The State and the Paradox of Customary Law in Africa

ISBN-13: 9781409468639 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 232 str.

Markus Virgil Hoehne; Olaf Zenker

Opis

Customary law and so called 'traditional authorities' continue to play vital roles in many African societies today. The codification and co-optation or oppression by 'the state' have been identified as major problems impinging on the dynamism of the living customary law and the independence and downward-accountability of traditional authorities. But what does customary law and traditional authority offer to the state? On the one hand, the state is expected to act as the 'sovereign' and to provide a comprehensive political structure. On the other, for pragmatic or ideological reasons, it has to integrate customary systems and make them 'processible' in order to satisfy demands for stability, accountability and decentralisation. This volume tackles the problem of how the state deals with the paradox of having to integrate customary law and traditional authorities that are based on their own logics of 'law', 'legal process' and 'authority' which are incommensurable with the logics of the state. It provides theoretically and ethnographically informed insights into the divergent strategies that are used by state representatives in courts, in parliament, or elsewhere to process this paradox and, somehow, to get their work done.