Product Description:

Law and Society is a rapidly-growing interdisciplinary field that turns on its head the conventional, idealized view of the “Law” as a magisterial abstraction. Kitty Calavita’s Invitation to Law and Society brilliantly brings to life the ways in which law shapes and manifests itself in the institutions and interactions of human society, while inviting the reader into conversations that introduce the field’s dominant themes and most lively disagreements.

Deftly interweaving scholarship with familiar personal examples, Calavita shows how scholars in the discipline are collectively engaged in a subversive exposé of law’s public mythology. While surveying prominent issues and distinctive approaches to the use of the law in everyday life, as well as its potential as a tool for social change, this volume provides a view of law that is more real but just as compelling as its mythic counterpart. In a field of inquiry that has long lacked a sophisticated yet accessible introduction to its ways of thinking, Invitation to Law and Society will serve as an engaging and indispensible guide.

Acknowledgments / ix

Chapter 1.

Introduction / 1

Chapter 2.

Types of Society, Types of Law / 10

Chapter 3.

Law in the Everyday, Everywhere / 30

Chapter 4.

The Color of Law / 51

Chapter 5.

Many Laws, Many Orders / 74

Chapter 6.

The Talk versus the Walk of Law / 94

Chapter 7.

Law and Social Justice:

Plus Ça Change . . . / 116

Chapter 8.

Conclusion / 148

References / 155

Index / 167