General Research Interests

I am an Australian citizen and have been in the United States since 1990.

Before obtaining a MA (Harvard, 1991) and Ph.D. (University of Chicago, 1995) in anthropology, I received a combined history and law degree from the University of Melbourne and worked as a commercial litigation attorney in Australia.

I take an anthropological approach to law, which means that I explore the extent to which legal symbolism, legal values, and legal processes are indicative of specific cultural contexts and socioeconomic conditions. My general research explores the role of law in shaping a person's nationality, ethnic, gender, and class identities. By taking into account both historical and contemporary perspectives, I emphasize the colonial and postcolonial dimensions of legal interaction and the asymmetrical power relations that law embodies. In this focus, I attempt to undermine our western society's belief in law as somehow an objective and universal mode of governance.

For instance, in the United States access to the law and legal justice presupposes that a person can speak English, knows his or her rights, and can afford to pay for an attorney's services. For many people, especially in the state of California, these prerequisites make using the legal system extremely difficult. The result is a legal system that serves only certain members of the community, and perpetuates social divisions and discrimination against those who cannot enter the legal domain.

In my writing and teaching, I also illustrate particular moments of legal interaction that may challenge prevailing cultural values and, at times, empower marginal members of society. One example of this is the increasing opportunities for women to enter a more flexible labor force, make an independent wage and, in turn, enter the public domain and be able to pay for access to the legal system. Another example is the sanctioning of laws allowing Native American Indians to open casinos on their reservations and profit considerably from capitalist enterprise for the first time.

However these so-called "advances", I suggest, may come at a price. Many women in part-time and casual employment do not receive the same health and employment benefits as do their full-time male colleagues. And gaming laws have, in some cases, divided the Native American Indian community and presented new forms of conflict and economic discrimination.