ABSTRACT
Anthropology has had an enormous influence on legal research and in the development of socio-legal studies. The long and rich relationship between anthropology and law has many strands, and it is impossible to provide a comprehensive analysis in one short chapter. Instead, this chapter identifies some “headline” features of this disciplinary relationship and then outlines how my own research has been influenced by anthropological theory and method. Discussing my research on administration of justice among refugees from Myanmar living in camps in Thailand, a project that was deeply informed by anthropology, I identify a number of research challenges (including issues related to fieldwork, ethics, power and positionality). The chapter concludes with some reflections on the future for law–anthropology interdisciplinarity in socio-legal studies.
