Eltringham, Nigel (2012) Spectators to the spectacle of law: the formation of a ‘validating public’ at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 77 (3). pp. 425-445. ISSN 0014-1844

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Abstract

While the ethnography of contemporary courtrooms has been dominated by a concern with speech, this article considers how a silent, validating public is constructed within court complexes. Drawing on fieldwork at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Arusha, Tanzania), I explore how the court’s threshold practices form validating witnesses whose embodied deference contributes to the constitution of the courtroom as a space of privileged speech. I suggest, therefore, that court spectators are not incidental, but are integral to juridical spectacle and the authority of law.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	School of Global Studies > Anthropology
Subjects:	H Social Sciences
Related URLs:	Publisher
Depositing User:	Nigel Eltringham
Date Deposited:	03 Oct 2012 10:57
Last Modified:	08 Mar 2017 05:02
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/40689

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