Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-1998

Keywords

Transnationalism, Negotiation, International agreements, Ethnography, Legal anthropology

Disciplines

Anthropology | International Law | Legal History | Transnational Law

Abstract

The ethnographic subjects of this article are UN-sponsored international conferences and their legal documents. Drawing upon fieldwork among Fiji delegates at these conferences, in this article I demonstrate the centrality of matters of form, as distinct from questions of “meaning,” in the negotiation of international agreements. A parallel usage of documents and of mats among Fijian negotiators provides a heuristic device for exploring questions of pattern and scale in the aesthetics of negotiation.

Comments

This article predates the author's affiliation with Cornell Law School.

Publication Citation

Published in: American Ethnologist, vol. 25, no. 3 (August 1998).

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