Iterations of Law

This volume reflects a recent transformation of the concerns of social scientists regarding the legal history of South Asia. While, earlier, historians looked at the results rather than the performance of law, the concerns later shifted to unravelling the socioeconomic and political contexts that shaped law-making and its practice. Iterations of Law advances these new perspectives on legal history from South Asia. Going beyond an area studies rubric to critically engage with recent work in colonial and transnational legal history, the essays in this volume utilize both archival and everyday records to interrogate the relationship between the discipline of history and the institution of law.

The contributors to this volume include both young and established scholars who address the enacted and performative aspects of law that illuminate how rights are inscribed into a hierarchical order, a process that is often elided and fragmented by jurisdictional contexts. Their essays focus on complex moments in the life of the law when rights or claims simultaneously inaugurate a new economy of power and authority. Through these chapters, it becomes possible to interrogate the framing of legal regimes 'from below' and treat the law as a process that entails constant exchange, conflict, and adjustment between the rulers and the governed.