Jane BURBANK

Période de résidence à Nantes: janvier à juin 2009.

Projet de recherche:
"Imperial Connections: Law and Belonging in the Russian Empire"

Résumé :

"My project is a study of legal process and political imagination in Russia from the mid-19th century through 1917. I focus on the "middle" level of the law--on appeals instances in Kazan, a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional province on the Volga River. The imperial legal system was a transmitter of values in multiple directions: decisions made and passed up and down the legal ladder by provincial and district officials communicated qualities of sovereignty among rulers and users of the legal system. While at the Institute, I will be drafting portions of what will become a monograph about this web of legal connections, based on materials from a single province inhabited by 15 ethnic groups and with a substantial Muslim population. This project offers insights into the long-term political and cultural practices that still inflect governance, values, and expectations of people living in the Russian Federation and in other post-Soviet states; it also argues that we must take a more expansive, differentiated, and contextual approach to understanding "rule of law."