Reckoning with Law in Excess

Mark Goodale is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology and Director of the Laboratory of Cultural and Social Anthropology (LACS) at the University of Lausanne. One of the pioneers in the anthropology of human rights, he is the author or editor of a number of books on law, human rights, and justice, including Reinventing Human Rights (2022). Olaf Zenker is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. His research deals with political and legal issues such as statehood, bureaucracy, the rule of law, normative pluralities, inequality and justice. His latest book publications include Beyond Expropriation without Compensation: Law, Land Reform and Redistributive Justice in South Africa (2024).

• Introduction: social and political transformation within, against, and beyond the Law Mark Goodale and Olaf Zenker; 1. Reckoning with transformative constitutionalism: land reform, expropriation without compensation and the iconic indexicality of post-apartheid South Africa Olaf Zenker; 2. Beyond here lies somethin': juristocratic reckonings in two narratives of legalities Lynette J. Chua; 3. After constitutionalism: current pathways of legal domination Julia Eckert and Kiri Santer; 4. Re-presenting rights: food sovereignty and the struggle for postliberal democratic governance Matthew Canfield; 5. Translocal dilemmas: social mobilization and justice-seeking beyond the boundaries of Law Mark Goodale; 6. The enduring logic of mercy: humanitarianism and the eclipse of human rights Arzoo Osanloo; 7. Law and the afterlives of Utopia: reckoning with pasts and futures in Berlin's housing movement Nitzan Shoshan; 8. Plurinational juristocracy and rights from below at Bolivia's gas frontier Penelope Anthias; 9. Law-washing the transitional state: the practice of property restitution in post-war Kosovo Agathe Mora; 10. After judicialization? law, authoritarian regression, and the defense of indigenous life-worlds in Guatemala Rachel Sieder; 11. 'A dead child is better than a missing one': religiosity, technology and aspirations for justice beyond law Kamari Clarke.