Elizabeth Mertz

Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change

Ethnography in Unstable Places is a collection of ethnographic accounts of everyday situations in places undergoing dramatic political transformation. Offering vivid case studies that range from the Middle East and Africa to Europe, Russia, and Southeast Asia, the contributing anthropologists narrate particular circumstances of social and political transformation—in contexts of colonialism, war and its aftermath, social movements, and post–Cold War climates—from the standpoints of ordinary people caught up in and having to cope with the collapse or reconfiguration of the states in which they live. Using grounded ethnographic detail to explore the challenges to the anthropological imagination that are posed by modern uncertainties, the contributors confront the ambiguities and paradoxes that exist across the spectrum of human cultures and geographies. The collection is framed by introductory and concluding chapters that highlight different dimensions of the book’s interrelated themes—agency and ethnographic reflexivity, identity and ethics, and the inseparability of political economy and interpretivism. Ethnography in Unstable Places will interest students and specialists in social anthropology, sociology, political science, international relations, and cultural studies. Contributors. Eve Darian-Smith, Howard J. De Nike, Elizabeth Faier, James M. Freeman, Robert T. Gordon, Carol J. Greenhouse, Nguyen Dinh Huu, Carroll McC. Lewin, Elizabeth Mertz, Philip C. Parnell, Nancy Ries, Judy Rosenthal, Kay B. Warren, Stacia E. Zabusky

Beyond Symbolic Anthropology: Introducing Semiotic Mediation

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses certain fundamentals of semiotic theory that are prerequisites to any serious consideration of processes of semiotic mediation. The contrast between index and symbol parallels that between pragmatic and semantic meaning. Pragmatic meaning is defined as meaning that is dependent on context, while the semantic value of a sign is the meaning, or notional core, that it has apart from contextual factors. The structure of discourse is also affected by extralinguistic context. The division between the kinds of context is not clear or absolute; some concepts bridge the gap between intra- and extra-linguistic contexts. In actuality, language can rarely be so neatly sorted into distinct functions, because any particular stretch of language is usually multifunctional, serving several ends at once. The Vygotskian perspective looks at the effects of language, generally conceived, on the development of cognitive processes. A theory of how sign tokens are exchanged and connected must be supplemented with a notion of the way the signs together form an interrelated system.

Legal Ideology and Linguistic Theory: Variability and Its Limits

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the principles governing indexicality, type–token relationships, and the relation of pragmatics to semantics are important in understanding the influence of legal ideology on legal practice. The language of semiotics gives us a precise tool for discussing the role of context. Indexicality actually bridges several associated gaps that are given in traditional linguistic ideology. Whorf posits a dependency relationship between the actual structure of language and the way speakers view their language. While Harts analysis finds creativity at the fringes, in process, it locates the primary source of legal creativity in rules. Hart distinguishes two basic sorts of rules–primary rules of obligation and secondary rules. In contrast with Hart, the legal realists and the sociological school of jurisprudence see social context as central in shaping legal systems. They also refute to varying degrees the notion that law can be understood as essentially rational or principled.

The New Legal Realism: Translating Law-and-Society for Today's Legal Practice

This is the Table of Contents for The New Legal Realism: Translating Law-and-Society for Todays Legal Practice Volume I.

Legal R/realism and Jurisprudence: Ten Theses

At Oxford, Salmond on Torts had been my favorite textbook (Salmond 1953). It was a conventional, lucid, expository work. Shortly after I had graduated in 1955, a solicitor specializing in personal injuries told me to forget what I had learned in the books because nearly all of his cases were settled out of court with an insurance company or the Motor Insurers’ Bureau involved. Anyway, he said, the system needed drastic reform. I suffered culture shock. So I began to wonder: how could one understand the law relating to personal injuries if one knows nothing about insurance, settlement, the damages lottery, and alternatives to the common law action for negligence? I felt misled, let down, even betrayed by Salmond and my teachers. This is a common complaint by students in most modern legal systems. Of course, I was naı̈ve, for no one in Oxford had claimed that what they were offering was in any way realistic. Brian Leiter cites a colleague as saying: “Anyone teaching constitutional law who discusses only the doctrine is guilty of educational malpractice” (Leiter 2003, citing Powe 2001). That was how I felt about Torts. But the context in England was different. When I complained, I was met with standard, complacent answers:

Comparative Anthropology of Law

This Article reviews the history and current status of Legal Anthropology, a subfield of the general field of Sociocultural Anthropology. It describes successive transformations in the anthropological study of law and law-like systems across cultures and through time.