Books

Personal book  

2001 La Parole des Dieux. Rituels de possession en Himalaya indien, Paris, CNRS Editions (collection Monde Indien), 340 p. Dans la partie occidentale de l'Himalaya, les villageois viennent régulièrement interroger les possédés attitrés des divinités locales. La consultation, au temple, prend la forme d'un dialogue où les deux parties - la divinité et les hommes - confrontent leurs opinions sur ce qui se déroule dans la société locale. La présentation du contexte de ces séances, puis des formes de communication propres au langage de la possession, débouche sur l'analyse détaillée de différents cas. L'auteur met en évidence la diversité des points de vue qui s'expriment et les enjeux multiples qui orientent le déroulement des dialogues et l'ensemble de la procédure rituelle. Le langage de la possession impose un registre différent du discours ordinaire. Il autorise de ce fait la communication de sentiments et de tensions qui seraient difficiles, autrement, à verbaliser, et permet non seulement aux villageois de construire dans un lieu rituel leurs analyses des faits sociaux, mais aussi, le cas échéant, d'y exercer un pouvoir. >>Couverture & table des matières Texte intégral (pdf, pré-publication, sans photos): https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00621603/document

Edited Books & Special Issues of Journals

2023 ed. (with Anthony Good) Animal sacrifice, Religion and Law in South Asia, Abingdon, Routledge, xii+270p. This book presents original research on the controversies surrounding animal sacrifice in South Asia through the lens of court cases. It focuses on the parties involved in these cases: on their discourses, motivations, and contrasting points of view. Through an examination of judicial files, court decisions and newspaper articles, and interviews with protagonists, the book explores how the question of animal sacrifice is dealt with through administrative, legislative, and judicial practice. It outlines how, although animal sacrifice has over the ages been contested by various religious reform movements, the practice has remained widespread at all levels of society, especially in certain regions. It reveals that far from merely being a religious and ritual question, animal sacrifice has become a focus of broader public debate, and it discusses how the controversies highlight the contrast between ‘traditional’ and ‘reformist’ understandings of Hinduism; the conflict between the core legal and moral principles of religious freedom and social progress; and the growing concern with environmental issues and animal rights. >>Presentation and links to some open access chapters

2018 ed. (with Gilles Tarabout) Through the Lens of the Law. Court Cases and Social Issues in India, South Asian Multidisciplinary Journal (SAMAJ), 17.   For anthropologists as well as for historians, law practices and their discursive productions provide a way of studying interactions and decisions in various realms of social and political life. The following studies deal with such issues by using the “lens of the law” as a vantage point over society, providing access to sometimes intimate situations that are otherwise difficult to document for an observer, as well as a filter through which social issues have to be shaped when evolving into court cases. Thus, studying how law is used by people and how it impacts their lives is all the more important as, despite delays, poor facilities and widespread corruption, courts often represent the main if not the only hope for many of redressing their grievances. Consequently, the Courts are bustling with activity that testifies to the vital role they play in society as sites of power that affect every aspect of life.  Open-access to full issue: https://journals.openedition.org/samaj/4412

2016 ed. (with Gilles Tarabout and Raphaël Voix)  Filing Religion. State, Hinduism and Courts of Law, New-Delhi, Oxford Uniersity Press, xlvi+358p.   The Indian Constitution posits a separation between a secular domain that the state regulates and a religious domain in which it should not interfere. However, defining the separation between the two has proved contentious. This volume explores how the apparently ‘technical’-legalistic action taking place in the courts of law significantly shapes the place that Hinduism occupies in Indian and Nepalese societies, perhaps even more so than the ideology of any political party. The approach developed in this volume is resolutely historical and anthropological. It considers law as part of social, religious, and political dynamics. . >>Cover, presentation, and table of contents

2015 ed. (with Gilles Tarabout) The Boundaries of Law. Justice, Powers and Politics, Diogenes, 60 (3-4) (2013), 189p. [English edition of Diogène, 239-240]   This collection of studies aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationships between justice and the exercise of power in various societies of Africa, Asia and Europe. The growing awareness that we have of judicial practices around the world leads to a renewed questioning of their link with the actual power relationships structuring the socio-political field. The articles here closely follow the tradition of anthropological studies which have explored the relationship between agency, power relationship and the resolution of disputes. They nevertheless seek to transcend the classical opposition between the law as a set of rules and the law as a process. Indeed, a major trend in current studies consists precisely in drawing the close link that exists between ‘abstract’ juridical categorizations and concrete socio-political interactions. . >>Table of contents

2015 ed. (with Anthony Good and Gilles Tarabout) Of Doubt and Proof. Ritual and Legal Practices of Judgment, Farham/Abingdon, Ashgate/Routledge, 352p.   All institutions concerned with the process of judging - whether it be deciding betweenalternative courses of action, determining a judge’s professional integrity, assigning culpability for an alleged crime, or ruling on the credibility of an asylum claimant - are necessarily directly concerned with the question of doubt. By putting ritual and judicial settings into comparative perspective, in contexts as diverse as Indian and Taiwanese divination and international cricket, as well as legal processes in France, the UK, India, Denmark, and Ghana, this book offers a comprehensive and novel perspective on techniques for casting and dispelling doubt, and the roles they play in achieving verdicts or decisions that appear both valid and just. .>>Cover, presentation, and table of contents

2015 ed. (with Devika Bordia) Of Regimes of Legality. Ethnography of Criminal Cases in South Asia, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 333p.   An anthropological study on judicial practices in South Asia, this volume takes criminal cases as frameworks to examine power dynamics within a legal setting. Case studies in this book analyse a set of state and non-state institutions and the practices of people associated with them. The essays delve into the underlying tension in institutional contexts between legal practitioners such as police officers, lawyers, and judges who orient their claims towards neutralism, objectivity, and equality and a set of everyday interactions and decisions where cultural, social, and political factors play a major role. The contributors examine the discourses and relationships around criminal cases that shape how ideas circulate in the public sphere and how mediation and negotiation between different actors characterize police and court practices. .>>Cover, presentation, and table of contents

2013 ed. (with Gilles Tarabout) Les Frontières de la loi: Justice, pouvoirs et politique, Diogène, 239-240 (juillet-octobre 2012), 271p.   Ce recueil d’études se propose de contribuer à une meilleure compréhension des rapports entre justice et exercice du pouvoir dans différentes sociétés d’Afrique, d’Asie et d’Europe. La connaissance croissante que l’on a des pratiques judiciaires dans le monde conduit en effet à s’interroger à nouveaux frais sur leurs relations aux rapports de force concrets qui concourent à la structuration du champ sociopolitique. Les études de ce recueil cherchent cependant à dépasser l’opposition classique entre la loi comme ensemble de règles et la loi comme processus. L’un des apports des travaux actuels consiste précisément à montrer le lien étroit qui existe entre catégorisations juridiques « abstraites » et interactions sociopolitiques concrètes..>>Couverture, présentation, table des matières

2011 ed. (with Nicolas Jaoul and Pralay Kanungo) Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva. Local Mediations and Forms of Convergence, New Delhi / Abingdon, Routledge, 344 p.   The book reflects on the discreet influence of Hindutva in situations / places outside or at the margins of its organisational and mobilisational arena, where people denying any commitment to the Sangh Parivar incidentally show affinities and parallelisms with its discourse and practice. Case studies highlight different dynamics of Hindutva's cultural entrenchment. The first section gathers together cases where RSS-affiliated organisations have set up cultural programmes at regional level, involving the mediation of people whose interest does not necessarily mean that they endorse the Hindutva agenda. The next section deals with convergence and refers to cases where followers gather around a charismatic personality, whose precepts and practice may bring them towards a closer affinity with the Hindutva programme. The last section deals with the contexts of resistance where social milieus engaged in opposing Hindutva may, in fact, paradoxically, and even inadvertently, imbibe some of its ideas and practices in order to contest its claims. .>>Cover, presentation, and table of contents

2009 ed. (with Gilles Tarabout) Territory, Soil and Society in South Asia, New Delhi, Manohar, 379 p. [Revised English edition]   This volume tackles a widespread stereotype in academic studies, according to which pre-colonial India consisted of territorial units with ill-defined, fuzzy boundaries, and where territory had, and still has, little value as a cognitive category. In aiming to reconsider this perspective, the book follows two converging lines of enquiry. One explores the conceptions that stress the mutual determination of places and people, and the entrenchment of their identity in the soil. The other analyses historically and anthropologically the changing nature of the notion of territory, understood in its proper sense of a jurisdiction: an area where rights and power are exercised. The investigation starts from the devaluation of religious territory in Vedic ritual texts, takes stock of later developments of divine territories in relation to temples, details various types of 'traditional' jurisdictions, and ends up with an analysis of the recent ethnicization of the Nation as shown in Hindutva-produced videos. >>Cover, presentation, and table of contents

2003 ed. (with Gilles Tarabout) Terra, territorio e società nel mondo indiano, Ethnosistemi, 10, 144 p.   Il territorio in India è oggetto di pensiero e non è relegato al piano empirico: è une categoria esplicita di rappresentazioni, la cui analisi si rivela cruciale per la comprensione della società indiana nei suoi diversi periodi storici. Accordandogli une pertinenza euristica, il presente volume si propone di mostrare che non esiste un modo indiano di pensare il territorio, ve ne sono molteplici, e forse essi non sono neanche specificamente indiani. È ad ogni caso alla comparazione con altre società che invita questo lavoro, sulla base di una pluralità dei modi di organizzazione territoriale che sono al cuore dei rapporti umani. .>>Cover, presentation, and table of contents