An Intellectual Odyssey. The Case of Legal Pluralism

Keebet Von Benda-Beckmann; Judith Beyer

When: 29 January 2021 / 2-3.30 pm CET

Link: https://zoom.us/j/93210372616pwd=dTZZ…

ID: 93210372616
Password: 4JzWZ6

Abstract

Sally Merry was an active participant in the work of the project group “Legal Pluralism” at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology over many years. From the very beginning, she was also a Scientific Member of its Advisory Board. In this conversation, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, who co-headed the project group at the MPI from 2000 until 2012, and Judith Beyer, her former PhD student and a member of the group until 2010, will talk about Sally’s role at the MPI, the importance of her work for legal pluralism in particular, and for legal anthropology in general.

We are going to review some of Sally’s theoretical ideas about the concept of legal pluralism: What was so provocative about it that Sally referred to its history as ‘an intellectual odyssey’? How did she explore it in her own ethnographic work? We will also discuss the possibility to think through her more recent themes of research on indicators and quantification in regard to the concept of legal pluralism. To expand the conversation, we invite the audience to contemplate the potential of revisiting the numerous debates Sally has initiated with the concept of legal pluralism in mind.

See you on Zoom!

Here is the full schedule of the webinar series.

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This article is peer reviewed. See our review guidelines.

Cite this article as: Von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet & Judith Beyer. January 2021. 'An Intellectual Odyssey. The Case of Legal Pluralism'. Allegra Lab. https://allegralaboratory.net/an-intellectual-odyssey-the-case-of-legal-pluralism/

About The Authors

Keebet Von Benda-Beckmann

Keebet von Benda-Beckmann (1946-2022) was a legal anthropologist. She was the co-founder of the Project Group "Legal Pluralism" and an associate of the later Department of Law and Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. She also was emeritus Professor at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and an associate of the Van Vollenhoven Institute for law and Governance at Leiden University. She has conducted research on disputing, social security, natural resources, under conditions of plural legal order in several parts of Indonesia and the Netherlands. Her latest work has been on processes of decentralization in Post-Suharto Indonesia.

Judith Beyer

Judith Beyer joined Allegra in 2013 and is currently part of an editorial team that explores how to make anthropology multimodal: across multiple media and towards a more engaged public anthropology. Judith specializes in political and legal anthropology. She conducts long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan), Southeast Asia (Myanmar) and increasingly in Europe. Her current thematic interests are: the concept of community, practices of traditionalization, statelessness and activism. Theoretically she is inspired by existential anthropology, ethnomethodology, and the work of Jacques Lacan.