Rules of Law and Laws of Ruling: On the Governance of Law

Offering an anthropological perspective, this volume explores the changing relations between law and governance, examining how changes in the structure of governance affect the relative social significance of law within situations of legal pluralism. The authors argue that there has been a re-regulation rather than a de-regulation, propagated by a plurality of regulative authorities and this re-regulation is accompanied by an increasing ideological dominance of rights talk and juridification of conflict. Drawing on insights into such processes, this volume explores the extent to which law is used both as a constitutive legitimation of governance and as the medium through which governance processes take place. Highlighting some of the paradoxes and the unintended consequences of these regulating processes and the ensuing dynamics, Rules of Law and Laws of Ruling will be a valuable resource for researchers and students working in the areas of legal anthropology and governance.

Professor Franz von Benda-Beckmann is joint Head of the Project Group on Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. He is Honorary Professor for Ethnology at the University of Leipzig, and Honorary Professor for Legal Pluralism at the University of Halle. Keebet von Benda-Beckmann is joint Head of the Project Group on Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and Professor in Anthropology of Law, Faculty of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Law & Society Association. Julia Eckert is Associate Professor and Head of Research Group, in the Project Group on Legal Pluralism, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Her interests are in the areas of anthropology of modern state organisation, legal anthropology, group conflict, collective identities, nationalism, democracy.