ANTHRO 1603: The Law and Its Limits Office Hours

Date: 

Tuesday, August 24, 2021, 11:00am to 11:30am

Location: 

Virtual - Zoom

ANTHRO 1603 will be taught by Prof. Malavika Reddy on Tuesdays 12-2:45pm in room Tozzer 203. 

Prof. Reddy will hold office hours on August 24th from 11-11:30 am EST to discuss the class and answer any questions you may have.

We often talk about the power of law to shape our worlds but what about its powerlessness? 

An axiom of contemporary life is that societies need law to address social, political and environmental ills. Yet, in the face of entrenched problems, including expanding who belongs, tackling inequality, and confronting environmental crisis, law often appears impotent or, worse, detrimental. This course grapples with the simultaneous hunger for and weakness of law, its power and its powerlessness, by guiding students through an exploration of the following questions. How, why and to whose benefit or expense is the legal posed as an answer to political and social problems? What can we learn from situations in which law harms? Who resists law? How does legal process transform conflict and define the terms of its resolution? What is the relationship between law and violence? The course will seek answers to these questions via an engagement with the ethnographic – close readings of a variety of judicial processes -- and the theoretical. In so doing, the course will be guided by two objectives: 1. to introduce students to the anthropological study of law and 2. to trouble commonsense pieties about law and its place in social life.

 

The Zoom link can be found in the Canvas course site and in the Harvard College Events Calendar

See also: Undergraduate