Custom, Courts, and Class Formation: Constructing the Hegemonic Process Through the Petty Sessions of a Southeastern Irish Parish, 1828-1884

Abstract

This exploration of hegemony, law, and politics attempts to expand recent anthropological approaches to hegemony and the law both topically and temporally. Specifically, I try to insert notions of coercion, class formation, agency, and political process into what have largely been cultural approaches to hegemony; I do so by exploring the workings of a local court through time. This court, in the context of a colonial state, brought together numerous agents (landlords, laborers, farmers, and retailers) who had conflicting and also sometimes converging economic and political interests and understandings. Through their interaction, the court became a theater, forum, and arena while, over time, it proved simultaneously to be both a civilizing device and a way of reproducing local class experience.[hegemony, historical anthropology, political-legal anthropology, class formation, courts, Ireland, colonialism]