International Studies Senior Seminar (IS 550)
LAW and SOCIETY
Syllabus
T & Th 10-11:15pm, Fall 2013
Erica Bornstein, Associate Professor
Office: Sabin Hall 311
Office hours: Th 12-2pm & by appointment
Email: elbornst@uwm.edu (when emailing always put IS 550 in subject heading)
Draft: August 2013. Subject to change.
Course description:
This class provides a basic overview of the field of legal anthropology. Beginning with
philosophies of law, society, and moral order and continuing with classical experiments in
ethnographic fieldwork of legal process, the course explores such issues as social and moral
order, governance, resistance to the state and norms, legal institutions, and transnational rights
movements. It also explores attempts to resist governance structures, such as people’s social
action movements and anarchist movements, as well as endeavors to fight for social justice
through collective action. The aim of this class is understand comparative legal process through
fieldwork and case study in a variety of legal and cultural contexts around the world.
Prerequisites: Prereq: jr sr; This course is the capstone course for International Studies majors.
Students enrolling in this course should have familiarity with basic concepts in the social
sciences.
Required Books
1. Law and Anthropology: A Reader, Blackwell (2004) S. F. Moore, editor
2. Law and Community in Three American Towns, Cornell U Press (1994) Carol Greenhouse,
Barbara Yngevesson and David Engle
3. Direct Action: An Ethnography, A.K. Press (2009) David Graeber
4. Public Justice and the Anthropology of Law, Cambridge U Press (2010) Ronald Niezen
Course requirements: This course is a lecture/discussion course. It is reading-intensive, with
considerable attention devoted to in-depth discussion of assigned readings. Students are expected
to attend class regularly, keep up with the readings and to be prepared to participate in
discussion. Participation (10% of course grade) is an important part of this class and will include
regular attendance and engaged discussion participation. The remainder of the course will be
evaluated via two take-home essay exam questions (30% x 2 = 60% of total grade), and a short
essay on a relevant topic with references to at least three assigned course readings (7-page
double spaced plus 10 minute presentation: 30%).
Class presentations: There is no required format for in class presentations of the final research
essay. For example, you do not have to use powerpoint. An ideal presentation will include an
engaged and thoughtful discussion of the topic with direct links to assigned course readings. The
focus is on content, not technology. Your goal is to demonstrate to me and to your classmates
that you have thought carefully and critically about the topic you have written about in your
essay. Students are encouraged to make an outline of the presentation and to stick to the time
limit (10 minutes).
Evaluation Criteria
Class participation
Essay Exam 1
Essay Exam 2
Class presentation (10 min)
Final research paper (7 pages)
Total
Points
100
300
300
100
200
1000
% of grade
10
30
30
10
20
100%
Plagiarism warning: All writing for this course must be your own. Cutting and pasting from
the internet without citing the website and putting the passage in quotation marks is plagiarism.
If I find evidence of plagiarism, you will receive an F for the assignment and possibly fail the
course. If you have questions about this please ask.
University academic policies can be found at: http://www4.uwm.edu/secu/SyllabusLinks.pdf
Final Grade Scale
970 – 1000
940 – 969
900 – 939
870 – 899
840 – 869
800 – 839
770 – 799
740 – 769
700 – 739
670 – 699
640 – 669
600 – 639
< 599
A+
A
AB+
B
BC+
C
CD+
D
DF
Weekly Schedule of Readings, Themes and Discussion Topics
Introduction
Week 1: September 3 & 5
Reader ch 28: Certainties Undone: Fifty Turbulent Years of Legal Anthropology, 1949–1999
(Sally Falk Moore)
Theories of Law & Society
Week 2: September 10 & 12
Reader: chapters 1-7, pp. 5-53
1 Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, and Others Asking What is Morally Right: Essays on Natural Law,
Ideal Law, and Human Law.
The International Bill of Rights (Louis Henkin)
Culture and Rights (Jane K. Cowan, Marie Benedicte Dembour & Richard Wilson)
2 Charles-Louis Montesquieu: Law as an Expression of a Particular Cultural Complex.
The Spirit of the Law (Charles-Louis Montesquieu)
Local Knowledge (Clifford Geertz)
3 Henry Maine: The Contrast between Archaic Law and Modern Law.
Criticism of Maine’s Theory, Norbert Rouland.
4 Lewis Henry Morgan: Evolutionist, Ethnographer, Lawyer.
The Historical Place of Property, Lewis Henry Morgan.
5 Karl Marx: The Mode of Production at the Base – Law as Part of the Superstructure.
Selected Writings, Karl Marx.
Law and Economic Organization, Katherine Newman.
6 Emile Durkheim: Collective Consciousnesses and Law
On Law (Emile Durkheim)
Disciplinary Power and Subjection (Michel Foucault)
Law and Society in Modern India (Marc Galanter)
Modernity and Self Identity (Anthony Giddens)
7 Max Weber: The Evolution from Irrationality to Rationality in Law.
The Economy and Social Norms (Max Weber)
The Theory of Communicative Action (Jürgen Habermas)
Law and Social Science (Richard Lempert and Joseph Sanders)
Equity and Discretion in a Modern Islamic Legal System (Lawrence Rosen)
Classical Fieldwork on Legal Process
Week 3: September 17 & 19
Reader: chapters 8-12, pp. 65-99
8 Crime and Custom in Savage Society (Bronislaw Malinokwski)
9 A Handbook of Tswana Law and Custom (Iassac Schapera)
10 The Judicial Process Among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia (Max Gluckman)
11 Justice and Judgement Among the Tiv (Paul Bohannan)
12 Kapaupu Papuans and Their Law (Leopold Pospisil)
Struggles Over Property
Week 4: September 24 & 26
Reader: chapters 13-16, pp. 11-154
13 Objects of Property and Subjects of Politics (Rosemary Coombe)
14 Where it Hurts: Indian Material for an Ethics of Organ Transplantation (Lawrence Cohen)
15 Disputing over Livestock in Sardinia (Julio Ruffino)
16 Consensus and Suspicion: Judicial Reasoning and Social Change in an Indonesian Society
1960–1994 (John R. Bowen)
Legal Identities
Week 5: October 1 & 3
Reader: chapters 17-20, pp. 178-245
17 Identity in Mashpee (James Clifford)
18 Locating a Reinvigorated Kentish Identity (Darian Smith)
19 Academic Narratives: Models and Methods in the Search for Meanings (Anne M. O.
Griffiths)
20 Human rights and Nation Building (Richard A Wilson)
* * * Essay exam #1 distributed – due 10/8, midnight in D2L dropbox
Rights & Enforceable Rules
Week 6: October 8 & 10
Reader: chapters 21-24, pp. 249-303
21 Rights, Religion and Community: Approaches to Violence Against Women in the Context of
Globalization (Sally Engle Merry)
22 Regional Practices and the Marginalization of Law: Informal Financial Practices of Small
Businesses in Taiwan (Jane Kaufman Winn)
23 Enacting Law through Social Practice: Sanctuary as a Form of Resistance (Susan Coutin)
24 Deciding Who Gets In: Decision-Making by Immigration Inspectors (Janet A. Gilboy)
Negotiation of International Disputes
Week 7: October 15 & 17
Reader: chapters 25-28, pp. 306-367
25 Multiculturalism, Individualism and Human Rights: Romanticism, The Enlightenment and
Lessons from Mauritius (Thomas Hylland Eriksen)
26 Governing Economic Globalization: Global Legal Pluralism and European Union Law
(Francis Snyder)
27 Civilization and its Negotiations (Laura Nader)
Law and Community
Week 8: October 22 & 24
Law and Community in Three American Towns (Part 1)
Ethnographic Studies, chapters 1-3
Week 9: October 28 & 31
Law and Community in Three American Towns (Part 2)
Laws, Values, and the Discourse of Community, chapters 4-6
* * * Abstract/outline due for final research paper in D2L dropbox
Public Justice & Collective Action
Week 10: November 5 & 7
Public Justice and the Anthropology of Law (chapters 1-4)
Week 11: November 12 & 14
Public Justice and the Anthropology of Law (chapters 5-7)
Anarchism as Protest & Social Change
Week 12: November 19 & 21
Direct Action: An Ethnography (chapters 1-3)
* * * Essay exam #2 distributed – due 12/3, midnight in D2L dropbox
Week 13: November 26 – No class 11/28, Thanksgiving break
Direct Action: An Ethnography (chapters 4-6)
Week 14: December 3 & 5
Direct Action: An Ethnography (chapters 7-10)
Final Presentations
Week 15: December 10 & 12
-- Class presentations
* * * Final research papers due in D2L dropbox by midnight 12/15
Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee
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