Anthropology on trial

Zenker, Olaf

doi:10.1017/S174455231600015X

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Journal article

Anthropology on trial : exploring the laws of anthropological expertise

Zenker, Olaf Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

2016

Published in:

International Journal of Law in Context. - Cambridge. - 2016, vol. 12, no. 3, p. 293-311

English This paper explores the role of anthropological expertise in shaping the outcome of legal proceedings under conditions of cultural diversity. Taking the state-driven land-restitution process in postapartheid South Africa as its point of reference, the text reflects upon the work of anthropological experts in a number of cases and shows how their theoretical and political stances shaped the trajectories of their legal engagements. Pointing towards frictions that emerge in acts of translation between the seemingly objectivist rhetoric evoked in court and more relativist and subjectivist stances within the academy, the paper revisits and problematises debates around strategic essentialism. Sketching instead the contours of a ‘recursive anthropology’ that expresses itself in terms of a postpositivist universalism, the paper turns on the author’s use of his own expertise in support of a White land claim, probing – and critically reflecting upon – the practical potential of a form of expertise grounded in such a recursive anthropology.

Faculty

Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines

Department

Département des sciences sociales

Language