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- Convenors:
-
Yazid Ben Hounet
(CNRS)
Alice Wilson (University of Sussex)
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- Formats:
- Workshops
- Location:
- S303
- Sessions:
- Friday 13 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Paris
Short Abstract:
This panel proposes moving from the anthropology of Islamic law to the anthropology of law in Islamic contexts (including settings where Muslims are in a minority). We are interested in ethnographic studies in situations where the property regime may give rise to ambiguities and uncertainty.
Long Abstract:
With the exception of the study of Islamic law per se, the broader study of the law and legal institutions in Islamic contexts has been neglected. A wide range of areas has been under-researched. As a result, accounts of the law and justice in Muslim contexts often suffer over-simplification and analytical weaknesses. The alleged importance of Islam may be all too often over-stated, both in academic circles and political circles, where parties or groups demand the application of "Islamic law".
Yet it is essential to study the law in these contexts (and beyond) with a view to understanding the range of factors that the law projects, creates and constitutes, as well as taking into account the practices within which the creation, administration, application and experience of the law exist.
In response to these concerns, this panel proposes moving from the anthropology of Islamic law to the anthropology of law in Islamic contexts. We are especially interested in ethnographic studies of property, contracts and property transmission in situations where the property regime itself may give rise to ambiguities and uncertainty, e.g. because of legal pluralism, or where wider social, economic and political change increases the pressure on property regimes to resolve actors' experiences of uncertainty. The panel will bring together ethnographically-grounded papers from different Muslim societies which may address issues including, but not restricted to: the co-existence of secular and religious property regimes; the creation of new property categories; the survival and/or transformation of longstanding property categories in new settings; etc.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 13 July, 2012, -Ursula Günther (Erlangen Centre for Islam and Law in Europe EZIRE)
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates legal practices with a particular focus on property. The praxeological approach widens the understanding of legal phenomena inasmuch as it amplifies the notion of legal pluralism while augmenting it with the factor of context when it comes to legal practices based on alternative systems of reference.
Paper long abstract:
The notion of property as explored in the empirical study is related to questions of landownership, comercial transactions and family law (notably inheritance and divorce). The reference to the authority of Islam might be occasional and, when it appears, is part of the banality and routine of carrying out legal practice. Two major aspects understanding property will be highlighted: on the one hand the paper will try to describe the modes of use and reference to legal rules and their production - taking into consideration the impact of the context concerning decisions with regard to legal practices. On the other hand the notion of a transnational context plays a decisive role since the countries of origin's legal provisions differ from those of the country of permanent residence - particularly with regard to family law and the personal status. In this case, it is not that much the law of the countries of origin that matters than the practises informed by social and cultural habits and customs of the societies with which immigrants keep on maintaining may types of links. Eventually indications will be provided in order to asses which factors are specifically Islamic.
Selected cases will illustrate these aspects.
Yasmine Berriane (University of Zurich) Fadma AIT MOUS (HASSAN II UNIVERSITY OF CASABLANCA)
Paper short abstract:
Le Mouvement des Soulaliyates émerge en 2007 et revendique le droit pour les femmes de pouvoir percevoir comme les hommes des indemnités générées par les opérations de cession de terres collectives. De quelles manières les différents registres de droit sont-ils réinterprétés et utilisés dans le cadre de cette mobilisation?
Paper long abstract:
Ce papier sera consacré au Mouvement des Soulaliyates qui émerge en 2007 au Maroc. Cette mobilisation revendique le droit pour les femmes de pouvoir percevoir, comme les hommes, une partie des indemnités générées par les opérations de cession de terres collectives qui s'accélèrent à partir des années 1990 sous la pression de l'expansion urbaine et démographique et de la multiplication des projets touristiques. Ces terres sont gérées par un statut juridique pluriel et opaque et sont tant soumises à la tutelle de l'Etat (par l'intermédiaire du Ministère de l'Intérieur) qu'à des règles coutumières qui diffèrent d'une région à l'autre. Ainsi, il s'agira d'analyser de quelle(s) manière(s) le droit codifié et le droit coutumier sont réinterprétés et utilisés, et ce tant par les soulaliyates que par les autorités publiques et locales en réponse aux revendications de ces dernières.
Afin de répondre à cette question, notre présentation reposera sur les résultats d'une étude ethnographique réalisée aux abords de la ville de Kénitra, auprès de femmes engagées au sein du mouvement des soulaliyates (les Mehdia et les Hdâdda). Quels registres de légitimation mobilisent-elles pour justifier leurs demandes? En quoi ces registres diffèrent-ils de l'argumentation proposée par le ministère de l'Intérieur qui reconnaît officiellement la validité de leurs revendications à travers une circulaire émise en 2010? De quelle manière, enfin, les opposants au mouvement tentent-ils de contourner cette même circulaire ?
Yazid Ben Hounet (CNRS)
Paper short abstract:
On esquissera ici certaines pistes de recherches concernant les règles et pratiques d'accession à la propriété foncière en nous centrant sur la loi de l'Accession à la Propriété Foncière Agricole (Algérie) et sur certains des conflits qu’elle a généré.
Paper long abstract:
La question de l'appropriation du foncier, plus spécifiquement agricole, est un sujet d'actualité et délicat en Algérie et ce, en raison de l'adoption par l'Assemblée populaire nationale, durant l'été 2010, d'une loi modifiant les conditions d'exploitation des terres agricoles. Cette loi de concession du foncier agricole, dont les effets ne peuvent encore être analysés, se distingue de la loi 83-18, du 13 août 1983, relative à l'accession à la propriété foncière agricole (APFA), abrogée dans le cadre de la nouvelle loi d'orientation foncière de 2010 (après une période de suspension commencée en 2007/2008). On esquissera ici certaines pistes de recherches concernant les règles et pratiques d'accession à la propriété foncière en nous centrant sur la loi de l'APFA et sur certains des conflits qu'elle a généré.
Catherine Baroin (CNRS)
Paper short abstract:
The Tubu, muslim nomads of Chad, have an elaborate system of property rights on their flocks. It stems from their specific social system, which prohibits marriage with any close kin. It sheds light on animal transfers, on the status of individuals, as well as on the global Tubu economy.
Paper long abstract:
Les Toubou, nomades musulmans du Nord du Tchad, ont un système élaboré de droits sur le bétail qui, sans être contraire au droit musulman, s'inscrit pour l'essentiel en marge de celui-ci. Ces droits résultent de la règle de mariage, qui interdit l'union avec un proche parent et entraîne une vaste circulation de bétail entre les familles qui s'allient. Ce système matrimonial, moteur des transferts d'animaux, définit aussi les droits sur le bétail. Ces droits fondent le statut social des individus (hommes/femmes, mari/épouse, parents/alliés) et permettent de mieux comprendre la logique économique de cette société pastorale.
Alice Wilson (University of Sussex)
Paper short abstract:
Much research on property amongst refugees concentrates on dispossession. The context of forced migration can nevertheless be the setting for the creation of new forms of property. This paper explores how this is the case for Sahrawi refugees from Western Sahara.
Paper long abstract:
The condition of being a refugee is often associated with dispossession. This paper explores how for Sahrawi refugees, whose exile in refugee camps in Algeria dates back to 1975, exile has been the setting not only of the dispossession of refugees' homes and livelihoods, but also of the appearance and creation of new forms of property.
These new forms of property range from refugee rations to new collective forms of property in the public domain of the refugees' state-in-exile. For example, camel herds have been created that are the collective property of state-in-exile entities such as a ministry or a residential administrative unit. More recently, though, new collective forms of property have emerged that are not owned by units of the state-in-exile. For example, some people are forming groups through ties of membership in a qabila ("tribe") and making collective investments such as in a truck for commerce between the camps and Mauritania.
This paper both identifies these new forms of property, and discusses a new challenge arising from the contact of new and old forms of privately and collectively owned forms of property. This challenge concerns the legitimate and illegitimate ways that a particular item can pass from one property sphere into another.
This paper is based on ethnographic research in the camps in 2007-2009, and in 2011.