1 See Peter Fitzpatrick, “Custom as Imperialism,”in J. M. Abun-Nasr et al., eds., Law, Society and National Identity in Africa 15–30 (Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 1990); id., The Mythology of Modern Law (London: Routledge, 1992); Jane F. Collier, “Intertwined Histories: Islamic Law and Western Imperialism,”28 Law & Soc'y Rev. 395 (1994); Sally E. Merry, “Legal Pluralism,”22 Law & Soc'y Rev. 869; id., “Law and Colonialism,” 25 Law & Soc'y Rev. 889.Google Scholar

2 See Merry, 22 Law & Soc'y Rev. Google Scholar

3 Much of this research represents the law as a relatively monolithic repressive arm of the colonial state. See Kim Johnson, “The Dialectics of Legal Repression in Neo-Colonial Capitalist Societies: Notes on the Caribbean.”Working Papers on Caribbean Society ser. D, no. 1 (Dept. of Sociology, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad, 1980); A. Edwards, “The Evolution of Obeah Laws in Jamaica,”Jamaica L.J., April 1973; H. Fraser, “Law and Cannabis in the West Indies,”Jamaica L.J., April 1973; Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (New York: Russell & Russell, 1944 [1961]); Elsa Goveia, The West Indian Slave Laws of the 18th Century (Bridgetown, Barbados: Caribbean Universities Press, 1970); David Cohen & Jack Green, eds., Neither Slave Nor Free (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

Some of these works on slavery could be seen as part of a tradition of regional legal commentary on slave law and indenture, e.g., J. Stephen, Slavery of the British West Indian Colonies Delineated as It Exists Both in Law and in Practice (2 vols.; orig. London, 1824; New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1969); William G. Sewell, The Ordeal of Free Labour in the British West Indies (New York: Harper & Row, 1861); Edward Jenkins, The Coolie: His Rights and Wrongs (New York: Routledge, 1871).Google Scholar

On contemporary Caribbean labor law, see Zin Henry, Labor Relations and Industrial Conflict in Commonwealth Caribbean Countries (Port of Spain, Trinidad: Columbus Publishers, 1972); and Walter Rodney, A History of the Guyanese Working People (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

Contemporary research on land law also continues a tradition of regional literature. See R. J. Cust, A Treatise on West Indian Incumbered Estates Act (London, 1865); compare Jean Besson, “Symbolic Aspects of Land in the Caribbean: The Tenure and Transmission of Land Rights among Caribbean Peasantries,”in M. Cross & A. Marks, eds., Peasants, Plantations and Rural Communities in the Caribbean 86-116 (Dept. of Sociology, University of Surrey, 1971); Besson, “Family Land and Caribbean Society: Toward an Ethnography of Afro-Caribbean Peasantries,” in E. Thomas-Hope, ed., Perspectives on Caribbean Regional Identity 13-45 (Liverpool: Center for Latin American Studies, University of Liverpool, 1984). See also Charles Carnegie, “Is Family Land an Institution?”in C. Carnegie, ed., Afro-Caribbean Villages in Historical Perspective 83-99 (Kingston, Jamaica: African-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica, 1987).Google Scholar

More recent works include Cynthia Mahabir, Crime and Nation Building in the Caribbean: The Legacy of Legal Barriers (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenckman, 1985); Jerome Wendell Lurry-White, Custom and Conflict on a Bahamian Out-Island (Lanham, Md.: University Presses of America, 1987); and Bill Maurer, “Recharting the Caribbean: Land, Law and Citizenship in the British Virgin Islands” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1994).Google Scholar

This list is far from comprehensive. See generally the sources listed in Keith Patchett & Valerie Jenkins, A Bibliograghical Guide to Law in the Commonwealth Caribbean (Mona, Jamaica: Institute of Social & Economic Research, University of the West Indies, 1973); and Velma Newton, Commonwealth Caribbean Legal Literature (Cave Hill, Barbados: Faculty of Law Library, University of the West Indies, 1987).Google Scholar

4 With the exception of C. Jayawardena's Conflict and Society on a Guyanese Plantation (London: Althone, 1963), the “village ethnography” genre of Caribbeanist anthropology virtually ignores law and state-level political issues. Classic examples of this genre include M. & F. Herskovits, Trinidad Village (New York: Knopf, 1947); M. Herskovits, Life in a Haitian Valley (New York: Knopf, 1937); M. G. Smith, Kinship and Community in Carriacou (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962); Michael Horowitz, Morne Paysan (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston). For a critique of Horowitz, see Willie Baber, “Social Change and the Peasant Community: Horowitz's Morne-Paysan Reinterpreted,” 21 Ethnology 227 (1982).Google Scholar

5 For example, Robert Gordon, “Critical Legal Histories,” 36 Stanford L. Rev. 57 (1984); Alan Hunt, Explorations in Law and Society: Towards a Constitutive Theory of Law (New York: Routledge, 1993); David Kairys, ed., The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique (New York: Pantheon, 1982); P. Fitzpaaick & A. Hunt, eds., Critical Legal Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).Google Scholar

6 Frances Fox-Piven & Richard Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: Vintage Books, 1971).Google Scholar

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8 At present, the following territories are not politically autonomous from European or American powers: Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands (all under the U.K.); Guadelopue, Martinique, St. Martin, St. Barthelemy (all under France, although Guadeloupe and Martinique have status as departements); Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, St. Maarten, Saba, St. Eustatius (under the Netherlands); Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (US. possessions).Google Scholar

9 See Sally E. Merry, “Anthropology, Law and Transnational Processes,” 21 Ann. Rev. Anthropology 357, 363 (1992); John Comaroff & Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).Google Scholar

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14 Susan Hirsch, “Subjects in Spite of Themselves: Legal Consciousness among Working Class New Englanders,” 17 Law & Soc. Inquiry 839, 843 (1992). See Sally Engle Merry, Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working-Class Americans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). See also Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (New York: Pantheon, 1982), and Lila Abu-Lughod, “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing the Transformation of Power through Bedouin Women,” 17 American Ethnologist 4 (1990).Google Scholar

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