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8 - Law: A Map of Misreading

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2020

Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Affiliation:
Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
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Summary

In Chapter Eight I continue my theoretical endeavors, this time drawing on a conception of law as a map and offering an analysis of law from the point of view of cartography and its procedures (scale, projection, and symbolization). I concentrate on forms of law, using them as revolving doors through which different forms of power and knowledge circulate. The type of close-up view I am calling for can only be obtained in the context of concrete struggles as they unfold, mobilizing, inventing, confronting, appropriating or rejecting different forms of legality and illegality. The purpose of my analysis is to show that, since the struggles on regulation/emancipation are never fought in general but rather in specific social sites, involving specific issues and social groups, and drawing on specific instrumental and expressive resources, it is of crucial importance and strategic value to understand the limits and the possibilities of the different contexts of struggle, in this particular case, social struggle centered around law, legality and illegality.

Type
Chapter
Information
Toward a New Legal Common Sense
Law, Globalization, and Emancipation
, pp. 496 - 521
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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