This title was first published in 2003. This book examines the interrelationship between the unravelling of the post-war welfare state and legal change. By reference to theorists of postmodernity such as Zygmunt Bauman, Scott Lash and John Urry, and David Harvey, the principal argument is that contemporary law and legal institutions can be best understood as having changed in ways that mirror the recent transformation of the interventionist welfare state and its Fordist, Keynesian economic infrastructure. The key changes identified in the legal field include:- the shift toward marketized regulatory structures as reflected in privatization and deregulation, the attenuation of welfare rights, the privatization of justice, legal polycentricity, the reconfiguration of the welfare state’s social citizenship and the globalization of law. Empirical evidence from a number of jurisdictions is adduced to indicate the general direction of change.

Arguing that contemporary law can be understood to have undergone parallel changes to postmodernism, this book then reconsiders influential neo-evolutionist analyses of the nature of law in the welfare state.

In this important theoretical and empirical statement John Law argues against the purity of post-enlightenment political and social theory, and offers an alternative post-modern sociology. Arguing in favor of a sociology of verbs, he suggests that power, organizations, mind-body dualisms, and macro-micro distinctions may all be understood as the local performance of recursive modes of social ordering. Drawing on a range of theoretical traditions including actor-network theory, verstehende sociology, and the writing of Michel Foucault, he explores the production of materials - including agents and architectures - and their importance for these modes of ordering. The book, which draws on organizational ethnography to develop its argument, is essential reading for all those interested in social theory, materialism, or the sociology of organizations at the end of the era of high modernity.

This book incorporates many of the exciting debates in the social sciences and philosophy of knowledge concerning the issues of modernity and post-modernism. It sets out a new project for criminology, a criminology of modernity, and offers a sustained critique of theorizing without a concern for social totalities. This book is designed to place criminological theory at the cutting edge of contemporary debates. Wayne Morrison reviews the history and present state of criminology and identifies a range of social problems and large scale social processes which must be addressed if the subject is to attain intellectual commitment. This book marks a new development in criminological texts and will serve a valuable function not only for students and academics but for all those interested in the project of understanding crime in contemporary conditions.

This challenging book on jurisprudence begins by posing questions in the post-modern context,and then seeks to bridge the gap between our traditions and contemporary situation. It offers a narrative encompassing the birth of western philosophy in the Greeks and moves through medieval Christendom, Hobbes, the defence of the common law with David Hume, the beginnings of utilitarianism in Adam Smith, Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the hope for enlightenment with Kant, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx, onto the more pessimistic warnings of Weber and Nietzsche. It defends the work of Austin against the reductionism of HLA Hart, analyses the period of high modernity in the writings of Kelsen, Hart and Fuller, and compares the different approaches to justice of Rawls and Nozick. The liberal defence of legality in Ronald Dworkin is contrasted with the more disillusioned accounts of the critical legal studies movement and the personalised accounts of prominent feminist writers.

Modern civilization, Bauman argues, promised to make our lives understandable and open to our control. This has not happened and today we no longer believe it ever will. In this book, now available in paperback, Bauman argues that our postmodern age is the time for reconciliation with ambivalence, we must learn how to live in an incurably ambiguous world.

This collection of original essays critically examines the relationship between ritual, embodiment, and social change in the South Pacific. Over the past few decades, the societies of Melanesia have undergone profound and revolutionary social change. Encounters with colonialism, postcolonialism, and the forces of globalization have put indigenous peoples in touch with processes of state formation, late capitalist culture, and the emergence of a complex network of transnational identities. In addition to shaping the contours of the nation state, these developments are having a profound impact on the nature of embodied experience. In recent years, many Melanesian societies have witnessed the rise of charismatic Christianity, changing gender configurations, and the growing use of consumerism as a means of defining new social and political hierarchies. Embodying Modernity and Post-Modernity provides detailed analyses of those social changes that are becoming part of contemporary Melanesia. Written by experts with first-hand fieldwork experience, this volume furnishes novel insights concerning the social implications of modernity and postmodernity. More specifically, it addresses two interrelated themes: how the rise of new social and economic forms has influenced the ways in which Melanesians think about, experience and act upon their bodies, and the ways in which these new forms of bodily experience contribute to the emergence of new social and cultural identities. This book is part of the Ritual Studies Monograph Series, edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. "While this volume will be of particular interest for regional specialists and theorists of the body, it also makes important contributions to historical analysis of colonial and post-colonial interpretations of modernity and ritual studies. The editor also deserves credit for bringing together a cohesive text, one in which the articles usefully speak to and complement one another." -- Anthropological Forum "This book is a must read for scholars of Melanesia and all scholars of the Anthropology of the Body. There is much to be gleaned theoretically from these ethnographically rich essays." -- Oceania

A wide-ranging and comprehensive survey of modern legal scholarship and the evolution of law in America What do Catharine MacKinnon, the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, and Lani Guinier have in common? All have, in recent years, become flashpoints for different approaches to legal reform. In the last quarter century, the study and practice of law have been profoundly influenced by a number of powerful new movements; academics and activists alike are rethinking the interaction between law and society, focusing more on the tangible effects of law on human lives than on its procedural elements. In this wide-ranging and comprehensive volume, Gary Minda surveys the current state of legal scholarship and activism, providing an indispensable guide to the evolution of law in America.

International Legal Positivism in a Post-Modern World provides fresh perspectives on one of the most important and most controversial families of theoretical approaches to the study and practice of international law. The contributors include leading experts on international legal theory who analyse and criticise positivism as a conceptual framework for international law, explore its relationships with other approaches and apply it to current problems of international law. Is legal positivism relevant to the theory and practice of international law today? Have other answers to the problems of international law and the critique of positivism undermined the positivist project and its narratives? Do modern forms of positivism, inspired largely by the theoretically sophisticated jurisprudential concepts associated with Hans Kelsen and H. L. A. Hart, remain of any relevance for the international lawyer in this 'post-modern' age? The authors provide a wide variety of views and a stimulating debate about this family of approaches.

In this book it explores science and technology, makes connections between these epistemic, cultural, and political trends, and develops profound insights into the nature of our postmodernity.