Ethnographical research carried out between 1997 and 2001 of the five Jury Courts in the city of São Paulo leads me to ask whether courts in general, and the Jury Court in particular, can be explained merely as arenas of conflict and privileged sites for the interplay of domination and subjection. Although in such places we can observe rituals that reinforce traditionally established hierarchies, they also allow for the construction of new subjectivities and the redefinition of social experiences. The facts/dramas reconstructed in the courts are as far removed from their original contexts as they are from the possibility of being explained from a legal perspective alone. They are of a different nature and their meaning can only be understood from within the ritual, playful and poetic domains of their own expression.
Jury Courts; Ethnography; Imaginative/Collective Works
