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Law and Anthropology: Notes on Interdisciplinary Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Klaus-Friedrich Koch
Klaus-Friedrich Koch*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Almost two decades ago Reisman (1951) published an article in which he criticized the lawyer for his ethnocentric view of law and invited the anthropologist to study the organization and functions of American legal institutions and the activities of lawyers. Very few anthropologists have done so. In fact, few anthropologists have made the general study of law their special area of research. In this country, there are perhaps a dozen or two. However, the field is now beginning to attract more people. As a look at the tables of contents and the indexes of ethnographic monographs published in recent years will show, most anthropologists still neglect to report on the law of the people they have studied—yet rarely fail to have chapters on social organization, economy, religion, and the remaining traditional categories with which we “domainize” the culture of a society. Legal scholars, on the other hand, often in cooperation with sociologists and political scientists, have increasingly turned to the kind of research which Schubert (1968) has called, “behavioral jurisprudence.” Outside the United States, this interdisciplinary focus in the study of law and society has been very productive in Scandinavia (see Blegvad 1966).

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , August 1969 , pp. 11 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 by the Law and Society Association

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Footnotes

AUTHOR'S NOTE: A portion of this paper was prepared for a Faculty Seminar on Law and Related Disciplines held during the Fall Semester 1968-69 at Harvard Law School This revised version retains style and organization of the original.

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