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- Convenors:
-
Agata Hummel
(University of Warsaw)
Geoffrey Hughes (University of Exeter)
Alexandra Oancă (KU Leuven)
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- Discussant:
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Jill Alpes
(Ghent University)
Short Abstract:
Policy and law are both conceptualised by anthropology as a prism through which socio-political transformations can be studied. The aim of the panel is to explore the differences, similarities and entanglements between processes of doing and undoing law and policy, both conceptually and empirically.
Long Abstract:
Policy and law are both tools for doing and undoing social reality. They intertwine in power relations and processes from the global to local levels. The construction of a division between policy and law is often pivotal in the assertion of political and moral claims about intentionality, freedom, rights, compulsion and culpability.
Anthropology of public policy conceptualises policy as a prism through which socio-political transformations can be studied. The field of inquiry is a socio-political space articulated through power relations and systems of governance. Anthropology of law is also often deployed with an assumption that law provides insights into socio-political transformations with a similar concern for the emergence of governance and states. With the possible exception of ‘customary’ law studies, law is usually seen as objectified, inert, and subject to self-interested manipulation. In contrast, policy seems like pure intentionality in its attempts (however futile) to instrumentalize law.
The aim of the panel is to explore the differences, similarities and entanglements between law and policy, both conceptually and empirically. What is the relation between these two concepts and subfields of anthropology? Can policies lead to new/revised laws? How can laws influence policies, and what institutional mechanisms channel or inhibit these transformations? How policies and laws are the arena of negotiation of rules, classifications and categories? Can both be mechanisms of emancipation and exclusion? Finally, this panel considers how the boundary between law and policy is constructed, policed, contested, and negotiated in different socio-cultural and historical contexts and in anthropology itself.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 18 July, 2024, -Nathan McAllister (University of St Andrews)
Paper short abstract:
My paper will discuss how the lived role village courts magistrates take in Duau, Papua New Guinea extend far beyond those assigned to them by the state. They act in a manner analogous to prestigious kula players, serving as intermediaries that connect local villagers to powerful state actors.
Paper long abstract:
My paper will discuss discrepancies between the stated goal of Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Village Courts Act, and the actual duties of the local legal experts it creates. This policy began as an effort to make space for the varied ‘customary laws’ of PNG’s diverse communities, recruiting its magistrates from knowledgeable locals. They are instructed to only hear mediations and hold court on matters that fall within the jurisdiction of customary law. My participants in Duau interpret the responsibilities of its magistrates far more broadly, using them as intermediaries who connect their community to the external world of government and business. For instance, if someone needs to relay a message to the police or any other government organisation, they will go to the magistrate who will help craft a letter. They even assist in communications with non-governmental entities, such as gold buyers who have business deals with local villagers. These unofficial secondary duties present magistrates in a manner that is analogous to senior participants in kula exchange. Kula elders make connections with other islands; magistrates do so for government.
Through this example my paper will demonstrate the potential transformations of policy as it is transmitted from the national level to be implemented as law in rural peripheries. It will argue that far from law and its professionals being the instrument through which policy is enforced in a top-down manner, Duau magistrates are highly pragmatic actors (Demian 2023), who include within their duties those of analogous customary roles.
Miria Gambardella (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Paper short abstract:
Through the eyes of antisystemic movements, informality can become an analytical tool to go beyond dualistic conceptualizations of legality. Investigating initiatives that openly challenge the state order, allows to articulate everyday resistance within larger scale hegemonic processes.
Paper long abstract:
Recent debates within informality studies have been attempting to go beyond dualistic conceptualizations opposing state to non-state actors to delineate the limits of what can be legally considered acceptable. Despite these efforts, policy-oriented perspectives continue to reduce informal practices to a grey area of illicit activities needing to be eliminated, controlled or – at best – channeled into compatible and foreseeable rules and policies. Institutions can openly foster informal practices to allow citizens' participation in the socio-political life of their country. Processes referred to as transition to formality are seen by policy specialists and intergovernmental organizations as valuable contributions towards future government strategies and sustainable innovations. Informality can avoid official rejection when compatible with rulers’ interests and power dynamics, when capable of providing politically correct business opportunities: its existence is allowed as long as it’s possible to subsume it within neoliberal logics.
Literature accounting for informal practices as forms of resistance apply Scott’s notion of infrapolitics to describe reactions to authoritarian regimes, corruption, institutional ineffectiveness or behaviors motivated by individual moralities and standardized societal norms. Informality studies applied to political protests provided states with understandings that could be used to contain, prevent and even neutralize oppositions. The aim of this paper is to investigate initiatives that collectively and openly challenge the state order, their potential to promote change and build political subjectivities. Through the eyes of radical left, antisystemic movements, informality can become an analytical tool able to reconceptualize and articulate everyday forms of resistance within larger scale hegemonic processes.
Monika Weissensteiner
Paper short abstract:
This contribution reflects upon policy and law within ongoing reconfigurations of governance, by taking as empirical case the Schengen-area. Specifically, this paper “studies through” a core symbol of Schengen, namely the absence of border control at internal Schengen borders.
Paper long abstract:
This contribution reflects upon policy and law within ongoing reconfigurations of governance, by taking as empirical case the Schengen-area, today’s EU Area of Freedom, Security. Specifically, this paper “studies through” a core symbol of Schengen, namely the absence of border control at internal Schengen borders.
The absence of border control at internal Schengen borders figures as core symbol of the European integration process. It is at the core of Schengen policy and regulated in law by the Schengen Borders Code. At the same time, recent years have not only seen a more frequent introduction of border control measures by member states, but also a call for an enhancement of ‘alternative measures’ in policy, reflected also in ongoing legislative reforms. In my presentation I argue for the fruitful entanglement of the methodological approach of “studying through” in policy research (Wright and Reinhold 2011) and of anthropological approaches to legal pluralism, which provide an analytical lens attentive to temporality and space, law-as-text and law-as-practice (e.g. Benda-Beckmann, Benda-Beckmann). While EU law (Graziadei 2022) and state-sanctioned law enforcement have been less frequent objects of study in legal anthropology, both fields of inquiry and their entanglement provide valuable insights into an anthropology of Europe and beyond.
Agata Hummel (University of Warsaw) Paula Escribano (University of Barcelona)
Paper short abstract:
This paper analysis the changes in perception and function of on farm pig-slaughter in the light of the application of agricultural and sanitary legal norms in Catalonia, Spain. The study shows how the legal confusion in the interpretation of laws reflects and promotes socio-cultural change.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analysis the changes in perception and function of on farm pig-slaughter in the light of the application of agricultural and sanitary legal norms in Catalonia, Spain, as well as the Common Agricultural Policy. The aim is to demonstrate how this rural practice, which was widely accepted as "normal" forty years ago, is gradually disappearing and is now viewed as cruel anachronism by the majority of society. Additionally the paper explores how the practice has been marginalised, made invisible and criminalised by state institutions. The focus is on the shift from perceiving on-farm pig slaughter as legal to considering it prohibited due to a lack of appropriate regulations, and on how the legal confusion around this practice has been constructed. The study of laws, regulations, their interpretation, enforcement and social reception helps us to understand how public policies reflect and, at the same time, promote (not necessarily intentionally) socio-cultural change.
Inspired by Silbey’s argument that constitutive/cultural analysis of legal consciousness helps to describe processes by which “law contributes to the articulation of meanings and values in daily life” we want to analyse how law, legality and public policies relate to each other in the process of socio-cultural change. If we understand the law and legality as part of public policy conceptualized as dispositive, in the interpretative approach, the analysis of plurality of narratives about legality can shed lite on the social life of public policies, and therefore on socio-cultural tendencies in which the norms are developed.