This qualitative research project investigates how inhabitants of Port Sa'id, Egypt resolve common civil disputes by making the most of spaces in the law and on the margins of law. It examines disputes in social context in order to observe the various means by which resolutions are obtained, taking into account not only 'legal' aspects of the dispute resolution process, such as hiring a lawyer, raising an action for damages, and court proceedings, but also simultaneous and overlapping processes of negotiation and mediation and the use of semi-legal 'customary' documents (muharrar 'urfi). As such, the study highlights the complex and permeable relationship between 'custom' ('urf), variously imagined and enacted, and law. The research poses the questions: When do people invoke the law in dispute resolution, and what form does this invocation take? Further, how and why do lawyers facilitate the use of multiple resources in civil disputes? Finally, how do people shape what the law means and can do by layering legal and non-legal strategies, and what might this tell us about the meaning of 'custom' in contemporary Egypt? Data will be collected through interviews and discussions with those involved in legal disputes or contemplating legal action. Data will also be drawn from secondary sources, including legal documents, local newspapers, and other locally published historical, socio-economic, and legal materials.
This study engages with prior work on dispute resolution towards the goal of re-examining some critical assumptions in the theorization of disputing. In particular, the typical analytical divide between the formal milieu of the courts and the realm of informal mediation, negotiation, and reconciliation processes is herein re-envisioned as fundamentally intertwined, rather than clearly demarcated as separate spheres of action and rules. This qualitative research will also provide a necessary complement to formalistic and historical studies of law in the Middle East. Despite the abundance of scholarly work on the development of the Egyptian civil code, for instance, and the diminishing scope and authority of shari'a in many Middle Eastern countries, there is much to be understood about what happens when actual cases are presented in court, and about how people resolve problems by invoking, referencing, and interpreting the law.
The research will have broader impacts by contributing qualitative data critical for comparative work on legal systems. Contemporary geopolitics reveal the dearth of knowledge about how the law is lived and deployed in everyday life in the Middle East, and this study is intended as a much-needed corrective. In particular, the attention paid to mediation practices and customary documents is designed to complicate idealized understandings of how customary law enters into contemporary urban life in the Middle East. This study considers dispute resolution processes in order to address broader questions of legal authority in the Middle East, particularly in the context of authoritarian rule, and seeks to demonstrate how people, by taking things 'into their own hands', remake the meanings of justice, obligation, and right. Dissemination of the research will take several forms, including: presentation of papers on the research at the 2007 Law and Society Association Conference and at the American Anthropological Association 2007 Annual Meetings, future publications in scholarly journals, and by giving copies of the completed dissertation to a number of academic institutions in Egypt to build upon the body of knowledge available on Port Sa'id and it's communities within Egypt.
