UMIFRE

Le CJB et le Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale (Collège de France, Paris) organisent un workshop international.
Organisateurs : Yazid Ben Hounet, Baudouin Dupret, Deborah Puccio-Den

This workshop aims to discuss the concepts of crime and tort, and how they can be addressed with the theoretical and methodological tools of anthropology and comparative sociology. Communications will deal mainly with the Mediterranean area, but for the sake of comparison, we would like to integrate communications concerning other parts of the world. Crime and tort are classical objects of legal anthropology and comparative sociology of law, but invariably and insufficiently studied (in comparison with other topics such as law, custom, property, family, etc.). Henry Sumner Maine (1861) already discussed in one chapter of Ancient Law the origins of criminal law. He proposed a distinction between crime (offense against the state or the community) and tort (offense against the person) and argued that the first codes (including Roman and Teutonic) were more devoted to the regulation of tort sanctioning than of crimes – the settlement of the latter being somehow sanctioned in hasty expeditious ways. Bronislaw Malinowski (1926) defined crime as defiance against custom and tried understanding the logic of the sanctions attached to crimes among the Trobriand. Isaac Schapera (1972), in his attempt to analyze the concept of crime, criticized the idea that crime would refer to a form of a universally shared disapproval. He reminded that a principle of universal disapproval does not exist and, secondly, that in "primitive societies" (a term used at his time), there is often no legal authority and therefore, for some, no system of law in the strict sense. He concluded that the definition of crime is thus not obvious. Given this fact, Isaac Schapera offers in his essay, a minimal definition that will be used in this argument: « A crime is an act, or failure to act, that is considered punishable by those who are entitled to react in that way » (Shapera, 1972 : 390) .

In the early anthropological and comparative sociology research on crime and tort, the emphasis was on issues of definition, conceptualization of crime, logical forms and meanings of sanctions. Over the past 40 years, however, anthropological and related research on the topic has been more concerned with the analysis of crimes as manifestations of larger social dynamics and social relations. This is particularly the approach of Donald Black (1983). Arguing that many crimes in contemporary societies resemble acts of self-help, Black provides an analysis of crime in terms of social control. Georg Elwert (1999) analyzes crime in the context of a market (economy) of violence, that is, costs and benefits. Philipp C. Parnell and Stephanie C. Kane (2003) have argued that crime is part of the reorganization and redistribution of power. Many classical works of anthropology of the Mediterranean also re-inscribe crime under the framework of the analysis of violence exchange, and try to understand the logic of retaliation (blood feud, vendetta) and honor, upstream or downstream, to crimes and torts (Bourdieu, 1965; Peristiany, 1965 Black-Michaud, 1975; Jamous, 1981, etc.).

In this workshop, we would like to understand crimes and torts, not generally, but in their contextual definitions, and especially, in the ways they may be perceived by those most concerned. By doing so, we will follow Isaac Schapera' suggestion to recognize the importance of understanding the perception of crime. Thus, the workshop will not analyze causes and effects of crimes and torts, forms of sanctions, nor their place in the sociopolitical relations. It rather intends to report and analyze different perceptions and definitions of actions as crimes or torts depending on the context and on people involved in various instances or moments of trials, mediations, arbitrations and information (court proceedings, police reports, newspapers, moments of conflict resolution, reconciliation, etc.).

We will focus more precisely on the notions of truth, intentionality, and evidence related to the perception and definition of crimes and torts. The presentations will consist of empirical cases that are ethnographically documented. Questions that will be adressed in this workshop include: What facts, elements of a case are (or not) considered to produce truth, intent, or evidence? What kind of roles do they play in the judgment, mediation, arbitration and adjudication of the act ? How do they influence the perception and/ or the definition of an act as a crime or a tort?

Papers can cover various types of crimes and torts – crimes and torts simple, mass murders, organized crimes, cybercrimes, financial crimes, etc. With these papers, we hope to shed light on an important concept for our contemporary societies, the development of Criminology and Forensic Science departments around the world seems to testify it. The workshop aims also to question the notion of truth – which became important since the development of "truth and reconciliation" commissions – and truth-telling practices, understood as saying the truth, whether the truth of God, legal truth, or any other form of truth (Dupret, 2011).

Venue : Centre Jacques Berque
Salle de conférence
35, avenue Tarik Ibn Ziad
10020 Rabat - Maroc

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Workshop - Truth, intentionality and evidence : anthropological approaches to crime and torts

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