(Doctorate in Anthropology, CIESAS 2017-21)
This doctoral course offers students a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to analyzing law and justice as plural, de-centered constructions that are often in tension with hegemonic forms of law. It focuses on the material and discursive practices of justice in the plural and the production of distinct legal subjectivities by individual and collective actors. It addresses debates about justice as the recognition of structural, colonial, racial and gendered forms of violence, and considers the complex dynamics between law and justice.
The course is divided into three parts. The first examines key anthropological debates on human rights and justice, including intersectional perspectives, debates on ontological difference and its role in conceptualizing justice and questioning hegemonic frames of “transitional justice”. The second part focuses on issues of memory and violence, considering the legal construction of “victims”; violence, gender and law; and the challenges posed to dominant theories of justice and human rights by the suffering of migrants and displaced peoples. The third part addresses issues of ethnic diversity, racism and justice, analyzing indigenous autonomies and justice, the dilemmas that occur when other forms of knowledge enter the terrain of hegemonic law, and anthropological contributions to debates on reparations.