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Law and Disorder in the Postcolony.

Article Excerpt
Law and Disorder in the Postcolony. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 357 pp.

The collection of essays being reviewed consists of seven case studies of local patterns of violence drawn from experiences in ten countries--South Africa, Brazil, and the six countries of the Chad Basin (Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, Niger, and Central African Republic), and two theoretical essays.

In the Preface the authors present a problem--is there "anything distinctive about (the) contemporary predicament (of post-colonies in Africa, Asia, Europe & Latin America), about the kinds of criminality, coercion, corruption, conflict, even chaos often attributed to them?" (p. vii). A presumption which they reject, that the answer to the above question is yes. And a paradox that law, rather than morals, ethics, or custom has become the measure of action, even as its spirit and letter are violated.

The editors argue that the corruption and crime in post-colonial countries are "discernible elsewhere as well, if not perhaps as acutely or as vividly--or living under a legal alias," for instance, campaign contributions to politicians by interested businesses (p. 39). The case studies belie this easy symmetry. Several discuss local circumstances of, at best, governance without legitimacy. The gang and drug violence, and arbitrary police behavior in many of America's inner cities no doubt is similar to that in the urban slums of the postcolony. However, for the vast majority of Europeans and Americans there is little or no direct experience or even exposure to violence other than as a media event. In the countries described in this collection and much of the post-colony, it would appear a...