Open AccessBook
Law, custom, and social order : the colonial experience in Malawi and Zambia
TLDR
Chanock as discussed by the authors explores the historical formation during the colonial period of that part of African law known as customary law, and shows how African ideas, aspirations and activities regarding law were shaped by interaction with the legal ideas of the British colonisers, their understandings of African societies, and the judicial institutions of the colonial state.Abstract:
This book explores the historical formation during the colonial period of that part of African law known as customary law. In treating the emergence of the customary law as part of the history of the social and economic transformation of African societies under colonial rule, it also provides an interpretation of the ways in which people tried to control the disrupting effects of the changes which they experienced. Martin Chanock shows how African ideas, aspirations and activities regarding law were shaped by interaction with the legal ideas of the British colonisers, their understandings of African societies, and the judicial institutions of the colonial state. These thematic considerations are illustrated by studies of how the customary law developed alongside criminal law in colonial society in Malawi and Zambia as part of the moral weaponry of a changing social order, and more specifically by describing the role of the customary law of the family in conflicts between men and women in the new colonial political economy.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Environmental Entitlements: Dynamics and Institutions in Community-Based Natural Resource Management
TL;DR: In this article, a conceptual framework highlighting the central role of institutions in mediating environment-society relationships is proposed. But the authors focus on the implications of intra-community dynamics and ecological heterogeneity.
Book
Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa
TL;DR: A survey and focus group methodologies for ethnic politics in post-independence Zambia are presented in this paper, with a focus on ethnic coalitional building and ethnic voting. But the model is not suitable for the analysis of ethnic coalitions.
Journal ArticleDOI
Inequality and Social Conflict Over Land in Africa
TL;DR: The authors proposes that reports of pervasive competition and conflict over land in sub-Saharan Africa belie a current image of negotiable and adaptive customary systems of landholding and land use, revealing processes of exclusion, deepening social divisions and class formation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Indigenous land rights systems in sub-Saharan Africa : a constraint on productivity?
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used cross-sectional evidence from Ghana, Kenya, and Rwanda in 1987-88 to examine the question, are indigenous land rights systems in sub-Saharan Africa a constraint on productivity?
Book
Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900
TL;DR: In this article, a place for the state: legal pluralism as a colonial project in Bengal and West Africa, and a constructing sovereignty: extra-territoriality in the Oriental Republic of Uruguay.