A history of rights: game of actors and legal pluralism in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Legal pluralism is a theoretical approach that criticizes State law exclusivity. However, there are as many conceptions of legal pluralism as pluralist thinkers. And young researchers who wish to venture on this path find themselves quickly overwhelmed by the range of possibilities offered by this school of thought. In this perspective, a historical analysis can serve as a first empirical exploration of a research topic. This is what I intent to do in this short essay, in the context of my field research, which is the Eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In the DRC, we must understand legal pluralism as the combination of different normative systems superimposed on various scales, which blend into individual's thoughts and actions. To a certain legal porosity is added social actors' role in the production and reproduction of law. Thus, it is the model of the game, as developed by the French anthropologist Etienne Le Roy, that theorizes adequately all these elements.