new network of scholars from a variety of disciplines—art, history, law, anthropology—interested in the intersection of images and law.

The last decade has seen much research into the intersection of the visual and the legal, yet the impact on the practice of contemporary legal scholarship has been limited, and there is little methodological reflection on the roles that images and imagery have played in scholarship about law.

For the first time in the UK, this workshop will explore these issues with legal scholars, art historians, art theorists, visual epistemologists, anthropologists, and explore future avenues of research.

This workshop is co-organised by Professor Sionaidh Douglas-Scott (Oxford) and Dr Maks Del Mar (Queen Mary).

Participants

o    Dr Carolin Berhmann (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz)

o    Professor Sionaidh Douglas-Scott (Oxford)

o    Professor Denis Galligan (Oxford)

o    ​Professor Adam Gearey (Birkbeck)

o    Professor Peter Goodrich (Cardozo)

o    Dr Maks Del Mar (Queen Mary)

o    Professor Marie Laure Mathieu (Montpellier)

o    Professor Fernanda Pirie (Oxford)

o    Professor Geoffrey Samuel (Kent)

o    Dr Clare Sandford-Couch (Northumbria)

o    Professor Mathias Siems (Durham)

o    Professor Amanda Perry-Kessaris (Kent)

o    Dr Patricia Cain

o    Ms Sophie Arkette (Artist in residence, Cambridge)

o    Dr Thomas Giddens (St Mary’s)

Programme

10:30–11:00 Tea and Coffee

11:00–12:00 Keynote speaker
Dr Carolin Berhmann, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenze
Title: ‘Nomos of Images’

12:05–1:05 Keynote speaker
Dr Clare Sandford-Couch, Northumbria University
Title: ‘Images and Legal Authority in Fourteenth Century Florence’

1:05–2:00 Lunch

2:00–4:30 Short presentations with breaks

Panel 1
Dr Patricia Cain, Artist
Title: ‘Practices of Thinking: Law and Art’

Ms Sophie Arkette, Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence, Centre for Intellectual Property & Information Law, University of Cambridge
Title: ‘Appearance v Materiality: On the Nature of Fixation in UK & Dutch Copyright Law’

Professor Amanda Perry-Kessaris, Kent Law School
Title: ‘Graphic Legal Interdisciplinarity’

Panel 2
Professor Fernanda Pirie, Oxford University
Title: ‘Visual Regularity in Tibetan Legal Documents’

Professor Geoffrey Samuel, University of Kent
Title: ‘The Use of Images in Legal Reasoning’

Dr Thomas Giddens, St Mary’s University, Twickenham
Title: ‘Comics and Legal Aesthetics: Navigating the Limits of Rational Text with Graphic Fiction’

Panel 3
Professor Denis Galligan, Oxford University
Title: ‘On Trial for Treason: The Unlikely Alliance of John Lilburne and Edward Coke’

Professor Adam Gearey, Birkbeck, University of London
Title: ‘Once Poor Always Poor: Images of Law and Poverty in George Orwell’s “The Road to Wigan Pier”’

Professor Mathias Siems, Durham University
Title: ‘Mapping Law Visually’

Panel 4
Professor Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Oxford University
Title: TBA

Dr Maks Del Mar, Queen Mary University of London
Title: ‘Visualising the Common Law Tradition’

4:30–5:00 Tea and Coffee

5:00–6:00 Keynote speaker
Professor Marie-Laure Mathieu, University of Montpellier
Title: ‘Images in Legal Reasoning’

6:00–7:00 Keynote speaker
Professor Peter Goodrich, Benjamin N Cardozo School of Law
Title: ‘Imago Decidendi- Pictures as Precedents’

7:00 Closing remarks

How to book

To reserve your place, please visit The Foundation for Law, Justice and Society website.

Here is a registration link: www.fjls.org/images-and-law

____________________________________

Dr. Maksymilian Del Mar

Senior Lecturer in Law and Philosophy

Director, Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context

Academic Fellow (2013-16), The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple

Department of Law, Queen Mary, University of London

Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 20 7882 3962; Fax: +44 20 7882 7042

Email: m.delmar@qmul.ac.uk

Law, Cultural Anthropology, and Rehabilitation

José Calvo González, University of Malaga School of Law, has published Odia el delito, y compadece al delincuente». Memoria de Correccionalismo, Antropología cultural y Literatura popular [Hate crime, and pity the criminal». Memory of Correctionalism, Cultural anthropology and Popular literature] in the online journal  ISLL Papers. Here is the abstract.

The work covers the circumstances of misleading ascription to the writer Concepción Arenal (1820-1893) as creator the slogan "Hate crime, and pity the criminal". Place the place and date on which this author is mentioned and its context and scope. Determines the direction of the reference according theory of correctionalism to a new horizon; that of social reintegration based on the principle of fraternity. Also use of cultural anthropology and popular literature to show the excesses and deficits of interpretation of the idea of fraternity among the pious institutions (Compagnia del Santissimo Crocifisso in Italy, XVI-XIX centuries) and mendicant groups (Hermandad de Ciegos de Madrid in Spain, XVI-XIX centuries) related to offenders sentenced to death. Finally, the Author suggests that the motto "Hate crime, and pity the criminal" back in the news as a marker of our convictions in the field of public morality and the idea of Human Dignity.
 

Download the article at the link.

Indigenous Peoples and the Protection of Intellectual Property: The Case of the Zia

Stephanie B. Turner, Yale Law School, is publishing The Case of the Zia: Moving Beyond Intellectual Property Laws To Protect Cultural Rights, in the Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property. Here is the abstract.

This Article focuses on an ongoing dispute in trademark law: the case of the Zia. Located near Albuquerque, New Mexico, this Native American pueblo has been using its sacred sun symbol in religious ceremonies since 1200 C.E. The symbol now appears on the New Mexico State flag, letterhead, and license plate, and on commercial products ranging from chemical fertilizers to portable toilets. The tribe claims that the State appropriated the symbol without permission in 1925, and that the continued use of the symbol by various parties dilutes its sacred meaning and disparages the tribe in violation of Section 2(a) of the Trademark Act. This Article tells the Zia story, focusing on the harms the tribe faces when others appropriate its symbol and the possible solutions. It concludes by suggesting that indigenous groups like the Zia should move beyond intellectual property laws in the fight to protect their cultural rights.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Political Career of Franz Boas

Alan H. McGowan, The New School for Liberal Arts, Eugene Lang College, has published Franz Boas and the Progressive Spirit, in Jewish Currents, Autumn 2010. Here is the abstract.

This article examines the political career of Franz Boas, called the Father of American Anthropology. In addition to being a pioneering anthropologist, Boas realized the impact that scientists could have on public policy. In addition to commenting on issues concerning race, he organized committees to defend free speech in educational institutions and elsewhere.

Download the text from SSRN at the link.

Via First Amendment Law Prof Blog.

The Protection of Folklore

Ayoyemi Lawal Arowolo, Babcock University School of Law and Security Studies, has published Copyright Law and the Recognition of 'Folkloric Creations' and 'Folk Medicine' in Africa, at 5 Journal of Black and African Arts and Civilization 33 (2011). Here is the abstract.

Creations in traditional African societies are often categorized as folklore which is protectable under copyright law as expressions of folklore. They are indeed precious jewels which bear eloquent testimony to the wonderful civilisation and culture flourishing in traditional communities in Africa. The rich cultural heritage of Africa is a sign of the creative activities of the past. The present has not given enough recognition to the role and protection of works based on folklore thus compounding the misappropriation of folkloric works and folk medicine. The controversy on the protection of folklore is an issue African countries face and need to resolve. The invaluable role of folklore in African societies and the deficiencies in protecting creative works within traditional parameters to encourage intellectual creations is examined in this paper.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Origins of Law

Jacques DeVille, University of the Western Cape, has published On Law’s Origin: Derrida Reading Freud, Kafka and Lévi-Strauss in volume 7 of the Utrecht Law Review (April 2011). Here is the abstract.

This article's main focus is 'Before the Law', a text by Derrida on Kafka's Before the Law, in which Derrida also comments on Freud's Totem and Taboo. Freud, in this text, enquires into the origins of religion, morality, social institutions and law. He contends that this origin is to be found in a crime, the killing of the primal father by a band of brothers, followed by the institution of totemism and the incest prohibition. Freud's psychoanalytical account of the origins of the totem and the prohibition of incest has been challenged from various quarters. The article enquires whether Freud's Totem and Taboo and its theory of the primal horde in relation to the origins of law should be dismissed in light of these challenges, or whether some insight can still be gained from it. The second option is affirmed, with Derrida's 'Before the Law' pointing to the importance of reading Freud in a way analogous to Kafka's Before the Law, and more specifically to the need for a reconsideration of the originary nature of the Oedipus complex, so as to arrive eventually at a kind of 'pre-origin' of law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.