Denying the State Through Law

在过去的几十年里，全球各地的国家都出现了断然拒绝国家对权威和合法性的主张的运动。我将调查那些认为国家事实上不存在的团体，他们对法律的理解与主流法律话语完全不同。这些运动中的许多人理解真正的法律和主权权力是从替代法律当局中产生的，并试图在此基础上组织反主权。基于访谈和参与者观察，这项研究将调查法律作为国家辩论的媒介和作为激进政治的工具的吸引力。法律人类学家研究了国家法律如何塑造人们对日常生活的看法，以及法律如何在社会中占据主导地位。他们还调查了法律如何支持国家产生合法性。本研究将通过调查没有实现这些过程的实例来研究这些过程。它将批判性地评估法律在稳定和争夺社会权力配置方面的作用。

In the last decades, countries across the globe have seen movements which categorically reject claims to authority and legitimacy by the state. I will investigate groups that view the state as factually non-existent based on an understanding of law that is entirely different from mainstream legal discourse. Many in these movements understand true law and sovereign power to emerge from alternative legal authorities and attempt to organize counter sovereignties based on such. Based on interviews and participant observation, this research will investigate the attraction of law as a medium of state contestation, and as a vehicle for radical politics. Legal anthropologists have investigated how state law comes to shape the way people think about their daily life, how law achieves dominance in society. They have also investigated how law supports the generation of legitimacy by the state. This research will investigate these processes by investigating instances where it is not achieved. It will critically evaluate how law partakes both in the stabilization but also contestation of societal configurations of power.