Law, Anthropology, and the Constitution of the Social: Making Persons and Things (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society)

This collection of interdisciplinary essays explores how persons and things - the central elements of the social - are fabricated by legal rituals and institutions. The contributors, legal and anthropological theorists alike, focus on a set of specific institutional and ethnographic contexts, and some unexpected and thought-provoking analogies emerge from this intellectual encounter between law and anthropology. For example, contemporary anxieties about the legal status of the biotechnological body seem to resonate with the questions addressed by ancient Roman law in its treatment of dead bodies. The analogy between copyright and the transmission of intangible designs in Melanesia suddenly makes western images of authorship seem quite unfamiliar. A comparison between law and laboratory science presents the production of legal artefacts in new light. These studies are of particular relevance at a time when law, faced with the inventiveness of biotechnology, finds it increasingly difficult to draw the line between persons and things. The product of a collaboration between leading theorists in law and anthropology, this book develops an innovative analysis of legal practices. Specifically, it focuses on how law constructs persons and things, and develops new approaches to the question of ownership. These approaches are of particular value in understanding the cultural impact of biotechnology. At the same time, they illuminate the history of Western law, and develop thought-provoking comparisons between Western law and Islamic law. This book is the product of a collaboration between leading theorists in law and anthropology. It develops an innovative analysis of legal practices. Specifically, it focuses on how law produces persons and things, and develops new approaches to the question of ownership Each of the contributions to this book addresses the question of how legal techniques fabricate persons and things.

focuses On How Law Produces Persons And Things, And Develops New Approaches To The Question Of Ownership.