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- Convenors:
-
Raluca Bianca Roman
(Queen's University Belfast)
Sarah Bennison (St Andrews University)
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- Stream:
- Evidence
- Sessions:
- Thursday 1 April, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the anthropological significance, political relevance, and the theoretical/methodological challenges of community-focused legal archives. In doing so, the panel seeks to address the issue of representation and responsibility, through an analysis of 'paperwork' as 'patchwork'
Long Abstract:
What are the challenges faced by anthropologists working with legal texts at the community or ethnic-group level? Who speaks for whom within such spaces and how can the anthropologist account for all voices while considering the historically contextualised nature of such materials? This panel aims to explore the anthropological significance of community-focused legal archives (legal letters, lawsuits, statutes, petitions and other normative inscriptive media), particularly in contexts in which such materials were produced in times prior to the 'ethnographic present'. Furthermore, the panel seeks to address questions of power, identity construction, ethnicity and indigeneity in official domains which aspire to be inclusive in their representation of all members of the represented group yet are often essentialising and selective in their representation. Finally, it aims to look at the ways in which we can adequately account for the common yet methodologically challenging presence of self-editing, additions/corrections, in-text disagreement(s). In other words, what does the evolving, amended, and at times silenced nature of these 'legal' texts tell us about the constructed, politically-charged nature of community 'issues' and how does authorship translate into issues of representation? We invite abstracts from anthropologists and interdisciplinary scholars working on these issues, from a diversity of ethnographic contexts. Papers concerning the construction of categories (i.e. ethnicity, community, nation, etc.) within legal documents and their importance in the shaping of the ethnographic moment are particularly welcome. We also encourage reflexive engagements concerning not only the challenges but the potential resolutions concerning the anthropological value of such materials.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 1 April, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Drawing on the U.S. BGEP Act and the legal documents of three related court cases, this paper argues that the Federal regulation of eagle hunting and procurement reproduces a settler biopolitic where the interspecies and inter-artefactual collide with questions of justice and responsibility.
Paper long abstract:
The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (16 U.S.C. 668-668d) prohibits the possession, killing, molestation or taking of any bald and golden eagles and their parts. Violation of the Act can result in fines and imprisonment. Native Americans from Federally recognised tribes can, under the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, apply for a permit to own eagle part objects. Yet the legal outcomes of the BGEPA are rarely straightforward but are rather suffused with the potent power of the 'American Eagle' as a national symbol, with such symbolisation bleeding into systems of governance and judicial process. Exploring the web of affects of the Act through ethnographic and sociopolitical readings of three related court cases - Saenz v DOI, U.S. v Antoine, and U.S v Friday- this paper examines how U.S. settler governmentality serves to curtail and prohibit American Indian religious freedoms. When extrapolating the nuanced elements of the Act in court proceedings, governmentality can be seen to reinforce settler colonial notions of tribal citizenship and borders. Examining the legal archive alongside ethnographic material, this paper argues that the Federal regulation of eagle hunting, possession, and procurement can reproduce a settler biopolitic where the interspecies and inter-artefactual collide with questions of justice and responsibility. While the archive provides substantive data to suggest a heightened level of legal surveillance this paper considers the theoretical, methodological, and ethical challenges of using settler colonial theory to analyse legal texts where complex considerations for Indigenous sovereignty come to the fore.
Paper short abstract:
Analyzing community-legal archives is challenging where State monopolies are disputed. Guerrillas controlled territory exercising violence and regulating communities’ daily life. I explore blurred governances through handbooks assembling legal notions, community rules, and guerrilla orders.
Paper long abstract:
Modern states control the monopoly of violence, justice and order. But ¿What happened when alternative groups, besides the States, hold these monopolies? Colombia´s guerrilla FARC exercised governance in southern areas of the country using doses of violence and “bastard justices” to regulate the day-today life of communities. In FARC areas of influence, community-based level handbooks known as “Cartillas comunitarias” set forbidden behaviors within communities. A social leader mentioned: “FARC´s punishments worked as those of our parents. First, they forgive the kids. Second, they conciliate with them. Third, they receive physical punishment. The same applied for FARC´s justice. When someone broke the rules, we send them to FARC and they applied timely justice”. Relationships between guerrilla and communities are blurring. Usually varied from ecological landscapes, politico-military interests, and the presence or absence of the State. I would like to explain the challenges during my ethnographic in Colombian Amazon basin trying to understand FARC mechanisms to control population and territory. During fieldwork, I had access to community-handbooks produced by “Juntas de Acción Comunal” as hybrid legal byproducts. At some point these documents blend state-legal notions, community rules and guerrilla orders. I would like to explore the blurring area of ordinary concepts of power, identity and state construction to disentangle the production of these documents. I will focus on FARC´s Combatientes del Yarí handbook contrasted with interviews and ethnographic work in southern departments of Colombia (2017-2020). In those places governances are blurred and community handbooks pose challenges for legal-community archive analysis.
Paper short abstract:
In early colonial trials, Andean communities suing their corrupt encomenderos sometimes narrated their testimony from khipus (knotted-string records). The paper assesses the challenges encountered by digital analysis of surviving evidentiary khipu transcriptions, both individually and in aggregate.
Paper long abstract:
The decades following the Spanish conquest of the Inka Empire witnessed the rise of community litigation, in which Andean claimants sought compensatory damages from the estates of their corrupt encomenderos. In arguing their cases before the Spanish court, communities sometimes called on khipus—the yet-undeciphered knotted-string recording devices of the Andes—which were narrated by native cord keepers, translated by Spanish lenguas and committed to writing by Spanish scribes. The surviving court transcripts which contain their data have been digitized and syntactically annotated by the author, raising the possibility of aggregate computational analysis of "paper khipus." Since paper khipus have previously been studied only individually or in small groups, the paper considers the challenges and opportunities raised by engaging with this compiled legal archive at multiple scales—from the close reading of individual testimony to whole-corpus studies of linguistic patterns. Both approaches constitute promising inroads toward khipu decipherment. Yet, which silences emerge when studying khipu narrations in contexts increasingly abstracted from the conditions of their original production (transcribed, digitized, aggregated)? Have Andean community testimonies survived this tripartite translation? It is argued that the multi-scale analysis of paper khipus—analogue and digital, close and distant—charts a path forward in detecting indigenous categories buried in Spanish documents. Although studying an Andean cord-keeping tradition by aggregating its individual manifestations faces important trade-offs, I suggest that the spectrum of approaches inspired by these "mestizo" legal archives promises to make early-colonial community litigation—and the khipus which supported it—less distant than ever before.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the 1612 petition of Roma blacksmiths of Seville's Triana neighborhood. These families were active participants in Seville society yet faced the same discrimination as every Caló in Spain. Here, these families negotiate their identities in opposition to Spain's definition.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will focus on the 1612 petition of the Calé[1] blacksmiths of Castilla Street in Seville's Triana neighborhood. Documents like this one are rare, especially in the archives of Seville. However it is one of the earliest illustrations of Calé blacksmithing communities, prominent in the cultural record of Triana. These seven families petition the Spanish Crown for permission continue their tradition of blacksmithing which became illegal for Roma in 1611. Despite generations of service to king and community, these blacksmiths suddenly faced a very real threat to their very existence. Their response is to join together to contest the identity imposed upon them through Spanish legislation since 1499. "We are not gitanos," they argue, "because they are vagrants without community, homes, or trade." They and their grandfathers before them, in contrast, have owned homes and shops on Castilla street since 1502. The Calé are often assumed to have been on the margins of society yet these families show a different reality. This petition and the parish records which further document the community tells the story of church-going members of Santa Ana in Triana, who contributed to Seville's economy though a highly skilled trade. Furthermore they were aware of the legislation that targeted them specifically and savvy enough to use it to their advantage. This petition is a clear example of Calé families constructing and negotiating their own identities in opposition to Spain's definition. [1] Spanish Roma. Calé is plural, Caló singular