Chapter 9 extends the argument of this book to the case of the 1996 South African Constitution, demonstrating the usefulness of examining the contours and limits of constitutional embeddedness beyond the Colombian context. The South African case is one of partial constitutional embedding, where legal embedding significantly outpaced social embedding. This comparative examination probes different ways in which constitutional embedding can occur in practice, and it helps to show how constitutional embedding is not a necessary or inevitable phenomenon.

Chapter 4 tracks how the tutela procedure came to attain a central place in Colombian life, as people were inundated with opportunities to learn about the new constitution, including through media campaigns, popular television shows, board games, and comics. Over time, the tutela became “vernacularized,” and Colombians not only talked about the tutela procedure but transformed the word tutela in several different verb forms. Colombians developed a set of beliefs about the possibilities created by the new constitution, and these beliefs – whether accurate or inaccurate in relation to the constitutional text – drove claim-making using the tutela procedure, which in turn ensured the social embedding of the constitution.

Chapter 5 asks why contentious land narratives emerge between two ethnically distinct communities in one area, but not another nearby area. To examine this question, the chapter draws on an in-depth case comparison between two sets of farming communities in Nakuru County, in Kenya’s Rift Valley region. It argues that where two neighboring ethnic communities gain access to land through distinct processes, group members from both sides are likely to challenge the legitimacy of the other groups’ land claims. Yet where both communities acquire land through a similar process, group members are less likely to challenge the claims of the other, and contentious narratives are far less salient. The chapter demonstrates that contentious land narratives between ethnic groups are not the inevitable outcomes of ethnic rivalry but are instead endogenous to the local institutional context governing the provision of land rights.