Access to justice: the Palestinian legal system and the fragmentation of coercive power

In recent years there has been an increased interest amongst development practitioners in the potential role of law in situations of violent conflict. The Middle East has increasingly become the focus of this concern. In particular, it has been claimed that the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has failed to provide adequate access to the law for many Palestinians, and has instead ruled through patronage and violence. In this context the PNA has been the site of repeated calls for legal reform. Legal reform is often treated as a technical question of legal procedure or as an issue of the cultural appropriateness of legal regimes. This paper takes a third approach, which stresses the political and normative aspect of legal processes. It argues that, in order to understand the obstacles to positive legal development in situations of political transition, it is necessary to discover the ways in which legal practices are understood, used and abandoned in particular contexts. In a context where law has no absolute moral value, but is attractive for the substantive claims that can be made through it, people are willing to use whatever resources are available to them in order to enforce the tangible benefits of legal claims. This opens up the law for political manipulation, and encourages what might be called ‘legal patrimonialism’, whereby legal entitlements are distributed according to political resources, rather than legal procedures. The paper concludes by arguing that in the context of the West Bank the promotion of effective legal processes should not be seen as a short cut to a stable political regime. Accountable legal processes require centralised, strong and stable coercive support, based in a measure of organisational cohesion and territorial sovereignty

The Intimate Life of Dissent

The Intimate Life of Dissent examines the meanings and implications of public acts of dissent, drawing on examples from ethnography and history. Acts of dissent are never simply just about abstract principles, but also come at great personal risk to both the dissidents and to those close to them. Dissent is, therefore, embedded in deep, complex and sometimes contradictory intimate relations. This book puts acts of high principle back into the personal relations out of which they emerge and take effect, raising new questions about the relationship between intimacy and political commitment. It does so through an introduction and eight individual chapters, drawing on examples including Sri Lankan leftists, Soviet dissidents, Tibetan exiles, Kurdish prisoners, British pacifists, Indonesian student activists and Jewish peace activists. The Intimate Life of Dissent will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers of anthropology, history, political theory and sociology. Written in a clear and accessible style, it is also suitable for teaching introductory undergraduate courses on political anthropology

The Intimate Life of Dissent

The Intimate Life of Dissent examines the meanings and implications of public acts of dissent, drawing on examples from ethnography and history. Acts of dissent are never simply just about abstract principles, but also come at great personal risk to both the dissidents and to those close to them. Dissent is, therefore, embedded in deep, complex and sometimes contradictory intimate relations. This book puts acts of high principle back into the personal relations out of which they emerge and take effect, raising new questions about the relationship between intimacy and political commitment. It does so through an introduction and eight individual chapters, drawing on examples including Sri Lankan leftists, Soviet dissidents, Tibetan exiles, Kurdish prisoners, British pacifists, Indonesian student activists and Jewish peace activists. The Intimate Life of Dissent will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers of anthropology, history, political theory and sociology. Written in a clear and accessible style, it is also suitable for teaching introductory undergraduate courses on political anthropology