Gluckman, Max (1911–1975)

Herman Maximilian (Max) Gluckman received lectures in what he referred to as orthodox jurisprudence, but he did not graduate with a full legal training. His professional expertise was in social anthropology, which he studied first at the University of Witswatersrand (Johannesburg) and later at Oxford, after which he served as a professor of social anthropology at the University of Manchester until he died. Although Gluckman made major contributions in several areas of social anthropology, he considered anthropology of law to be his major interest.

Gluckman developed his ideas on law mainly based on his ethnographic work among the Lozi of Barotseland in Zambia during the 1940s, following research among the Zulu in South Africa. Thoroughly conscious of the subordination of these societies within imperial colonial orders, ...