Anthropology of Law Workshop
26 – 28 April 2004, Birkbeck

This is one of a series of workshops arising out of an application by Anne Griffiths to the Economic and Social Research Council to fund six workshops under the title 'Developing Anthropology of Law in a Transnational World'. There are three workshops planned each year starting with the current academic year. Two of the six will be held in Edinburgh and there is additional funding from foundations for these. And two will be held at Sussex and two at Birkbeck. The theme which Anne has identified for the workshops for the first year is 'Governmentality, The State and Transnational Processes of Law' and the theme for the second year is 'Space, Territoriality and Time'.

In the application for funding to the ESRC Anne identified a wide range of issues which the workshops could or would be concerned with. Perhaps the predominant emphasis is on the 'transnational' and the 'global', some pointed concern being with the relationship between the 'global' and the 'local', with the challenging of notions of sovereignty and territoriality as foundational of the state, and with the reformulating of ideas of legal pluralism. The more situated concerns extend widely also. 'Transnational forms of law and ordering' are seen as emanating from a considerable diversity of organisations such as the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and the African Union. There is also some particular emphasis on international human rights, on indigenous peoples and minorities, and, more generally, on 'issues about race, class and gender'. As all of this will at least suggest, the workshop will be responsive to critical perspectives. Some subsidiary emphasis, doubtless imperative in exercises of this kind, in placed on possibly operative dimensions of these various concerns. Related to this, and quoting from the application to the ESRC, the seminars will 'include two representatives from the Department for International Development who have recently been employed to run the new human rights and governance division and a representative from the British Council who is working on governance issues that represent a new direction in the Council's approach to overseas development'.

The whole exercise is presented emphatically as one in which people from various disciplines will be involved and certainly not one confined to anthropologists, although the expectation is that there will be some regenerative effect on the anthropology of law. The application envisages about eighteen participants in each workshop with several of these speaking over the first two days and the last day being devoted to postgraduates. There is flexibility to these arrangements, however, and clearly that flexibility would extend to the detail which has to be filled in. That detail will respond to the participation and, especially, the papers offered. There would be no registration fees or other payments for any participant. The dates for the first Birkbeck workshop are Monday April 26 to Wednesday April 28, beginning in the middle of the day on the Monday and ending mid afternoon on the Wednesday.

This is just by way of a preliminary 'call' although in the circumstances it has had to be a rather belated one. So, it would be good to have expressions of interest sooner rather than later. As the event shapes up, information about it will be frequently distributed to people who have expressed interest in giving a paper or in attending. So, if you might be interested do please get in touch with:

Peter Fitzpatrick: peter.fitzpatrick@clickvision.co.uk