[Linganth] Melissa Crouch on The Palimpset Constitution

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues,
Some of you might be interested in how legal ethnographers engage with
crucial textual artifacts like constitutions, so today on the blog, Melissa
Crouch chats with her interviewer, Amy Cohen, about her new book, *The
Palimpset Constitution*.

www.campanthropology.org

Best,
Ilana

Press blurb: Since the mid-20th century, many postcolonial states have
engaged in multiple constitution-making exercises, with the turnover in
written constitutions often due to coups or internal conflict. Conversely,
people have resisted authoritarian rule through alternative
constitution-making. The reality that most countries have had numerous
official and unofficial constitutional texts begs the question: How do past
constitutions matter in the present?

This volume explores the social life of constitutional legacies, or how
past constitutions matter. Using the case of Myanmar, Professor Crouch
demonstrates that constitutions are a palimpsest of past texts, ideas, and
practices, an accumulation of contested legacies. Through constitutional
ethnography, it traces Burma/Myanmar's modern constitutional history from
the late colonial era through its postcolonial, socialist, and military
regimes.

*The Palimpsest Constitution* captures the idea that contemporary debates
about constitutional reform are informed by the contested legacies of the
past. In Myanmar, the military insists on the endurance of its 2008
Constitution while pro-civilian actors resist military rule through
alternative constitution-making endeavours. Offering a sociological view of
constitutional endurance, the book demonstrates how the social life of
constitutions is central to the struggle for constitutional democracy and
civilian rule in Myanmar.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/linganth/attachments/20260525/0def8d6c/attachment.htm>