Book Review: JEAN COMAROFF and JOHN L. COMAROFF (eds), Law and Disorder in the Postcolony. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006, 357 pp., ISBN 9780226114095 £18 (pbk)
| Author | Carl F. Stychin |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663908092562 |
| Published date | 01 June 2008 |
| Date | 01 June 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
JEAN COMAROFF and JOHN L. COMAROFF (eds), Law and Disorder in the Postcolony.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006, 357 pp., ISBN 9780226114095
£18 (pbk).
This collection is an important contribution to the anthropological study of law,
edited by two leading figures in the field. A number of key themes are usefully and
incisively explained by the editors in an extended introduction. The chapters all explore
the dialectic of excessive disorder and the fetishism of law in postcolonial settings.
This relationship is framed by a number of related influences: neoliberal deregulation
and privatization; widening inequalities; the weakening of national borders; and the
growth of informal economies. As sovereignty becomes displaced, and state functions
are ‘outsourced’, we witness the normalization of the informal, the illegal, the counter-
feit, as organized lawlessness enters the spaces vacated by the postcolonial state. This
is the logic of market fundamentalism. Simultaneously, neoliberalism strengthens the
preoccupation of the legal subject with rights, which enhances the legalization of
everyday life, and well as the judicialization of politics. In these conditions, the fear
of uncertainty, violence, and impending collapse comes to dominate. Importantly,
however, the editors make clear that there is no clear-cut division between north and
south. Rather, these conditions are emblematic, not only of the postcolony, but of the
new world order itself.
The case studies explore these themes in a wide range of geographic and political
contexts. All these original contributions are the product of extensive fieldwork, often
over a long period of years. The chapters are united by a focus on binary divisions,
discursive shifts, and the political indeterminacy of the concepts of liberal democracy.
Through these gaps and ambiguities, the dialectic of law and disorder flourishes. For
example, Rosalind Morris explores the relationship of sexual violence to the category
of the political in the context of the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. She shows how...
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