The Expanding Spaces of Law
Stanford University Press eBooks, May 28, 2014
Legal geography is a stream of scholarship that takes the interconnections between law and spatia... more Legal geography is a stream of scholarship that takes the interconnections between law and spatiality, and especially their reciprocal construction, as core objects of inquiry. Legal geographers contend that in the world of lived social relations and experience, aspects of the social that are analytically identified as either legal or spatial are conjoined and co-constituted. The legal geography scholarship highlights that nearly every aspect of law is either located, takes place, is in motion, or has some spatial frame of reference. In other words, law is always “worlded” in some way. Likewise, every bit of social space, lived places, and landscapes are inscribed with legal significance. Distinctively legal forms of meaning are projected onto every segment of the physical world. These meanings are open to interpretation and may become involved in a range of legal practices. Such fragments of a socially segmented world — the where of law — are not simply the inert sites of law, but are inextricably implicated in how law happens. This introduction to the forthcoming book The Expanding Spaces of Law: A Timely Legal Geography (Stanford University Press) identifies and elaborates on three modes of legal geographic research. The first mode of legal geography includes disciplinary work in law or in geography that is modeled on the conventional image of import and export. The second is an interdisciplinary pursuit in which scholars in the eponymous fields draw on the work of each other and seek to contribute to the development of a common project. The third mode moves beyond legal geography to trans-disciplinary, or perhaps even post-disciplinary, modes of scholarship. Although these three modes exist concurrently, the general trajectory over time has been from disciplinary to interdisciplinary and, finally, to post-disciplinary orientations. This triadic classification helps organize the rich yet eclectic legal geography scholarship that has evolved over the last thirty years or so. While this introduction contains elements of each mode, it also urges interested scholars to move legal geography beyond the disciplinary boundaries into the horizons of a post-legal geography. Ironically, then, the ultimate success of legal geography will be in its ability to transcend the bi-disciplinary focus that has characterized so much of this scholarship up to this point. In addition to the introduction, the book consists of ten chapters. In the first three, Keebet and the late Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Mariana Valverde, and Nicholas Blomley identify gaps and obstacles in existing approaches to legal geography scholarship and offer remedies. An important sub-theme in each of these chapters is the importance of being more mindful of the temporalities of social, spatial, and legal phenomena. Authored by Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar and Irus Braverman, the next two chapters ask how a critical comparative legal geography might not only draw upon but also contribute to a rejuvenated project of comparative law and the methodological stakes of legal geography scholarship. The remaining five chapters expand legal geography into new spaces and make new connections. Specifically, Michael Smith, Antonio Azuela and Rodrigo Meneses, Lisa Pruitt, Melinda Benson, and David Delaney develop novel interpretive resources with the aim of enhancing interdisciplinarity, applying these tools to particular kinds of spaces and places: war zones, the street, the workplace, American rurality, and procedural spaces.
Uploads
Books by Sandy Kedar
Emptied Lands investigates the protracted legal, planning, and territorial conflict between the settler Israeli state and indigenous Bedouin citizens over traditional lands in southern Israel/Palestine. The authors place this dispute in historical, legal, geographical, and international-comparative perspectives, providing the first legal geographic analysis of the "dead Negev doctrine" used by Israel to dispossess and forcefully displace Bedouin inhabitants in order to Judaize the region. The authors reveal that through manipulative use of Ottoman, British and Israeli laws, the state has constructed its own version of terra nullius. Yet, the indigenous property and settlement system still functions, creating an ongoing resistance to the Jewish state.Emptied Lands critically examines several key land claims, court rulings, planning policies and development strategies, offering alternative local, regional, and international routes for justice.
Legal geography has contributed a great deal to understanding the many relationships between space and law. Earlier work has explored space that is static, such as the law's interaction with concepts of the home, public space, prison, restrooms, camps, territories, and nation states. But the past few years have seen an emphasis on analyzing the dynamic workings of space, and the understanding of space in various new ways. The Expanding Spaces of Law asks readers to consider what legal geography would look like if we were to give more prominence to conceptions of space as process, space as event, or space as situation or relationship. Questions of space and time are often implicit in the work of legal geographers, and this book seeks to bring these questions to the fore.
The Expanding Spaces of Law brings together some of the most prominent names in the field, and includes new voices in the field from around the world to introduce provocative and exciting research in legal geography.
"The Expanding Spaces of Law is the first book to encapsulate the trajectory of the legal geography field and point to its future possibilities in theoretical, methodological and substantive terms. Analyzing the increasing significance of the law-space nexus, this book highlights why all sociolegal scholars should take seriously the geo-political and spatial challenges to the prevailing understandings of law."—Eve Darian-Smith, Professor, Global & International Studies; University of California, Santa Barbara
"The Expanding Spaces of Law vividly illuminates the significant contributions spatial analysis offers to sociolegal studies and to legal anthropology, making clear that an adequate analysis of law and society requires a focus on space and time. The theoretically sophisticated, wide-ranging introduction and empirically rich chapters demonstrate how legal geography enhances the analysis of sociological studies in settings as diverse as Indonesian villages, rural America, and urban Mexico. It offers a valuable introduction to the field as well as a collection of recent, path-breaking work."—Sally Engle Merry, New York University
Papers by Sandy Kedar
Emptied Lands investigates the protracted legal, planning, and territorial conflict between the settler Israeli state and indigenous Bedouin citizens over traditional lands in southern Israel/Palestine. The authors place this dispute in historical, legal, geographical, and international-comparative perspectives, providing the first legal geographic analysis of the "dead Negev doctrine" used by Israel to dispossess and forcefully displace Bedouin inhabitants in order to Judaize the region. The authors reveal that through manipulative use of Ottoman, British and Israeli laws, the state has constructed its own version of terra nullius. Yet, the indigenous property and settlement system still functions, creating an ongoing resistance to the Jewish state.Emptied Lands critically examines several key land claims, court rulings, planning policies and development strategies, offering alternative local, regional, and international routes for justice.
Legal geography has contributed a great deal to understanding the many relationships between space and law. Earlier work has explored space that is static, such as the law's interaction with concepts of the home, public space, prison, restrooms, camps, territories, and nation states. But the past few years have seen an emphasis on analyzing the dynamic workings of space, and the understanding of space in various new ways. The Expanding Spaces of Law asks readers to consider what legal geography would look like if we were to give more prominence to conceptions of space as process, space as event, or space as situation or relationship. Questions of space and time are often implicit in the work of legal geographers, and this book seeks to bring these questions to the fore.
The Expanding Spaces of Law brings together some of the most prominent names in the field, and includes new voices in the field from around the world to introduce provocative and exciting research in legal geography.
"The Expanding Spaces of Law is the first book to encapsulate the trajectory of the legal geography field and point to its future possibilities in theoretical, methodological and substantive terms. Analyzing the increasing significance of the law-space nexus, this book highlights why all sociolegal scholars should take seriously the geo-political and spatial challenges to the prevailing understandings of law."—Eve Darian-Smith, Professor, Global & International Studies; University of California, Santa Barbara
"The Expanding Spaces of Law vividly illuminates the significant contributions spatial analysis offers to sociolegal studies and to legal anthropology, making clear that an adequate analysis of law and society requires a focus on space and time. The theoretically sophisticated, wide-ranging introduction and empirically rich chapters demonstrate how legal geography enhances the analysis of sociological studies in settings as diverse as Indonesian villages, rural America, and urban Mexico. It offers a valuable introduction to the field as well as a collection of recent, path-breaking work."—Sally Engle Merry, New York University
The issue of Bedouin land in the Negev is perhaps the most intense and protracted problem that has bedeviled both the Bedouin and the State of Israel for many years. Although this matter negatively affects the entire Negev population, both Arabs and Jews, it mainly has immense and direct implications for Bedouin life. While Israel continues to deny Bedouin land rights and to expropriate their land, the Bedouin continue to struggle and advocate their land rights on various levels, primarily legal and political. However, despite their many attempts, including lawsuits, petitions to the High Court of Justice, and appeals to the international community, the issue remains unresolved. It is particularly complicated since it includes many aspects from different disciplines: legal, geographic, political, and cultural. These elements stem from the history of the three states that have ruled the Negev for over the last 100 years: the Ottoman Empire, Britain, and most recently Israel. This book, based on research by three distinguished scholars from different disciplines, is a unique work that adds considerably to our understanding of this complex subject. The starting point of the book is the assertion that the Bedouin are victims of a process of deprivation and land dispossession, evictions, and Israel Studies Review, Volume 33, Issue 2, Autumn 2018: 155-174 © Association for Israel Studies