Description
Book SynopsisLaw is integral to culture, and culture to law. This book invites readers to consider how the facts that are adduced in a legal forum connect to the ways in which facts are constructed in other areas of everyday life, and how the processes of legal decision-making partake of the logic by which the culture as a whole is put together.
Trade Review"Lawrence Rosen exposes as false the view that law is an independent source of truth. Jurisprudence has a tendency to treat law as something given in nature, with a capacity to discern facts and attain absolute truth. This idea Rosen is determined to denounce... Rosen stresses that any uncertainty tends to put the law under cultural pressure. Though Rosen sees law's main function as establishing faith in an orderly universe, he pays due attention to its many areas of uncertainty... [This book] deserve[s] to be widely read."--Mary Douglas, American Interest "[A]n important book, making it well worthwhile to take time off from thinking about law only as framing structures of domination and as the preserve of a specialist service profession."--Simon Roberts, Modern Law Review "Using a range of cross-cultural evidence from Europe, Africa, Latin America, and North America, and employing numerous drawings and photographs, he explores how courts, mediation, and law are involved in creating a sense of the world that is consistent with common sense."--Law and Social Inquiry "Law As Culture is a cultured reading experience in its own right and most suitable for any academic and specialist library collection."--Stuart Hannabuss, Library Review "Law as Culture is quite appealing in enquiring further and 'elsewhere' the cultural construction of legality. The book can be recommended as a useful introduction to 'cultural studies' and anthropology and remains a beneficial reference to a wide range of academic scholars."--Esther Abin, In-Spire
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Preface xi Introduction 1 CHAPTER 1: Law and Social Control 14 CHAPTER 2: Creating Facts 68 CHAPTER 3: Reason, Power, Law 131 CHAPTER 4: Law as Cosmology 169 Conclusion 198 Further Reading 201 Index 213
