- University of Münster, Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics", Department Memberadd
- Anthropology/Sociology/Philosophy of State and Law, Comparative Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, African Studies, Horn of Africa, Legal Pluralism, and 10 morePostcolonial Studies, Globalisation and cultural change, Post-conflict Reconstruction and Development, Rule of Law, Peace and Conflict Studies, Transitional Justice, Restorative Justice, State Formation, Islamic Law, and Islam and Secularismedit
- Katrin Seidel is a sociolegal scholar and certified mediator with an academic background in law, anthropology and reg... moreKatrin Seidel is a sociolegal scholar and certified mediator with an academic background in law, anthropology and regional studies Africa/Asia. She is currently a fellow at the Cluster of Excellence 'Religion and Politics'/Münster University, an associate and former senior researcher in the ‘Law & Anthropology’ Department/Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research and the Academic Coordinator of the Research and Knowledge Transfer Hub for Rule of Law Promotion (RFS-Hub) at Freie Universität Berlin, in collaboration with the German Federal Foreign Office. Her research is situated at the intersection of legal pluralism, globalisation, heterogeneous statehood and governance with a transregional Africa focus; PhD on “Legal Pluralism in Ethiopia: Interdependent Relations between Islamic Law and State Law” and Habilitation on “Internationalised Constitution-Making as Tool for Negotiating Statehood and Rule of Law: South Sudan’s and Somaliland’s Constitutional Genesis in the Context of Plural Legal (Dis-) Ordering”.edit
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Vorstellungen von Mediation als „Alternative“ zur Justiz verkennen die Interdependenzen zwischen beiden semi-autonomen sozialen Feldern. Diese Sicht verhindert, gegenseitige Anpassungen als Reaktion auf abweichende normative Vorstellungen... more
Vorstellungen von Mediation als „Alternative“ zur Justiz verkennen die Interdependenzen zwischen beiden semi-autonomen sozialen Feldern. Diese Sicht verhindert, gegenseitige Anpassungen als Reaktion auf abweichende normative Vorstellungen während der Institutionalisierungs- und Verrechtlichungsprozesse zu erkennen. Es ist das Spannungsverhältnis beider Felder, welches das Potential hat, mediatives Handeln für Justiz und Mediation besser auszuschöpfen.
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In order to examine the implications different forms and degrees of internationalised constitution making have on ideas of statehood and the legitimacy of a constitution, the study compares two cases—South Sudan and Somaliland—to explore... more
In order to examine the implications different forms and degrees of internationalised constitution making have on ideas of statehood and the legitimacy of a constitution, the study compares two cases—South Sudan and Somaliland—to explore contrasting patterns of international involvement in constitution making. South Sudan is the one 'extreme' case with strong international intervention, with Somaliland at the other 'extreme'. This paper demonstrates that the actual process matters and once again reinforces scepticism about the ways in which internationalised constitution making is conducted in war-torn settings. In Somaliland the societal consensus production, which included negotiating a governmental structure, was in the hands of the local elites for the constitution making period, which lasted a decade. In South Sudan the consensus production has so far been framed and guided by powerful international actors who had a seat at the local negotiating table. Not only ...
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Be it in established democracies or in countries emerging from violent political conflict, constitution-making processes have become a key activity in moments of profound political and social change. Over the last three decades, the field... more
Be it in established democracies or in countries emerging from violent political conflict, constitution-making processes have become a key activity in moments of profound political and social change. Over the last three decades, the field of constitution making has witnessed an explosion of academic research from a variety of disciplines. This chapter sketches recent developments in the field, both in academia and in practice, and offers an overview of the conceptual and methodological approaches that have informed the study of such processes so far. The aim of the chapter is to introduce the reader to nascent anthropological research on constitution making and to explore how anthropological methods and theory can serve to address existing knowledge gaps and complement, nuance, and perhaps challenge existing approaches to constitution making.