Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Sociolegal Dynamics of Alternative Dispute Resolution in Marginalized Communities

本研究探讨了少数民族社区替代性争端解决机制的作用。本研究专门调查了具有不同法律和文化观点的不同替代司法机构，为什么以及人们如何使用这些法外系统，以及这些司法机构如何受到国家监管并与国家互动。除了支持培养一名博士生外，该提案还将与从事替代性争端解决工作的法律从业人员、民间社会组织和社区活动人士分享。本研究通过对两种重要的不同社会法律背景的对照分析和比较，探讨了导致使用替代司法机构的人们将这些机构做出的决定视为具有约束力的因素，以及赋予这些替代司法机构合法性的文化和法律动态。更广泛的问题也被问及社会和文化网络的形成，以及这些是否在不同的少数民族社区之间有所不同。本研究的民族志方法包括参与者观察，半结构化访谈和档案研究，以探讨人们为什么转向替代司法机构，这些机构如何与国家互动，以及不同的边缘群体，如妇女和难民，如何使用这些替代渠道来导航性别，司法和国家的动态。通过调查少数群体在日常生活中如何协商寻求正义的替代方式，该项目有助于法律人类学，国家人类学以及性别和宗教人类学。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research examines the role of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms within minority communities. This research specifically investigates diverse alternative judicial bodies with different legal and cultural outlooks why and how people use these extralegal systems, and how these judicial bodies are regulated by and interact with the state. In addition to supporting the training of a doctoral student, the proposal will be shared with legal practitioners, civil society organizations, and community activists working in alternative dispute resolution.This research examines the factors that lead people who use alternative justice bodies to view the decisions made by those bodies as binding and the cultural and legal dynamics that give these alternative judicial bodies their legitimacy, through a controlled analysis and comparison of two significant different sociolegal contexts. Broader questions are also asked about social and cultural network formation, and whether these vary between different minority communities. Ethnographic methods for this research include participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and archival research to explore why people turn to alternative judicial bodies, how these bodies and the state interact, and how different marginalized groups, such as women and refugees, use these alternative channels to navigate the dynamics of gender, justice, and the state. By investigating how minority groups negotiate alternative ways of seeking justice in their daily lives, this project contributes to the anthropology of law, anthropology of the state, and anthropology of gender and religion.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.