ELECTIVE COURSE Spring 2012

LAW AND SOCIAL THEORY: ADVENTURES IN NORMATIVITY AND COERCION

Prof. Vik Kanwar

Hobbes claimed we have been able to exit the state of nature (unsociability or disorder) by creating a modern state which monopolizes violence and enforces a civil peace. Modern sociologists and anthropologists would say that this description is incomplete at best. Here, we will look beyond foundational myths of the state and bring into view continual negotiations of violence and morality in defining law and settling legal disputes. This course introduces law students to the main traditions of social theory, focusing particularly on how social thinkers understand the emergence and operations of law and legal institutions. Though case studies will span the globe, we will read a largely western canon of writers, albeit not the ones taught in most courses on jurisprudence and legal philosophy: Maine, Marx, Freud, Durkheim, Weber, Elias, Foucault, Bourdieu, Habermas, Luhmann, Ellickson, and Unger, all of whom track the emergence of modern society through the interplay of norms and force. These sociological understandings can be supplemented with the historical and anthropological accounts by Malinowski, Kantorowicz, Dumezil, Pospisil, Turner, Cohn, Geertz, Comaroff, Miller, and Scott, whose works track the emergence of forms of lawfulness present in state and non-state entities as, among other things, the codification of manners, forms of play, theatrical performance, the work of rumors, the formalization of magic, or the channelization of private wars. Through lectures and class discussions we will explore how these thinkers approached laws social forms and functions, its relationship to other social institutions, its underlying ideals, and its operative controls. The course is organized around a main theme of law-like authority emerging out of problems of order and meaning, which will in turn serve to introduce the main sociological theories of law and legal change, modernity and postmodernity, the rule of law, disciplinary society, moral authority, sovereignty, legal pluralism, cultural identity, conflict management, and third party roles in cross-cultural conflict. While we will focus primarily on the emergence or failure of the emergence of state authority, specific illustrations of the dynamics of norms and force may range from disputes and challenges arising in TV Westerns, civil wars, Icelandic blood feuds, Balinese cock fights, cricket matches, American supermarkets, Siberian pub brawls, and Indian auto accidents. The course does not presuppose prior knowledge of sociology or social theory.