The State And The Paradox Of Customary Law In Africa

Author : Olaf Zenker,Markus Virgil Hoehne
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 395 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2018-02-02
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781317014799

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The State and the Paradox of Customary Law in Africa by Olaf Zenker,Markus Virgil Hoehne Pdf

Customary law and traditional authorities continue to play highly complex and contested roles in contemporary African states. Reversing the common preoccupation with studying the impact of the post/colonial state on customary regimes, this volume analyses how the interactions between state and non-state normative orders have shaped the everyday practices of the state. It argues that, in their daily work, local officials are confronted with a paradox of customary law: operating under politico-legal pluralism and limited state capacity, bureaucrats must often, paradoxically, deal with custom – even though the form and logic of customary rule is not easily compatible and frequently incommensurable with the form and logic of the state – in order to do their work as a state. Given the self-contradictory nature of this endeavour, officials end up processing, rather than solving, this paradox in multiple, inconsistent and piecemeal ways. Assembling inventive case studies on state-driven land reforms in South Africa and Tanzania, the police in Mozambique, witchcraft in southern Sudan, constitutional reform in South Sudan, Guinea’s long durée of changing state engagements with custom, and hybrid political orders in Somaliland, this volume offers important insights into the divergent strategies used by African officials in handling this paradox of customary law and, somehow, getting their work done.

Author : Berihun Adugna Gebeye
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2021
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780192893925

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A Theory of African Constitutionalism by Berihun Adugna Gebeye Pdf

A Theory of African Constitutionalism asks and seeks to answer why we need a new theoretical framework for African constitutionalism and how this could offer us better theoretical and practical tools with which to understand, improve, and assess African constitutionalism on its own terms. By locating constitutional studies in Africa within the experiences, interactions, and contestations of power and governance beginning in precolonial times, the book presents the development and transformation of African constitutional systems across time and place, along with the attendant constitutional designs and practices ranging from the nature and operation of the African state to its vertical and horizontal government structures, to its constitutional rights regime. This title offers both a theoretically and comparatively rich, historically and contextually informed, and temporally and spatially extensive account of the nature, travails, and incremental successes of African constitutionalism with detailed case studies from Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa. A Theory of African Constitutionalism provides scholars, policymakers, governments, and constitution builders in Africa and beyond with new insights for reimagining the purpose, substance, and scope of constitutions and constitutionalism.

Author : Ghislain Otis,Jean Leclair,Sophie Thériault
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2022-07-15
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781000609127

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Applied Legal Pluralism by Ghislain Otis,Jean Leclair,Sophie Thériault Pdf

This book offers a comparative study of the management of legal pluralism. The authors describe and analyse the way state and non-state legal systems acknowledge legal pluralism – defined as the coexistence of a state and non-state legal systems in the same space in respect of the same subject matter for the same population - and determine its consequences for their own purposes. The book sheds light on the management processes deployed by legal systems in Africa, Canada, Central Europe and the South Pacific, the multitudinous factors circumscribing the action of systems and individuals with respect to legal pluralism, and the effects of management strategies and processes on systems as well as on individuals. The book offers fresh practical and analytical insight on applied legal pluralism, a fast-growing field of scholarship and professional practice. Drawing from a wealth of original empirical data collected in several countries by a multilingual and multidisciplinary team, it provides a thorough account of the intricate patterns of state and non-state practices with respect to legal pluralism. As the book’s non-prescriptive approach helps to uncover and evaluate several biases or assumptions on the part of policy makers, scholars and development agencies regarding the nature and the consequences of legal pluralism, it will appeal to a wide range of scholars and practitioners in law, development studies, political science and social sciences.

Author : Pnina Werbner,Richard Werbner
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2021-12-29
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781000519013

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African Customary Justice by Pnina Werbner,Richard Werbner Pdf

This book presents an important ethnographic and theoretical advance in legal anthropological scholarship by interrogating customary law, customary courts and legal pluralism in sub-Saharan Africa. It highlights the vitality and continued relevance of customary justice at a time when customary courts have waned or even disappeared in many postcolonial African nations. Taking Botswana as a casestudy from in-depth fieldwork over a fifty-year period, the book shows, the ‘customary’ is robustly enduring, central to settling interpersonal disputes and constitutive of the local as well as the national public ethics. Customary law continues to be constitutionally protected, authorised by the country’s past as an authentic, viable legacy, from the British colonial period of indirect rule to the postcolonial state’s present development as a highly bureaucratised democracy. Along with a theoretical overview of the underlying issues for the anthropology and sociology of law, the book documents customary law as living law in the context of legal pluralism. It takes a legal realist approach and highlights the need to pay close attention to the lived experience of justice and its role in the production of legal subjectivities. The book will be valuable to Africanists but also, more broadly, to social scientists, social historians and socio-legal scholars with interests in law and social change, public ethics and personal morality, and the intersection of politics and judicial decision making.

Author : Paul Schiff Berman
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 1133 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2020-09-24
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780197516744

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The Oxford Handbook of Global Legal Pluralism by Paul Schiff Berman Pdf

"Abstract Global legal pluralism has become one of the leading analytical frameworks for understanding and conceptualizing law in the twenty-first century"--

Author : Achim Gutowski,Nazar Mohamed Hassan,Tobias Knedlik,Chantal Marie Ngo Tong,Karl Wholmuth
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 582 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Economic development
ISBN : 9783643961730

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Science, Technology and Innovation Policies for Inclusive Growth in Africa by Achim Gutowski,Nazar Mohamed Hassan,Tobias Knedlik,Chantal Marie Ngo Tong,Karl Wholmuth Pdf

Author : Andreas Zeman
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2023-09-18
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9783110765052

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The Winds of History by Andreas Zeman Pdf

Author : Katrin Seidel,Hatem Elliesie
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2020-06-09
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781000060966

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Normative Spaces and Legal Dynamics in Africa by Katrin Seidel,Hatem Elliesie Pdf

African legal realities reflect an intertwining of transnational, regional, and local normative frameworks, institutions, and practices that challenge the idea of the sovereign territorial state. This book analyses the novel constellations of governance actors and conditions under which they interact and compete. The work follows a spatial approach as the emphasis on normative spaces opens avenues to better understand power relations, processes of institutionalization, and the production of legitimacy and normativities themselves. Selected case studies from thirteen African countries deliver new empirical data and grounded insights from, and into, particular normative spaces. The individual chapters explore the interrelationships between various normative orders, diverse actors, and their influences. The encounters between different normative understandings and actors open up space and multiple forums for negotiating values. The authors analyse how different doctrines, institutions, and practices are constructed, contested, negotiated, and adapted in translation processes and thereby continuously reshape Africa’s multidimensional normative spaces. The volume delivers nuanced views of jurisprudence in Africa and presents an excellent resource for scholars and students of anthropology, legal geography, legal studies, sociology, political sciences, international relations, African studies, and anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of how legal constellations are shaped by unreflected assumptions about the state and the rule of law.

Author : Jeremy Gould
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2023-03-24
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780429581649

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Postcolonial Legality: Law, Power and Politics in Zambia by Jeremy Gould Pdf

This book interrogates the ideology and practices of liberal constitutionalism in the Zambian postcolony. The analysis focuses on the residual political and governmental effects of an imperial form of power, embodied in the person of the republican president, termed here prerogativism. Through systematic, long-term ethnographic engagement with Zambian constitutionalist activists – lawyers, judges and civic leaders – the study examines how prerogativism has shaped the postcolonial political landscape and limited the possibilities of constitutional liberalism. This is revealed in the ways that repeated efforts to reform the constitution have sidelined popular participation and thus failed to address the deep divide between a small elite stratum (from which the constitutional activists are drawn) and the marginalized masses of the population. Along the way, the study documents the intimate interpenetration of political and legal action and examines how prerogativism delimits the political engagements of elite actors. Special attention is given to the reluctance of legal activists to engage with popular politics and to the conservative ethos that undermines efforts to pursue a jurisprudence of transformational constitutionalism in the findings of the Constitutional Court. The work contributes to the rising interest in applying socio-legal analysis to the statutory domain in postcolonial jurisdictions. It offers a pioneering attempt to deconstruct the amorphous and ambivalent assemblage of ideas and practices related to constitutionalism through detailed ethnographic interrogation. It will appeal to scholars, students and practitioners with an interest in theorizing challenges to political liberalism in postcolonial contexts, as well as in rethinking the methodological toolbox of socio-legal analysis.

Author : Mathias Siems,Po Jen Yap
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 1362 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2024-01-31
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781108906876

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The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Law by Mathias Siems,Po Jen Yap Pdf

Comparative law is a common subject-matter of research and teaching in many universities around the world, and the twenty-first century has aptly been termed 'the era of comparative law'. This Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Law presents a truly global perspective of comparative law today. The contributors are drawn from all parts of the world to provide different perspectives on how we understand the 'law' and how it operates in practice. In substance, the Handbook contains 36 chapters covering a broad range of topics, divided under the following headings: 'Methods of Comparative Law' (Part I), 'Legal Families and Geographical Comparisons' (Part II), 'Central Themes in Comparative Law' (Part III); and 'Comparative Law beyond the State' (Part IV).

Author : Koen De Feyter,Gamze E. Türkelli,Stéphanie de Moerloose
Publisher : Edward Elgar Publishing
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2021-01-29
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781788117975

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Encyclopedia of Law and Development by Koen De Feyter,Gamze E. Türkelli,Stéphanie de Moerloose Pdf

This comprehensive Encyclopedia is an indispensable resource in the area of law and development. Bringing together more than 80 entries, the Encyclopedia spans a variety of approaches, contextualised histories, recent developments and forward-looking insights into the role of law in development. It is an invaluable reference point for scholars seeking to engage with issues at the intersection of law and development from both within and outside of the legal field, as well as a thorough but succinct overview for post-graduate students.

Author : Jonas Bens
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2022-05-19
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781316512876

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The Sentimental Court by Jonas Bens Pdf

Analyses how atmospheres and sentiments shape the workings of international criminal law in (post-)colonial Africa and beyond.

Author : Steffen Jensen,Olaf Zenker
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 166 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2018-02-02
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781317212096

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South African Homelands as Frontiers by Steffen Jensen,Olaf Zenker Pdf

This book explores what happened to the homelands – in many ways the ultimate apartheid disgrace – after the fall of apartheid. The nine chapters contribute to understanding the multiple configurations that currently exist in areas formerly declared "homelands" or "Bantustans". Using the concept of frontier zones, the homelands emerge as areas in which the future of the South African postcolony is being renegotiated, contested and remade with hyper-real intensity. This is so because the many fault lines left over from apartheid (its loose ends, so to speak) – between white and black; between different ethnicities; between rich and poor; or differentiated by gender, generation and nationality; between "traditions" and "modernities" or between wilderness and human habitation – are particularly acute and condensed in these so-called "communal areas". Hence, the book argues that it is particularly in these settings that the postcolonial promise of liberation and freedom must face its test. As such, the book offers highly nuanced and richly detailed analyses that go to the heart of the diverse dilemmas of post-apartheid South Africa as a whole, but simultaneously also provides in condensed form an extended case study on the predicaments of African postcoloniality in general. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Southern African Studies.

Author : Pierre, Jon,Peters, B. Guy
Publisher : Edward Elgar Publishing
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2021-09-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781784712136

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Advanced Introduction to Governance by Pierre, Jon,Peters, B. Guy Pdf

Jon Pierre and Guy Peters expertly guide the reader through governance – one of the most widely used terms in political science – and its differing interpretations, with comprehensive discussion of the key issues covering global as well as local level governance. A detailed look into what constitutes ‘good governance’, whether produced by a government or by more informal means, is also explored.

Author : Jessica Johnson,George Hamandishe Karekwaivanane
Publisher : Ohio University Press
Page : 342 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2018-10-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780821446485

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Pursuing Justice in Africa by Jessica Johnson,George Hamandishe Karekwaivanane Pdf

Pursuing Justice in Africa focuses on the many actors pursuing many visions of justice across the African continent—their aspirations, divergent practices, and articulations of international and vernacular idioms of justice. The essays selected by editors Jessica Johnson and George Hamandishe Karekwaivanane engage with topics at the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship across a wide range of disciplines. These include activism, land tenure, international legal institutions, and postconflict reconciliation. Building on recent work in sociolegal studies that foregrounds justice over and above concepts such as human rights and legal pluralism, the contributors grapple with alternative approaches to the concept of justice and its relationships with law, morality, and rights. While the chapters are grounded in local experiences, they also attend to the ways in which national and international actors and processes influence, for better or worse, local experiences and understandings of justice. The result is a timely and original addition to scholarship on a topic of major scholarly and pragmatic interest. Contributors: Felicitas Becker, Jonathon L. Earle, Patrick Hoenig, Stacey Hynd, Fred Nyongesa Ikanda, Ngeyi Ruth Kanyongolo, Anna Macdonald, Bernadette Malunga, Alan Msosa, Benson A. Mulemi, Holly Porter, Duncan Scott, Olaf Zenker.