BA/LLB Programme 2009-10

Order & Disorder in Colonialism & the (Post)-Colony

Course Sketch – Provisional

ORDER & DISORDER IN COLONIALISM & THE (POST)COLONY

(LAW 341)

Tutor: Sarah Suhail & Asad Farooq

E-mail: sarah.suhail@lums.edu.pk; asadfarooq@lums.edu.pk
Session: 6.00pm-7.50pm, Tuesday & Thursday, Room SC-4

This course aims to explore the relationship between colonialism and criminal justice formations, tracing
the logics behind criminal law, its expressions during colonial rule and its reproductions and
naturalisation within the postcolonial political form. It aims to question a number of certainties and
presumptions underlying dominant legal form, highlighting the colonisation of the idea of law that these
represent. Within this dominant legal formulation (of both form and content) we aim to examine and
destabilise boundaries and categories that the law views as static and natural, enabling us to examine
other conceptions of legal form from a decolonial positionality.

The course will be broken up into four broad themes:

I Birth, Nature & Operation of Western Criminal Law (Sessions 1-5)

II Colonialism & the Export/Creation of Legal Forms (Sessions 6-15)

a) Land Policy
b) Labour Policy
c) Gender & Criminal Justice
d) Colonising/Criminalising the Body
e) Policing the Colony
f) Resisting Colonialism & Criminal Justice
g) The Colonial Subject, Cultural Change & Criminal Justice

III Criminal Justice in the Postcolony (Sessions 16-26)

a) Authoritarianism, Rule of Law & Criminal Justice
b) Authoritarianism, Rule of Law & Criminal Justice: Pakistan (South Africa)
c) Economic Policy & Criminal Justice
d) Criminal Justice & the Crimes of the Poor
e) Criminal Justice & the Crimes of the Powerful
f) Criminal Justice & the Position of Women
g) Criminal Justice & Dual Power
h) The International Criminal Subject

IV Criminal Justice & the Decolonial (Sessions 26-30)

The aims and proposed outcome of the course is to:

• Locate the emergence of the dominant legal form

• Recognise the frames of criminal justice and notions of (dis)order
• Examine the architectonics of dominant legal form and its constitution within and of colonial
practice
• Understand the continuities and change of colonial legal form within the poscolonial
• Problematise the kinds of questions posed of the postcolonial state from within notions of
(dis)order
• Engage with the recognition of practices within the postcolony as a reformulat6ion of law and
politics

Indicative Readings:
 BA/LLB Programme 2009-10
Order & Disorder in Colonialism & the (Post)-Colony
Course Sketch – Provisional

Comaroff, J. & Comaroff, J.L., eds. (2006): Law & Disorder in the Postcolony (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press).

Kannabiran, K. & Singh, R., eds. (2008): Challenging the Rules(s) of Law: Colonialism, Criminology &
Human Rights in India (New Delhi: Sage).

*Focault, M. Discipline and Punish. Esp. pp73-104

*Hay, D. Property, Authority and the Criminal law in Hay et al, albion’s Fatal Tree
*Norrie, A. Law, Ideology and Punishment, esp. Chs.1,9
*Spear, P. Penguin History of India, Vol.2, chs 8, 10, 11
*Peiterse, J. Empire and Emancipa
*Fitzpatrick, P. “Transformations of Law and Labour in Papua New Guinea” in F. Snyder and D. Hay,
Op.cit.
* Van Onselen, C. Chibaro
*Guha, r. “Chandra’s Death in R. Guha, Subaltern Studies Vol.V.
*Bujra, J. Women Entrepreneurs” of Early Nairobi” in C. Sumber, op.cit.
*Freitag, S. “Collective Crime and Authority in North India in Yang, op.cit
*Amin, S “Approves Testimony, Judicial Discourse: the Case of Ghauri Chaura” in R. Guha, Op.cit.
Social Protest in Africa
*Ranger, T. “Bandits and Gurrillas: the Case of Zimbabwe’ in D. Crummey, Banditry, Rebellion and
*Tanner, R. The Witch Murders in Sukhumeland
*Cohn, B. ‘The Command of Language and the Language of Command in R.Guha, Subaltern
Studies, Vol.
*Arnold, D. Touching the Body: Perspectives on the Indian Plague, 1896-1900’ in R.Guha,
op.cit.vol.V
*Ghai, Y. The Rule of Law, Legitimacy and Governance (1986) Int.Jo.Soc.Law 14, 179-208
*Jones, L, Murder in Guatemala New Left Review 182
*Anderson, B. Murder and Progress in Modern Siam New Left Review 181
*Hansson, D. and Van Zyl Smit, d. Towards Justice? Chs. 1, 2, 4, 5-9
*Shaidi, L. Crime, Justice and Politics in Contemporary Tanzania’ op.cit.
*Shivji, I. State Coercion and Freedom in Tanzania
*Hanlon, J. Mozambique: the Revolution Under Fire ch 23
*Theolbald, R. Corruption, Development and Underdevelopment
*Stein, d. Burning Widows, Burning Brides: the Perils of Daughterhood in India 1988 Pacific Affairs
*Matsui, Y. Dowry and Rape: Women against Traditional Discrimination in Women’s Asia.
*de Sousa Santos, B. From Customary Law to Polular Justice Jo.African.Law 28, 90-98
*de Sousa Santos, B. Popular Justice, Dual Power and Socialist Strategy in R.Fine et al,
Democracy and the Rule of Law
 BA/LLB Programme 2009-10
Order & Disorder in Colonialism & the (Post)-Colony
Course Sketch – Provisional
 BA/LLB Programme 2009-10
Order & Disorder in Colonialism & the (Post)-Colony
Course Sketch – Provisional

Order & Disorder in Colonialism & the (Post)-Colony

reading and topic list

1. Birth, Nature and Operation of the Western Criminal Law

Rusche and Kircheimer, Punishment and social Structure, ch.II>

Radzinowics, A History of English Criminal Law I, ch.1
Chambliss, A Sociological Analysis of the Law of Vagracny’ in Carson and Wiles, Crime and
Deliquency in Britain.

Corrigan, D. And Sayer, D. The Great Arch, chs 4-6

Thompson, E. Whigs and Hunters, incl epilogue

*Focault, M. Discipline and Punish. Esp. pp73-104
*Hay, D. Property, Authority and the Criminal law in Hay et al, albion’s Fatal Tree
*Norrie, A. Law, Ideology and Punishment, esp. Chs.1,9
Haney “Criminal Justice and the Nineteenth Century Paradigm” Law and Human Behaviour (1982
6, 191.
*Brgoden, An Act to Colonize the Internal Lands of the Island: empire and the Origins of the
Professional Police, INt.J.Sco.Law (1987) 15, 179.
Storch, “The Plague of the Blue Locust” Int.Rev.Soc.Hist (1975) 61.
Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform chs. 1-3.
Stedman Jones, Outcast London, chs. 18, 19.
*Stang Dahl, “State Intervention and Social Control in 19th Century Europe” Contemporary Crises
(1977) 1, 163.
*McConville and Mirsky, “The State, the Legal Profession and the Defence of the Poor” Journal of
the Law and Society (1988) 15, 342.
*Garland, D. Punishment and Welfare, chs 1, 2
*Norrie, A. and Adelman, S. Consensual Authoritarianism and Criminal Justice in Thatcher’s Britain.
*Davies, Los Angeles: Civil Liberties between the Hammer and the Rock NLR 1988,
170.Authoriatirarism

2. Colonialism and the Export and Creation of Legal Forms

a) Land Policy
Sinha, A. Against the Few, Part 2
*Spear, P. Penguin History of India, Vol.2, chs 8, 10, 11
*Peiterse, J. Empire and Emancipation, Ch. 6
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Order & Disorder in Colonialism & the (Post)-Colony
Course Sketch – Provisional

Washbrook, D. Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India ( see also essay in Ghai et al,
Political Economy of Law)
*Fisch, J. Cheap Lives and Dear Limbs
*McLane, “Bengali Bandits, Police and Landlords after the Permanent Settlement in Yang, A. Crime
and Criminality in British India
*Sweet, L. “Inventing Crime: British Colonial Land Policy in Tanganyika” in C.Sumner, Crime,
Justice and Underdevelopment
Steinhart, E. “Hunters, Poachers and Gamekeepers: Towards a Social History of Hunting in colonial
Kenya” (1989) Jo. African History 30, 247-264
Harring, S. “Please Send Six Copies of the Penal code: British Colonial Law in Selangor, 1874-1880
(1991) Int.Jo.socl.Law 19, 193
Dodd, D. “The Role of Law in Plantation Society: Reflections on a Caribbean Legal System (1979)
Int.Jo.Soc.Law 7, 275

b) Labour Policy
*Shivji I.Semi Proletarian Labour and the Use of Penal Sanctions in the Labour Law of colonial
Tanganyika (1920-38) in C. Sumner, op.cit.
*Cooper, F. Contracts Crime, and Agrarian Conflict: from Slave Labour to Wage Labour on the East
African Coast” in F. Snyder and d. Hay, Labour, Law and Crime
*Fitzpatrick, P. “Transformations of Law and Labour in Papua New Guinea” in F. Snyder and D. Hay,
Op.cit.
* Van Onselen, C. Chibaro
Cohen, R. Enggame in South Africa? Ch.3,4
Huggins, B. From Slavery to Vagrancy in Brazil

c) Gender and Criminal Justice

*Guha, r. “Chandra’s Death in R. Guha, Subaltern Studies Vol.V.
*Bujra, J. Women Entrepreneurs” of Early Nairobi” in C. Sumber, op.cit.
White, L. vice and Vagrants: Prostitution, Housing and Causal Labour in Nairobi in the Mid-1930s in
F.Snyder and D. Hay, op.cit.
*Mbilinyi, M. Runaway Wives in Colonial Tanganyika: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage in
Rungwe District 1919-1961 in (1988) INt.Jo.Sociology of Law 16,1-29

d) Policing the Colony

*Freitag, S. “Collective Crime and Authority in North India in Yang, op.cit
Arnold, D. Bureaucratic Recruitment and Subordination in Colonial Inida: the Madras Constabulary
in R.Guha, Subaltern Studies,
*Amin, S “Approves Testimony, Judicial Discourse: the Case of Ghauri Chaura” in R. Guha, Op.cit.
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Order & Disorder in Colonialism & the (Post)-Colony
Course Sketch – Provisional

*Ahire, P. “Rewriting the Distorted History of Policing in Colonial Nigeria’ (1990) Int.Jo.Soc.Law 18,
45-60
Brogden, M. “An Acto Colonize the Internal Lands of the Island: Empire and the Origins of the
Professional Police” (1987) Int.Jo.Soc.Law 15, 179

e) Resisting Colonialism and Criminal Justice

*Ranger, T. “Bandits and Gurrillas: the Case of Zimbabwe’ in D. Crummey, Banditry, Rebellion and
Social Protest in Africa
Wells, J. The War of Degradation: Black women’s Struggle against the Orange Free State Pass
laws, 1913, in D. Crummey, op.cit.
*Gordo, R. “Bushman Banditry in Twentieth Century Namibia in D. Crummey, op.cit.

f) Cultural change and Criminal Justice

*Tanner, R. The Witch Murders in Sukhumeland
Tanner, R. Homicide in Uganda 1964
Tanner R. Three studies in East African Criminology
*Cohn, B. ‘The Command of Language and the Language of Command in R.Guha, Subaltern
Studies, Vol.
Hardiman, D. From Custom to Crime: the Politics of Drinking in Colonia South Gujerat in R.Guha,
Op.cit. vol.IV
*Arnold, D. Touching the Body: Perspectives on the Indian Plague, 1896-1900’ in R.Guha,
op.cit.vol.V
*Gordon S ‘Bhils and the Idea of a Criminal Tribe in Nineteenth Century Inida in A. Crime and
Criminality in British Inida
*Branstadter, E. Human Sacrifice and British-Kond relations Criminality in British India.
Scharf, W. Liquor, the State and Urban Blacks in D. Davis and M. Slabbert, Crime and Power in
South Africa
Scharf, W. ‘shebeens in the Cape peninsula’ in Davis and Slabbert, op.cit.

3. Criminal Justice After Colonialism

a) Authoritarianism, the Rule of Law and Criminal Justice
*Ghai, Y. The Rule of Law, Legitimacy and Governance (1986) Int.Jo.Soc.Law 14, 179-208
*Jones, L, Murder in Guatemala New Left Review 182
*Anderson, B. Murder and Progress in Modern Siam New Left Review 181
*Calathes, W. Jamaican Firearm Legislation: Crime Control, Politisation, and Social control in a
Developing Nation (1990) Int.Jo.Soc.Law 18, 259-285
*Shaidi, L. Crime, Justice and Politics in Contemporary Tanzania: State Power in an
 BA/LLB Programme 2009-10
Order & Disorder in Colonialism & the (Post)-Colony
Course Sketch – Provisional

Underdeveloped Social Formation (1989) In.Jo.Soc.Law 17,247-271

Sinha, A. Against the Few Part III
Mahabir, C. Crime and National Building in the Caribbean Petras, J. Chile: Crime, Class
Consciousness, and the Bourgeoisie (1977) Crime and Social Justice 9, 14-22
Seidman, R. The State, Law and Development chs 17-22
Williams, D. The Authoritarianism of African Legal Orders (1981) Contemporary Crises 5, 247
Southweed, J. and Flanagan, P. Indonesia: Law, Propaganda and Terror

b) Authoritarianism, the Rule of Law and Criminal Justice: South Africa

Davis, D. ‘Politcal Trials in South Africa in Davis and Slabbert, op.cit.
Foster, D. Sandler, D. and Davis, D. Detention, Torture and the Criminal Justice Process in South
Africa in (1987) Int.Jo.Soc.Law 15, 105-120
Suttner, R. ‘The Judiciary: its Ideological Role in South Africa (1986) Int.Jo.soc.Law 14, 47-66
Bindman, G. South Africa and the Rule of Law, Chs, 13 and 14
*Hansson, D. and Van Zyl Smit, d. Towards Justice? Chs. 1, 2, 4, 5-9

c) Economic Policy and Criminal Justice

*Shaidi, L. Crime, Justice and Politics in Contemporary Tanzania’ op.cit.
Cohen, R. Endgame Apartheid?
She M. From Dompas to Disc: the Legal Control of Migrant Labour in Davis and Slabbert, op.cit.
Pande, B. ‘Vagrancy, Beggary and Status Crimes in India’ in Eastern, Social Policy, Law and
Protection of the Weaker Sections of Society
Rogers, Crime and Modernization: the Case of Sri Lank
*Shivji, I. State Coercion and Freedom in Tanzania
*Hanlon, J. Mozambique: the Revolution Under Fire ch 23
d) Criminal Justice and the Crimes of the Poor
*Theolbald, R. Corruption, Development and Underdevelopment
Pande, B. ‘The Nature and Dimensions of Privilegal Class Deviance’ in Shukla, The Other Side of
Development.

e) Criminal Justice and the Position of Women

*Stein, d. Burning Widows, Burning Brides: the Perils of Daughterhood in India 1988 Pacific Affairs
*Matsui, Y. Dowry and Rape: Women against Traditional Discrimination in Women’s Asia.
*Mehdi, ‘The Offence of Rape in the Islamic Law of Pakistan (1990) Int.Jo.Soc.Law 18,19-29
Ahuja, r. Crime Against Women
Gutto, ‘The Law and Mass Rape during Armed Social Conflicts: Lessons from the 1982 Coup
Attempt in Kenya’ (1986) Zimbabwe Law Review 125
Maboreke, M. Violence Against Wives; a Crime Sui Genesis (1986) Zimbabwe Law Review 88
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Order & Disorder in Colonialism & the (Post)-Colony
Course Sketch – Provisional

McLean, Female Circumcision Minority Rights Group Report No.47

f) Criminal Justice and Dual Power

*de Sousa Santos, B. From Customary Law to Polular Justice Jo.African.Law 28, 90-98
*de Sousa Santos, B. Popular Justice, Dual Power and Socialist Strategy in R.Fine et al,
Democracy and the Rule of Law
Clain, M. Beyaond Informal Justice (1985) Contemporary Crises, 9, 335
Burman, S. and W. Scharf, Creating People’s Justice Street Committees and Peoples Courts in a South
African City (1990) South African Review 5
Seekings, J. Peoples Courts and Polular Politics (1989) South African Review 5
Scharf, W. The Role of Peoples’ Court in Transitions’ in H. Corder, Democracy and the Judiciary
Scharf, W. Images of Punishment in the Peoples’ Courts of Cape Town 1985-7: from Prefigurative
Justice to Polulist Violence in C.Manganyi and A. Du Toit, Political Violence and the Struggle in South
Africa
*Hanson, d. and D. Van Zyl Smit, Towards Justice? Chs 2, 3, 10, 11
*Allison, J. In Search of Revolutionary Justice in South Arifca (1990) Int.Jo.Soc.Law 18, 409-428
(Oloka-Onyango. J. Law, Grassroots Democracy” and the National Resistance Movement in Uganda
(1990) Int.Jo.Soc.Law 17, 465-480