Norms and Illegality

Reviews / Votes

This is a fantastic volume. The editors propose an ambitious research agenda, which invites for a fundamental rethinking of ruling notions of norms and legality. This invitation is taken up in a series of fascinating chapters which delve into the lived realities of legality/illegality. It is rare to find a book which so successfully combines ethnographic thickness with conceptual depth. The book deserves a wide readership across the social and human sciences. -- Bjorn Thomassen, Roskilde University Norms and Illegality brings together anthropological studies from diverse urban settings focusing on the making of precarious livelihoods in 'in-between' spaces where extra-legal activities slip between norms and law, between toleration, permissiveness, and legal authority. Theoretical discussions and rich case studies provide inspiring insights into the cultures and politics of working on the edge, negotiating illegality and legality in ingenious ways. -- Karen Tranberg Hansen, professor emerita, Northwestern University Norms and Illegality enjoins legal and economic anthropologists to attend to the corporeality, hope, pain, risk, and ambiguity that mark human lives lived in the abject zones of 'illegal' activity. The contributors deftly explore the networks of complicity that make the vital moral economies of aspiration and value in these social worlds invisible to us. The volume's trenchant, compelling, and intimate ethnographic explorations of illicit activities and informal economies invite us to reevaluate our imbrications in systems of power when ethically reconsidering the politics of legitimacy. -- Rosemary J. Coombe, York University Norms and Illegality is a thought-provoking, timely, and brilliant collective work that challenges our conventional understanding of the limits between legal, illegal, and extralegal practices, and explores their articulation in a given moment and place. This is an important book that intelligently assembles significant theoretical insights with fresh ethnographic configurations of norms, illegality, and their margins. While entirely anthropological in spirit, it is a must-read for scholars across a wide range of academic disciplines and scholars interested in going beyond a legalistic understanding of illegality and extralegality. -- Filippo M. Zerilli, University of Cagliari