Life at a Tangent to Law
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6015382 |
|---|---|
| Authors | W Rollason (0000-0002-5250-8370, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 26-48 |
| Publication date | 2018-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Legal Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1758-9584 • E-ISSN: 1758-9576 |
| Publisher | Berghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3167/jla.2018.020103 |
| OpenAlex | W2901876836 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 27 |
This article concerns the relationship between motorcycle taxi drivers in Kigali and the legal frameworks that govern their business. While motorcyclists commonly subvert legal processes, or avoid complying with regulations, this should not be understood in terms of their ‘resistance’ to legal orders. To do so would imply that laws are imposed on their social lives from without; however, I show how illegalities help to structure social life by creating ‘mistakes’ that are the basis of social relations. I argue that motorcyclists do not confront legal orders in the idiom of resistance, but neither are they determined or shaped directly by legality. Rather, partially formed by breaches of rules, law is integral to their lives, shaping them indirectly or tangentially, according to the relationships and connections ‘mistakes’ with respect to law enable. Law regulates life not by encoding its rules, but by allowing certain kinds of relationships to form
Business · Law and economics · Political science · Principle of legality · Resistance (ecology · Social life · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Sex work and related issues
Discipline and Punish
Times of Security
Domination and the Arts of Resistance
The Mistakes That Make People
Discovering 'Social Control
Taming the “Rogue” Sector
(Re-)imagining a reluctant post-genocide society
Whispering truth to power
Re-Engineering Rural Society
From Urban Catastrophe to 'Model' City? Politics, Security and Development in Post-conflict Kigali
Precolonial Burundi and Rwanda
Seeing Like a State
The Gender of the Gift
The Romance of Resistance
Figures of the Subject in Times of Crisis
Our Goal Is Not to Punish but to Reconcile
Law and the architecture of social repair
Resisting resettlement in Rwanda
Buying a path
Explaining the design of the Rwandan decentralization
What's on a peasant's mind? Experiencing RPF state reach and overreach in post-genocide Rwanda (2000-10)
On De-Pathologizing Resistance
Indigenous Autonomy, Delinquent States, and the Limits of Resistance
Revolución o muerte
Resistance without Protest and without Organization
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |