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'We don’t work for the Serbs, we work for human rights': justice and impartiality in transitional Kosovo
This chapter looks at the modalities through which impartiality can be guaranteed in a context as fraught and highly politicized as post-war Kosovo, and explores how impartiality is produced in the everyday at the Kosovo Property Agency (KPA). The KPA is a quasi-judicial institution put in place by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to ‘resolve’ war-related property claims and thereby restitute property rights to, for a great majority of claims, Kosovo Serbian ‘displaced persons’. The chapter argues that impartiality is produced and made possible by different, seemingly contradictory repertoires of justice that are acted out in everyday practice by the national lawyers of the agency. It probes the tenets of the dialectic between ‘global’ ideals and ‘local’ practice, and ethnographically demonstrates the limits of an anthropology of human rights that sees vernacularization and meaning-making as the only analytical tools available. The chapter shows that, in the specific political landscape of post-war Kosovo, it is the ‘nationalistic bias’ of Kosovo Albanian lawyers that ensures due diligence and respect for rule of law principles.
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Publication status
- Published
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Cambridge University PressExternal DOI
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83-105Pages
244.0Book title
Everyday justice: law, ethnography, injusticePlace of publication
CambridgeISBN
9781108487214Series
Cambridge Studies in Law and SocietyDepartment affiliated with
- Anthropology Publications
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- No
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Editors
Sandra BrunneggerLegacy Posted Date
2020-01-07Usage metrics
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