Department of Criminal Justice

About

Professor Parnell received his Ph.D. in anthropology and has conducted ethnographic research on law, crime, and the state; formations of law in intergroup networks; and disputing and social change in rural Mexico and urban areas of the Philippines. In his research, he has examined varying roles of law and crime across different formations of the state and roles of disputes and conflicts in the formation and dissolution of federations and confederations as alternatives to centralized state law and governance. He also studies relationships among official and unofficial legal systems in situations of culture contact. He is interested in development of concepts and methods to facilitate comparative research on law and crime across Western and non-Western societies.