PRÁVNA ANTROPOLÓGIA – JEJ PRÍNOSY A ZLYHANIA

• Authors: Daniel Šmihula

Title variants

EN

Legal anthropology – its benefits and failures

• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

Legal anthropology is an interdisciplinary science on the border between anthropology and theory of law and the state. During its beginnings in 1920s it was dealing with legal and political systems of primitive populations and from such findings it tried to extract generally applicable principles which could be utilized also in the case of modern societies. The legal anthropology is understod by any legal system as an integral part of the society in which it is being used. Therefore it requires also a research not only in the legal system but in the society as whole (material conditions, culture, language etc.) and also of a man with his biological qualities, thinking and habits. But this science needed to cope with tendencies to ideologization and to use it as a “tool” in efforts to prove “priority of non-western cultures” or even “corruption of the whole masculine aggressive Western civilization”. As any scientific method or theory the legal anthropology must be used critically and with knowledge of it limits.

Keywords

EN

LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY; THEORY OF THE STATE AND LAW; LEGAL PLURALISM; LAW; MULTICULTURALISM

• Publisher: Institute of State and Law of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Právny obzor. Teoretický časopis pre otázky štátu a práva (Juridical Review. Theoretical journal for the questions of state and law)
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 97
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 444 – 455

Contributors

author

Daniel Šmihula

• Ministerstvo zahraničných vecí a európskych záležitostí, Bratislava, Slovak Republic