Legalism: Rules and Categories
Paul Dresch · Judith Scheele
Nov 2015 · Oxford University Press
Ebook
340
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
Mainstream historians in recent decades have often treated formal categories and rules as something to be 'used' by individuals, as one might use a stick or stone, and the gains of an earlier legal history are often needlessly set aside. Anthropologists, meanwhile, have treated rules as analytic errors and categories as an imposition by outside powers or by analysts, leaving a very thin notion of 'practice' as the stuff of social life. Philosophy of an older vintage, as well as the work of scholars such as Charles Taylor, provides fresh approaches when applied imaginatively to cases beyond the traditional ground of modern Europe and North America. Not only are different kinds of rules and categories open to examination, but the very notion of a rule can be explored more deeply. This volume approaches rules and categories as constitutive of action and hence of social life, but also as providing means of criticism and imagination. A general theoretical framework is derived from analytical philosophy, from Wittgenstein to his critics and beyond, and from recent legal thinkers such as Schauer and Waldron. Case-studies are presented from a broad range of periods and regions, from Amazonia via northern Chad, Tibet, and medieval Russia to the scholarly worlds of Roman law, Islam, and Classical India. As the third volume in the Legalism series, this collection draws on common themes that run throughout the first two volumes: Legalism: Anthropology and History and Legalism: Community and Justice, consolidating them in a framework that suggests a new approach to rule-bound systems.
About the author
Paul Dresch is an emeritus Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. His publications include Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen (1989), A History of Modern Yemen (2000), and The Rules of Barat (2006). He has co-edited volumes (with Pierre Bonte and Edouard Conte) on Islamic politics and kinship and (with James Piscatori) on the Arab Gulf. With Hannah Skoda he co-edited Legalism: Anthropology and History (2012). Judith Scheele is a Social Anthropologist and a Post-Doctoral Research fFellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Her publications include Village Matters: Knowledge, Politics and Community in Kabylia (2009) and Smugglers and Saints of the Sahara: Regional Connectivity in the Twentieth Century (2012). She has co-edited (with James McDougall) Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwest Africa (Indiana UP) and (with Fernanda Pirie) Legalism: Community and Justice (OUP, 2014).
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
