Anthropology as Critical Legal Intervention? Instrumentalization, Co-Construction and Critical Reformulation in the Relationship between Anthropology and International Law

Abstract:     
This article creates a 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.
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Keywords: International law, anthropology, production of knowledge

JEL Classification: K33

Accepted Paper Series