Marie-Claire Foblets is Director of the Law & Anthropology Department at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Honorary Professor of Law & Anthropology at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, both in Halle/Saale, Germany. Trained in law and anthropology, she taught law as well as social and cultural anthropology at the universities of Antwerp and Brussels and the Catholic University of Leuven, where she headed the Institute for Migration Law and Legal Anthropology, before joining the Max Planck Institute. She has also been a member of various networks of researchers focusing either on the study of the application of Islamic law in Europe or on law and migration in Europe, paying particular attention to family law. Her numerous publications include Family, Religion and Law: Cultural Encounters in Europe (Ashgate, 2014).

Mark Goodale is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Lausanne and Series Editor of Stanford Studies in Human Rights. He studies the intersections of culture, rights, ethics, and justice and is the author or editor of many volumes, including Anthropology and Law: A Critical Introduction (NYU Press, 2017), Human Rights at the Crossroads (ed., Oxford UP, 2013), Human Rights: An Anthropological Reader (ed., Blackwell, 2010), Surrendering to Utopia: An Anthropology of Human Rights (Stanford UP, 2009), and The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law Between the Global and the Local (coed. with Sally Engle Merry, Cambridge UP, 2007). He is currently writing a new book on justice, ideology, and practice in Bolivia based on nine years of ethnographic research.

Maria Sapignoli is an Assistant Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Milan and cooperation partner in the Law & Anthropology Department at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Sapignoli has spent the past ten years conducing ethnographic fieldwork in southern Africa as well as in several international organizations, including the United Nations, on topics of institutional reform, indigenous and minorities rights, social movements and advocacy and, ultimately, justice. Most recently she has started a new project that engages, critically and collaboratively, with the legal and social challenges and opportunities presented by the use of AI technologies and big data in society and in environmental governance. She is the author of Hunting Justice: Displacement, Law, and Activism in the Kalahari (Cambridge University Press 2018), as well as numerous articles and book chapters.

Olaf Zenker is Professor of Social Anthropology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Focusing on Southern Africa, Northern Ireland and Germany, his research has dealt with politico-legal issues such as conflict and identity formations, plural normative orders, statehood, bureaucracy and the rules of law. His publications include The State and the Paradox of Customary Law in Africa (coed. with Markus Hoehne, Routledge, 2018), South African Homelands as Frontiers: Apartheid's Loose Ends in the Postcolonial Era (coed. with Steffen Jensen, Routledge, 2016) and Transition and Justice: Negotiating the Terms of New Beginnings in Africa (coed. With Gerhard Anders, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015). He is currently working on a book on land restitution and the moral modernity of the new South African state.

• Global perspectives on law and anthropology


• 1: Carol Greenhouse: Social Control through Law: Critical afterlives


• 2: Martin Chanock: Anthropology, Law, and Empire: Foundations in context


• 3: Sindiso Mnisi Weeks: South African Legal Culture and its Dis/empowerment Paradox


• 4: Pratiksha Baxi: The Ethnographic Gaze on State Law in India


• 5: Paul Burke: The Anthropology of Indigenous Australia and Native Title Claims


• 6: Brian Thom: Encountering Indigenous Law in Canada


• 7: Florian Stammler, Aytalina Ivanova, and Brian Donahoe: Russian Legal Anthropology: From empirical ethnography to applied innovation


• 8: Armando Guevara Gil: Indigenous Peoples, Identity, and Free, Prior, and Informed Consultation in Latin America


• 9: Do Dom Kim: Rule of Law and Media in the Making of Legal Identity in Urban Southern China


• 10: Dominik Müller: Islam, Law, and the State


• 11: Keebet von Benda-Beckmann: Law and Anthropology in the Netherlands: From Adat Law School to Anthropology of Law


• 12: Frédéric Audren and Laetitia Guerlain: Legal Uses of Anthropology in France in the 19th and 20th centuries


• 13: Balacz Fekete: Legal Ethnology and Legal Anthropology in Hungary


• 14: Michele Graziadei: The Anthropology of European Law


• Recurring themes in law and anthropology


• 15: Elizabeth Mertz: Within and Beyond the Anthropology of Language and Law


• 16: Anne Griffiths: Law as an Enduring Concept: Space, time, and power


• 17: Fernanda Pirie: Legalism: Rules, categories, and texts


• 18: Günter Frankenberg: Legal Transfer


• 19: Thomas Duve: Legal Traditions


• 20: Baudouin Dupret: The Concept of Positive Law and its Relationship to Religion and Morality


• 21: Matthew Canfield: Property Regimes


• 22: Markus Böckenförde, Berihun Gebeye: Law and Development


• 23: Mark Goodale: Rights and Social Inclusion


• 24: Lynette Chua: Human Rights Activism, Sexuality, and Gender


• Anthropology in law and legal practice


• 25: Alison Dundes Renteln: The Cultural Defence


• 26: Andrzej Jakubowski: Cultural Rights and Cultural Heritage as a Global Concern


• 27: Faris Nasrallah: Alternative Dispute Resolution


• 28: Richard A. Wilson: Justice after Atrocity


• 29: Marie-Claire Foblets: Kinship through the Twofold Prism of Law and Anthropology


• 30: Dirk Hanschel, Elizabeth Steyn: Environmental Justice


• Anthropology at the limits of law


• 31: Felix-Anselm van Lier, Katrin Seidel: Constitution Making


• 32: Jennifer Burrell: Vigilantism and Security-making


• 33: Math Noortmann, Juliette Koning: The Normative Complexity of Private Security: Beyond legal regulation and stigmatization


• 34: Erica Bornstein: Humanitarian Interventions


• 35: Rita Kesselring: Inequality, Victimhood, and Redress


• 36: Katayoun Alidadi: Anti-discrimination Rules and Religious Minorities in the Workplace


• 37: Priscilla Claeys, Karine Peschard: Transnational Agrarian Movements, Food Sovereignty, and Legal Mobilization


• 38: Rachel Sieder: The Juridification of Politics


• 39: Meg Davis: The Persistence of Chinese Rights Defenders


• Current directions in law and anthropology


• 40: Sally Engle Merry: The Problem of Compliance and the Turn to Quantification


• 41: Bert Turner, Melanie Wiber: Law, Science, and Technologies


• 42: Olaf Zenker: Politics of Belonging


• 43: Katia Bianchini: Legal and Anthropological Approaches to International Refugee Law


• 44: Philipp Dann, Julia Eckert: Norm Creation Beyond the State


• 45: Didier Fassin: Critique of Punitive Reason


• 46: Maria Sapignoli, Ronald Niezen: Global Legal Institutions


• 47: Annelise Riles, Ralf Michaels: Law as Technique


• 48: Kamari Clarke: Emotion, Affect, and Law


• 49: Eve Darian-Smith: Legal Pluralism in Postcolonial, Postnational, and Postdemocratic Contexts