Anthropology of Law

The anthropology of law studies legal systems, law, and law-like social phenomena and takes as its foundation the anthropological insight that law cannot be meaningfully understood apart from wider culture and society. Although there have always been diverse schools of thought within the anthropology of law regarding appropriate goals, theories, epistemologies, and sometimes even methods, scholars in this area share a commitment to intensive and rigorous field methodologies requiring extensive involvement in the communities and social fields under study. In addition, legal anthropologists share another general foundational precept of their discipline, which requires (to at least some degree) a careful bracketing of the field-workers' own categories and presumptions to generate a more accurate picture of their informants' lived experiences.

Scholars recognize the anthropology of law—or legal anthropology—as a formal anthropological subdiscipline, particularly among American cultural and British social anthropologists. In the United States, the Association of Political and Legal Anthropology, an established subgroup under the umbrella organization of the American Anthropological Association, has its own journal, Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR). New anthropologists continue to conduct research in the anthropology of law, and to self-identify as legal anthropologists, in steady numbers. Indeed, some argue that the anthropology of law has become more central to the discipline of anthropology as a whole over the past ten years, especially in light of growing general interest among anthropologists in topics that fit squarely within the legal anthropological tradition. These topics include anthropology of the state in colonial and postcolonial societies; the anthropology of human rights; the anthropology of war, violence, and postconflict processes; and the anthropology of transnational (often legal) institutions.