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‘Reconciliation is the foundation!’: Courts of Justice and Unofficial Reconciliation Practices in Algeria and Sudan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Yazid Ben Hounet*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale, France
*
Yazid Ben Hounet, Laboratoire d’ Anthropologie Sociale, 52 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, 75005 Paris, France. Email: yazid.ben-hounet@ehess.fr

Abstract

This paper analyzes the interrelations of the customary practices of sulh, the reconciliation, and the work of courts of justice in Algeria and Sudan. It focuses on the idea that the courts’ work partly integrates the tradition of sulh – a practice grounded in custom and in Islamic normativities. The plurality of actors as well as of places – the place of the crime, the place of reconciliation, the court of justice – is taken into account to describe the interplay of official law enforcement and customary practices.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2015

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