Legal authority and state formation in Zambia

Dr Jeremy Gould is an anthropologist. His primary research interests relate to post-colonial state formation in Zambia, and the politics of aid. He is currently a research fellow at the Academy of Finland and is working on a four-year study of law, politics and state formation in Zambia. His most recent book on Zambia is Localizing modernity. Action, interests and association in rural Zambia (1997).

During the seminar Dr. Gould will apply constructivist legal/political ethnography to the study of the ‘rule of law’ in a post-colonial African context. The empirical case is Zambia where over the past five years the legal profession – and legal institutions more generally – have assumed a formidable role in the exercise of politics. Lawyers are pivotal in numerous dramatic and complicated processes that impinge on the legitimacy of the political system and the Zambian state more generally. Based on a close reading of these events and Zambia’s recent political history (which encompasses the growing assertiveness of traditional leaders, the guardians of customary law), Dr Gould will sketch some tentative hypotheses concerning the constitution and the need for legal authority in the Zambian social imagination. These reflections are (or will eventually be) brought to bear in a discussion on the meaning of ‘law’, and legal practice as a constitutive element in post-colonial state formation.