Spatializing Law

Spatializing Law: An Anthropological Geography of Law in Society focuses on law and its location, exploring how spaces are constructed on the terrestrial and marine surface of the earth with legal means in a rich variety of socio-political, legal and ecological settings. The contributors explore the interrelations between social spaces and physical space, highlighting the ways in which legal rules may localise people's rights and obligations in social space that may be mapped onto physical space. This volume also demonstrates how different notions of space and place become resources that can be mobilised in social, political and economic interaction, paying specific attention to the contradictory ways in which space may be configured and involved in social interaction under conditions of plural legal orders. Spatializing Law makes a significant contribution to the anthropological geography of law and will be useful to scholars across a broad array of disciplines.

Professor Franz von Benda-Beckmann is joint Head of the Project Group on Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. He is Honorary Professor for Ethnology at the University of Leipzig, and Honorary Professor for Legal Pluralism at the University of Halle. Keebet von Benda-Beckmann is joint Head of the Project Group on Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and Professor in Anthropology of Law, Faculty of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Law & Society Association. Dr Anne Griffiths is Professor of Law and Anthropology at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on anthropology of law, comparative and family law, African law, gender, culture and rights.