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Custom, Courts, and Class Formation: Constructing the Hegemonic Process Through the Petty Sessions of a Southeastern Irish Parish, 1828‐1884
Author(s) -
Silverman Marilyn
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.2000.27.2.400
Subject(s) - hegemony , irish , politics , agency (philosophy) , sociology , colonialism , coercion (linguistics) , law , context (archaeology) , state (computer science) , class formation , political science , social science , history , archaeology , philosophy , linguistics , algorithm , computer science
This exploration of hegemony, law, and politics attempts to expand recent anthropological approaches to hegemony and the law both topically and temporally. Specifically, I try to insert notions of coercion, class formation, agency, and political process into what have largely been cultural approaches to hegemony; I do so by exploring the workings of a local court through time. This court, in the context of a colonial state, brought together numerous agents (landlords, laborers, farmers, and retailers) who had conflicting and also sometimes converging economic and political interests and understandings. Through their interaction, the court became a theater, forum, and arena while, over time, it proved simultaneously to be both a civilizing device and a way of reproducing local class experience. [hegemony, historical anthropology, political‐legal anthropology, class formation, courts, Ireland, colonialism]