Routledge Readings on Law, Development and Legal Pluralism

Routledge Readings on Law, Development and Legal Pluralism presents some of the finest essays on social justice, environment, rights and governance. With a lucid new Introduction, it covers a vast range of issues and offers a compelling guide to understanding the harm and risk relating to biodiversity, agro-ecology, disaster and forest rights. The book covers critical themes such as ecology, families and governance and establishes the trajectory of contemporary ecology and law in South Asia. The thirteen chapters in the volume, divided into three sections, trace violence and marginality in the plurality of families and their laws in India, as well as discuss community-based just practices. With debates on development, governance and families, the book highlights the politics and practices of law making, law reform and law application. This multidisciplinary volume foregrounds the politics and plural lives of/in law by including perspectives from major authors who have contributed to the academic and/ or policy discourse of the subject.

This book will be useful to students, scholars, policymakers and practitioners interested in a nuanced understanding of law, especially those studying law, marginality, kinship and indigeneity studies. It will serve as essential reading for those in law, socio-legal studies, environment studies and ecology, social exclusion studies, development studies, South Asian studies, human rights, jurisprudence and constitutional studies, gender studies, history, politics, conflict and peace studies, sociology and social anthropology. It will also appeal to legal historians and practitioners of law, environmentalists and those in public administration.

Kalpana Kannabiran is a sociologist and legal scholar, and is Distinguished Professor at the Council for Social Development. Among her book publications are Tools of Justice: Non-Discrimination and the Indian Constitution (2012), Gender Regimes and the Politics of Privacy: A Feminist Re-Reading of Puttaswamy vs. Union of India (2021), Law, Justice and Human Rights in India: Short Reflections (2021) and the edited volumes Violence Studies (2016) and Re-Presenting Feminist Methodologies: Interdisciplinary Explorations (2017). Based in Hyderabad, India, she was formerly Professor and Director at the Council for Social Development, Southern Regional Centre, has taught at NALSAR University of Law, and is co-founder of Asmita Resource Centre for Women. She is a recipient of the VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research (2003) and the Amartya Sen Award for Distinguished Social Scientists (2012), both for her work in the field of law.