SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This article creates a coherent way to imagine the relationship between law and anthropology. It describes an analytical separation between three overlapping and interacting branches, aiming to present the relationship in a way that is instructive and programmatic. This article first highlights relevant methods and epistemologies of law and anthropology. Then it explores three central branches of anthropological-legal interaction, framed respectively as instrumentalization, co-construction, and critical reformulation. Ultimately, the article posits that the tensions between anthropology and law, including the (mis)appropriation of anthropology by law, can be theorized and repositioned as a means of more critically understanding how power and culturally-informed perspectives coordinate the production of legal knowledge.