NUMBER 50 / 2004

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Karine BATES completed an undergraduate degree in civil and common law, and then pursued graduate degree studies in legal anthropology. She obtained a Ph.D. degree from McGill University, Canada, in 2005 for a thesis entitled “Women’s Property Rights and Access to Justice in India: A Socio-Legal Ethnography of Widowhood and Inheritance Practices in Maharashtra.” At the same university, she created an undergraduate level course in Legal Anthropology which she taught in 2004. She is now a Post-Doctoral Scholar at the Department of Anthropology, University of Montreal, Canada. She holds a scholarship from the Fonds Québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture for the purpose of deepening the analysis of access to justice in India, in part through a comparison between Maharashtra and Kerala.

Richard C. CROOK is Emeka Anyaoku Professor of Commonwealth Studies at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Studies, University of London. He holds a Ph.D. in Government from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has spent his working life conducting research on and teaching about the politics and government of developing countries, especially in West Africa and South Asia. He has held positions at the Department of Politics, University of Glasgow, Britain, the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham, Britain, and the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Britain. He has published extensively on local politics and decentralisation, state and civil society relations, and administrative performance.  Among his more recent publications are: (with James Manor) Democracy and Decentralisation in West African and South Asia: Participation, Accountability and Performance. Cambridge University Press, 1998; (with Alan Sturla Sverrisson) Decentralisation and Poverty Alleviation in Developing Countries: A Comparative Analysis or, Is West Bengal Unique? Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2001.

Julia ECKERT studied Political Science, Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Germany, and the Free University Berlin. Her first field research was carried out in Pakistan in 1991 and concerned the changing political structures among Afghan refugees in the refugee camps in Peshawar and Quetta. Subsequently she undertook field research in Uzbekistan, publishing a monograph Das unabhängige Usbekistan auf dem Weg von Marx zu Timur [Independent Uzbekistan on the route from Marx to Timur]. Munster: LIT Verlag, 1994. In 1995 she joined the Institute for International Educational Research (DIPF) in Frankfurt am Main. 1997 she started her Ph.D. research in India on the Shiv Sena movement. She was subsequently a lecturer at the Institute for Social Anthropology, Free University Berlin, and at the Institute for Social Sciences, Humboldt University Berlin, before joining the Project Group on Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany as a senior research fellow in May 2001.  Her most recent book publications are: "The Charisma of Direct Action: Power, Politics and the Shivsena. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003; Partizipation und die Politik der Gewalt; Hindunationalismus und Demokratie in Indien [Participation and the Politics of Violence: Hindu Naitonalism and Democracy in Indai]. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2004.

Kathryn FULTON, born in Idaho, USA, is a Faculty Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, Colby College, Waterville, Maine, USA. She is a PhD candidate, at the University of Oregon, USA. Her current research areas include fishing villages in southeast Alaska, and she has conducted research among ranchers in the US Midwest. An environmental anthropologist, her research and theoretical interests include: Native Americans, Northwest Coast Tlingits, environment, space/place, gender, community studies, fisheries/fishers, forests/forest workers, prairies/ranchers, government policy, narrative discourse analysis, participant action research methodology and applied anthropology. She has presented numerous conference papers on her research.

Arnaldo Moraes GODOY is a Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of the State of Paraná, Brazil. He has published Direito e Historia: Uma Relacao Equivocada [Law and History: An Equivocal Relationship], 2003.

Pampa MUKHERJEE is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, Punjab University, Chandigarh, India. She completed her Masters, M.Phil and doctoral studies at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. She teaches and does research on development politics, Natural Resource Management, Gender and politics, and has published in these areas. She has done detailed work on Common Property Resources particularly in the hilly regions of North India. She has been involved with number of national and International projects in these areas and presently working on a book Common, Communities and Conservation: Politics of Forest Use in Uttranchal.

Yüksel SEZGIN is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. He holds an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His recent publications include ‘A political account for legal confrontation between state and society: the case of Israeli legal pluralism.’ Pp. 199-235 in Austin Sarat & Patricia Ewick (eds.), Studies in Law, Politics, and Society Vol. 32, 2004,

Bishnu Raj UPRETI gained a Ph.D. in conflict management from Wageningen University, The Netherlands, in 2001. He is engaged in conflict analysis, conflict management, and research related to peace building. During his 24 years of professional experience he has taught and conducted research at the Universities of London and Surrey, Britain, and has worked in international organisations (including UNDP, SDC, IDRC, IUCN, SNV, UMN) as a member of the professional staff and as consultant. He has also spent some years in the service of the government of Nepal as an assistant agricultural economist. He has published four books on conflict management and more than 100 articles in journals, magazines and edited books. He had coordinated a Nepal chapter of the regional research project on ‘Livelihood and Environmental Security and Conflict Mitigation’, which is being conducted in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Currently he directs a National Peace Research Institute and Resource Centre, Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR)-North-South South Asia Coordination Office, SDC Complex, Ekantakuna, Jawalakhel, GPO Box 910, Kathmandu, Nepal, e-mail: bupreti@nccr.wlink.com.np.