AN479 Half Unit
Anthropology of Law and Human Rights
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Dr Andrea Pia
Availability
This course is compulsory on the MSc in Culture, Justice, and Environment. This course is available on the MRes in Anthropology, MSc in Anthropology and Development, MSc in China in Comparative Perspective, MSc in Social Anthropology and MSc in Social Anthropology (Religion in the Contemporary World). This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission.
Course content
The aim of this course is to introduce students to major developments and debates in legal anthropology across time and space. The first part of the course reflects on the origins and early developments of the discipline, including the legacies of colonialism and its impact on the development of customary law; the concept of legal pluralism; and the relationship between law, violence, and the state. The second part of the course explores selected themes and debates in contemporary legal anthropology, including anthropological engagements with human rights; the concept of property; and indigenous sovereignties. The final part of the course surveys emerging discussions around environmental and interspecies justice, punitivism, and the rights of nature.
Teaching
10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.
1 hours of lectures in the Spring Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.
Formative assessment
Essay (1500 words)
Students will have the opportunity to submit one formative essay of up to 1500 words during the course.
Students taking AN479 as an optional course will be informed of their formative submission deadline by email by the end of Week 4 of term. These students will receive feedback on their formative essays from the course teacher.
Students on the MSc Culture, Justince and Environment programme, for whom AN479 is a core course, will be informed of their formative submission deadline by their academic mentor early in term. These students will receive feedback on their formative essays from their academic mentor.
Indicative reading
Malinowski, B. 1924. Crime and Custom in Savage Society. New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld.
Roberts, S. and Comaroff, J. 1981. Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Foblets, M. Goodale, M. Sapignoli, M. and Zenker, O. (eds.) 2020. The Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. 2007. Law and Disorder in the Postcolony. Social Anthropology 15(2): 133-152.
Englund, Harry. 2006. Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Strathern, M. 2006. Losing (Out On) Intellectual Resources. In Pottage, A. and Mundy, M. Law, Anthropology, and the Constitution of the Social: Making Persons and Things, pp. 201-233. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Riles, A. 1998. Infinity within the brackets. American Ethnologist 25(3): 378-398.
Kirsch, S. 2012. Juridification of Indigenous Politics. In J. Eckert, B. Donahoe, C. Strümpell, and Z. Ö. Biner, eds. Law against the State: Ethnographic Forays into Law’s Transformations, pp. 23–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Assessment
Essay (100%, 3500 words) in Winter Term Week 4
Key facts
Department: Anthropology
Course Study Period: Autumn and Spring Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: 9
Average class size 2024/25: 9
Controlled access 2024/25: NoCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
Personal development skills
- Leadership
- Self-management
- Team working
- Problem solving
- Application of information skills
- Communication
- Commercial awareness
- Specialist skills