Lauren Coyle
Lauren Coyle is a doctoral student in Anthropology at the University of Chicago, where she is working on a dissertation titled Dual Sovereignties in the Golden Twilight: Law, Land, and Labor in Ghana. Her research centers on the ways in which the colonial legacy of dual legal systems - one "customary," the other under the jurisdiction of the state - interacts with various shadow sovereigns to frame contemporary nationhood in Ghana and, in particular, the often violent conflicts over the property regimes governing ownership and access to land and raw resources in its neoliberal economy. The dual legacy has assumed new meaning and heightened significance alongside the recent boom of the "global land grab" and the flourishing of related "rule of law" governance programs. Coyle also holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Publications include: "The Birth of the Labor Bureau: Surveillance, Pacification, and the Statistical Objectivity Metanarrative," Rethinking Marxism 22(4):544-568 (2010), and "The Spiritless Rose in the Cross of the Present: Retracing Hegel in Adorno's Negative Dialectics and Related Lectures," Telos 155:39-60 (2011). Email: lcoyle@uchicago.edu.
