State Law, Dispute Processing, and Legal Pluralism: Unspoken Dialogues from Rural India, By Kalindi Kokal, London: Routledge, 2020, 218 pp.

Daniela Silipigni

doi:10.36368/njolas.v4i02.229

Abstract

This book review discusses Kokal’s central points in State Law, Dispute Processing, and Legal Pluralism: Unspoken Dialogues from Rural India. Within the review, Kokal’s arguments of legal pluralism are pointed out and linked back to theories related to this field, such as Ehrlich’s theory of living law and Luhmann’s systems theory. The review explores Kokal’s idea of parallel legal systems being interconnected and operating at the same time. The review further sets forward the importance of Kokal’s work as providing an enlightening perspective to the socio-legal discussion of what is law and if we should conceptualise it in terms of state law or adopt a more bottom-up approach to the issue, as Kokal did in her own work.

Highlights

Carried out in the village communities of Gonjhé and the Dharamgarh valley, the ethongraphic fieldwork of Kalindi Kokal presents the system behind informal dispute processing within these communities
Daniela Silipigni Review: State law, dispute processing, and legal pluralism: unspoken dialogues from rural India believes that such systems can experience "structural coupling" but remain independent systems that do not interfere nor can be interfered with by other systems (Deflem 2008, 168)
Such theory can be seen as being reflected in the case of non-state forums and state forums' interconnectedness within Kokal's book, especially when she speaks of nonstate forums as semi-autonomous social fields, the formal-informal binary and structural adaptation

Summary

Introduction

Carried out in the village communities of Gonjhé and the Dharamgarh valley, the ethongraphic fieldwork of Kalindi Kokal presents the system behind informal dispute processing within these communities. Kokal explains in detail the hierarchical social structures that characterise the communities in question and explores their function and power dynamics. In doing so, she presents different case studies that illustrate dispute processing through non-state forums and which further provide an insight into how the members covering influential roles in the community's hierarchical social structure are involved. This book deals with a fundamental issue that is at the centre of sociolegal discussions, and which is placed at the centre of debates between doctrinal legal scholarship and socio-legal studies Such issue concerns the question of what is law and if we should conceptualise it in terms of state law or adopt a more bottom-up approach to the question and understand law in terms of societal practices and what Ehrlich would define as living law (Ehrlich 2002). Nordic Journal on Law and Society around individuals' cultures, religions and communities' social structures (Kokal 2020, 62)

Interconnected legal systems

Notes on contributor