NUMBER 30-31 / 1990-1991

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

K.O. ADINKRAH is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Law of the University of Swaziland. He studied law at the University of Ghana and received his J.S.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He published ‘Ghana’s Marriage Ordinance: an inquiry into a legal transplant for social change’ in JLP (nr 18, 1980).

E. KOFI AGORSAH is associated with the Department of History of the University of the West Indies.

ELS A. BAERENDS studied anthropology in Leiden and Groningen and has been a Lecturer in legal anthropology on the staff of the Department of Legal Philosophy, Sociology of Law and Legal Informatics of the Law Faculty, University of Groningen, since 1983. In 1969-1971 and 1977-1978 she carried out fieldwork (together with E.A.B. van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal) concerning local, unwritten law among the Anufom of Northern Togo. This research resulted in a number of documentary films and publications (including ‘To claim or not to claim: changing views about the restitution of marriage prestations among the Anufom in Northern Togo’ in JLP nr 12, 1981). She is presently engaged in preparing a dissertation on kinship and debt relationships which are the consequence of the Anufo practice of exchanging marriageable women.

KEEBET VON BENDA-BECKMANN is Lecturer in sociology of law at the Law Faculty of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. In 1974-1975 she carried out field research in West Sumatra, which resulted in a dissertation (University of Nijmegen, 1984) entitled: The Broken Stairways to Consensus; Village Justice and State Courts in Minangkabau (Dordrecht: Foris Publications), one chapter of which was published in JLP (‘Forum shopping and shopping forums - dispute settlement in a Minangkabau village in West Sumatra,’ nr 19, 1981). Together with Fons Strijbosch she edited Anthropology of Law in the Netherlands (Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1986), and together with F. von Benda-Beckmann e.a., Between Kinship and the State: Social Security and Law in Developing Countries (Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1988). Her current research interest is the comparative study of formal and informal social security systems.

SOPHIE DASCALOPOULOS-CAPETANAKIS is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of the Aegean (Greece). She received her doctorate in social and cultural anthropology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) in 1979. Her doctoral thesis is entitled ‘Parenté et organisation sociale à Elymbos de Carpathos’. She has carried out field research in Greece (Dodecanese 1974-79, Peloponnese, 1984-86, Crete, 1987-1989). The dominant theme in her fieldwork has been kinship and, since 1984, more specifically peasant family structure, land tenure and inheritance customs. Her recent publications include ‘An interpretation of parental structure in relation to the appropriation of land’ (Year-Book of the Research Center for Greek Society, Academy of Athens, Athens, 1987) and ‘Mode de residence et dévolution des biens à Calavryta’ (Droit et Cultures nr 18, 1989).

JO-ANNE FISKE received her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia and is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Saint Mary’s University Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her research has focussed on Carrier culture and social organization with an emphasis on women’s changing economic and political roles. She has also written about the impact of residential schools on Carrier women’s lives and on the effects of colonization on the social status of Tsimshian Indian women.

ANNE M.O. GRIFFITHS is Lecturer in the Department of Scots Law at Edinburgh University. She received her LL.B. degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1978. In 1981 she assisted in setting up the Law Department in the University of Botswana. In 1982 and 1984 she conducted field research on the interaction between state and customary law in Botswana. In 1988 she gained a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science for a thesis entitled ‘Law and the Family in Molepole: A Study of Family Disputes in a Kwena Village’. She has published several articles on Tswana family law and legal pluralism, including ‘Support for women with dependent children under the customary system of the Bakwena and the Roman-Dutch common and statutory law of Botswana’ (JLP nr 22, 1984).

SOPHIE HUBER is a senior researcher in the Law Faculty of the University of Groningen, currently engaged in the preparation of a research project on the role of law in the preservation and exploitation of tropical rain-forests, to be carried out in Ecuador; from 1985 until 1991 she was a research associate at the Agricultural University of Wageningen (Netherlands). She studied law at the University of Amsterdam from 1966-1972 and practiced law from 1973-1978, specializing in the problems of immigrant workers. In 1979 she left the Netherlands to work in a development project with Andean farmers in Cuzco, Peru. From 1982-1984 she worked for a Dutch development agency supporting local development organizations in Peru. She is currently completing her dissertation, which concerns problems of land distribution in Peru, for which she did fieldwork in 1986 and 1987. Her article in this issue is based on this research, as was an earlier article, ‘Boeren, land en zekerheid in Caqui, Peru’ [‘Farmers, land and security in Caqui, Peru’] (Recht der Werkelijkheid 1988/1: 11-4 1).

CAROL LAPRAIRIE works for the Department of Justice in Canada. She received her M.A. in criminology and her Ph.D. in sociology and has been working in the area of aboriginal criminal justice for the past decade.

ATHALIAH MOLOKOMME received her LL.B. degree from the University of Botswana and Swaziland in 1981, and in 1983 her LL.M. from the Yale Law School. Since September 1983 she has been Lecturer at the Department of Law, University of Botswana. She has written, among other things, on the legal position of women in Botswana. She is presently on study leave at the University of Leiden, working on her doctoral thesis.

SABINE STEINBRICH is Assistant in the Seminar für Völkerkunde at the University of Münstcr. She studied Social Anthropology, History and Linguistics at the Universities of Hamburg and Münster. Her M.A. thesis was on women in the folktales of the Hausa and Fulani. From 1982 to 1984 she did fieldwork as part of a team in Burkina Faso, the results of which were published under the title Frauen der Lyela. Die wirtschaftliche und soziale Lage der Frauen von Sanje (B.F.). At the moment she is working on Lyela verbal art, editing a corpus of folktales. Her next field trip to Burkina Faso will be devoted to further research in oral literature in order to compile a comprehensive collection of Lyela folklore.

ULRIKE WANITZEK studied law at the University of Augsburg from 1973-1980. Her first appointment (1980-1986) was in the Department of Private Law, Private International Law and Comparative Law at the University of Bayreuth, where she received her doctorate in 1985. In 1986 she was appointed a member of’ the interdisciplinary research programme of the University of Bayreuth on ‘Identity in Africa: Processes of its Development and Change’. Her current research within this programme is a project on ‘Family Law Reform and Socio-Economic Developments in Africa’. She has conducted research in Tanzania in 1981, 1982-83, 1985, 1986, and in Ghana in 1989; she was a guest lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, in 1988. Her publications concern primarily questions of family law and the legal position of women and children in Africa, in particular Tanzania.