In this article, I discuss two roles of documents in the creation and enforcement of public health laws in early colonial Vanuatu and their implication in colonial attempts to transform ni-Vanuatu societies and subjectivities. Colonial officials of the British-French Condominium based their projects on their admittedly partial knowledge in reports generated by experts studying depopulation. This knowledge, I argue, produced a ‘population’ by categorizing people according to their relationship with a reified notion of culture. The Condominium enforced health laws by sending letters to people categorized as Christian who would, the Condominium hoped, adhere to the regulations as self governing subjects. Officials would engage in persuasive conversations when they enforced the regulations in ‘bush’ villages. I conclude by reflecting on ni- Vanuatu knowledge of well-being and illness that could not be represented or documented and its centrality for subjectivities that might elude, if not subvert, the modern subject presumed by colonial strategies of governance.
The Effects of Elusive Knowledge
Census, Health Laws and Inconsistently Modern Subjects in Early Colonial Vanuatu
Alexandra Widmer
In Journal of Legal Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2008
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 92–116
Policing the French Empire
Colonial Law Enforcement and the Search for Racial-Territorial Hegemony
Samuel Kalman
concomitant security/surveillance until successfully decolonizing their territories. 4 As a result of these truisms, there has been a tremendous increase in the past two decades in the history of colonial law enforcement and justice, as scholars attempt to
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2020
- Article Type:
- Introduction
- Pages:
- 1–8
Love is Love
The Recent Jason Jones Judgement in Trinidad and Tobago
Dylan Kerrigan
legal judgement upholding the challenge by Jason Jones to the nineteenth-century colonial laws in T&T that criminalise homosexual relations and same-sex loving. The judge declared that the laws contravened the T&T Constitution and an individual
In Journal of Legal Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jan 2018
- Article Type:
- Review Article
- Pages:
- 125–129
Bringing into View
Knowledge Fields and Sociolegal Phenomena
Narmala Halstead
judgement to overturn the two-hundred-year-old colonial law against homosexuality related to the larger gains of making this category acceptable, the reception – at the judicial level, an appeal has been launched and there are protests – ‘correlated’ to the
Anna Bara, Tero Mustonen, and Oxana Zemtsova
overview of a normative body consisting of ad hoc colonial laws, commercial laws, and domestic laws adapted to the Siberian context, as offered by this volume, may be seen to provide a good reference resource for scholars looking for comparative historical
Coulthard, Glen Sean. Red Skin, White Masks
Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition
Elaine Coburn
’s call for engagement with colonial law as a means of challenging the colonial state’s ‘unilateral construction of our (Indigenous) rights’ (46, 45–7, 107). Although not denying the need for limited, strategic engagement with colonial political structures
By Sentiment and By Status
Remembering and Forgetting Crémieux during the Franco-Algerian War
Jessica Hammerman
late 1940s until the mid-1950s. 20 But survival strategies quickly changed—and making claims of citizenship based on a colonial law was not an argument that worked in favor of the Jews. They had to seek out another way to justify their French belonging
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 76–102
Hunting for Justice
An Indigenous Critique of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation
Lauren Eichler and David Baumeister
. However, the divide among tribal members about how to respond to the regulations demonstrates how colonial laws disrupt and split apart Native communities by interfering with these communities’ traditional ways of life. Third, conservation laws in
“Purely Artistic”
Police Power and Popular Culture in Colonial Algerian Theater
Danielle Beaujon
political activity. Indeed, the Renseignements Généraux, France's political police, produced the reports on Algerian theater companies. In relying on this service, colonial law enforcement adopted tactics from political surveillance to control popular
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 89–109
Laborers, Migrants, Refugees
Managing Belonging, Bodies, and Mobility in (Post)Colonial Kenya and Tanzania
Hanno Brankamp and Patricia Daley
Empire Contemporary refugee regimes in Tanzania and Kenya have emerged from overlapping legacies of colonial laws and regulatory frameworks, international and regional legislations introduced after independence, and the more recent national politics of
