Crimes and Trials of the Century - Volume 1

Crimes and Trials of the Century - Volume 1

Describes some of the most famous crimes and court trials in the United States from 1919 to 2004, including cases involving John Scopes, Alger Hiss, Ted Bundy, O.J. Simpson, and Scott Peterson.

Crimes and Trials of the Century - Volume 1

Witchcraft and Colonial Rule in Kenya, 1900-1955

Witchcraft and Colonial Rule in Kenya, 1900-1955

Focusing on colonial Kenya, this book shows how conflicts between state authorities and Africans over witchcraft-related crimes provided an important space in which the meanings of justice, law, and order in the empire were debated. Katherine Luongo discusses the emergence of imperial networks of knowledge about witchcraft. She then demonstrates how colonial concerns about witchcraft produced an elaborate body of jurisprudence about capital crimes. The book analyzes the legal wrangling that produced the Witchcraft Ordinances in the 1910s, the birth of an anthro-administrative complex surrounding witchcraft in the 1920s, the hotly contested Wakamba Witch Trials of the 1930s, the explosive growth of legal opinion on witch-murder in the 1940s, and the unprecedented state-sponsored cleansings of witches and Mau Mau adherents during the 1950s. A work of anthropological history, this book develops an ethnography of Kamba witchcraft or uoi.

Witchcraft and Colonial Rule in Kenya, 1900-1955

State of Exception

State of Exception

Two months after the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration, in the midst of what it perceived to be a state of emergency, authorized the indefinite detention of noncitizens suspected of terrorist activities and their subsequent trials by a military commission. Here, distinguished Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben uses such circumstances to argue that this unusual extension of power, or ‘state of exception,’ has historically been an underexamined and powerful strategy that has the potential to transform democracies into totalitarian states.

State of Exception