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University of New South Wales Faculty of Law Research Series |
Last Updated: 4 October 2009
Beyond Methods - Law & Society in Action
Patrick Schmidt, Macalester College
Simon Halliday, University of
Strathclyde, University of New South Wales
Citation
This article is the introductory chapter of a book (Halliday, S. and Schmidt, P., Conducting Law and Society Research: Reflections on Methods and Practices, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Abstract
This essay is the introductory chapter of a book about research methods in the field of law and society (Halliday, S. and Schmidt, P., Conducting Law and Society Research: Reflections on Methods and Practices, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Through interviews with many of the most noteworthy authors of law and society, Conducting Law and Society Research takes readers behind the scenes of empirical scholarship, showing the messy reality of the research process. The challenges and the uncertainties, so often missing from research methods textbooks, are revealed in candid detail. The accessible and revealing conversations about the lived reality of classic projects will be a source of encouragement and inspiration to those embarking on empirical research, ranging across the full array of disciplines that contribute to law and society. In this introductory essay, we argue for greater candor in discussing the messiness of empirical research methods, particularly in the field of law and society which has for many years explored the gap between rules and reality. We also examine the role which luck (both good and bad) plays in empirical research. Ultimately, we suggest that narratives of the research process such as the conversations contained in the book are a necessary complement to research methods textbooks. They reveal, in powerful ways, that “good research” displays not an absence of problems but the care taken in negotiating them.
Keywords: research methods; law and society; empirical research.
Introduction
One might be forgiven for wondering what is to be
gained from another book on research methods. There is certainly no shortage of
research methods texts, especially when one includes in the counting the volumes
written for the separate disciplinary traditions
that comprise Law and Society.
Yet for scholars about to conduct empirical work for the first time, or about to
attempt a very different
approach, there is more to be said about the social
realities of conducting research than is found in most of these texts. A proper
grasp of the philosophical underpinnings of various research methods, and an
adequate understanding of the practical prescriptions
about the mechanics of
research are clearly essential aspects of one’s training. However, the art
of cooking is more than the
following of recipes. Just as reading recipes in a
cookbook does not sufficiently prepare you for your first foray into the kitchen
(and certainly does not make you a good cook), most research methods books can
only take you so far in preparing you for fieldwork.
Orthodox methodological
texts have two important limitations in this respect.
First, they do not
generally convey a sense of what it feels like to be out in the field,
particularly when things go wrong or become difficult (which is almost always
the case). As the interviews
contained in this book suggest, research projects
are usually longer and their narratives more complex than the researcher would
have imagined at the outset. Although this has to be experienced firsthand to be
fully appreciated, the retrospective tales told
in this volume work particularly
well as a window onto the lived reality of research. They demonstrate powerfully
that one of the
major skill sets required of a fieldworker is not so much the
preparation of the project, though this is very important, but the
ability to
respond to the unexpected, to serendipitous opportunities and, almost
inevitably, to a certain level of disappointment.
It is a rare research methods
textbook that prepares students for the emotional dimensions of research and
academia and helps them
set expectations about what constitutes
“success” in research and publication.
Second, research methods
texts, and the presentation of research findings more generally, often remain
quiet about the imperfect path
of the research process. Although transparency
about research design and data collection is a basic principle of good social
science,
it takes a brave soul to give a genuinely “warts and all”
account of the mistakes that are made along the way, or of
other infelicities in
the research process. There is much to inhibit us from such complete candor.
Having made mistakes or missed
opportunities, scholars learn to paper over those
problems with a dispassionate voice and a cool recollection of the
methodological
steps. The “whole truth” of how research work
actually gets done tends to remain unspoken except perhaps to one’s
students, who hear these tales as reassurance when their own projects are mired
in ambiguity and struggle. It is difficult, in research
as in any area of life,
to share one’s insecurities.
Yet, particularly for Law and Society
scholars, there is surely both credit to be taken and comfort to be given in
being a little
more candid. We might usefully think about research methods as
embodying the “laws” of the research process. Prescriptions
about
the mechanics of data collection and analysis are, in important ways, the rules
and regulations of the social sciences—a
self-regulatory system controlled
through a mix of community and competition. And just as early socio-legal
scholars exposed the
gap between law in the books and law in action, so we
might, as a scholarly community, consider the gap which inevitably exists
between
research methods and the realities of research. Although normatively
important, we should not expect the prescriptions of research
methods found in
the textbooks to be perfectly mirrored in the research process.
Methodological Anxiety Syndrome
Responding to these limitations is more than an
intellectual exercise. They have a practical impact on researchers, particularly
those
new to the enterprise. Many students and scholars experience what we would
dub “MAS,” or Methodological Anxiety Syndrome.
MAS is a pervasive
and sometimes debilitating doubt about whether one has the necessary
methodological skills to embark on empirical
socio-legal work in the first
place. It is important to recognize that not all the disciplines which
contribute to the Law and Society
field engage in the same kind of
methodological training. In particular, those coming from law schools may have
received no training
whatsoever in social science research methods. Yet,
socio-legal research has a particular appeal for lawyers who have become
frustrated
and/or bored with the limits of doctrinal scholarship, as a number of
the contributors to this book can testify (see, for example,
chapter 5 with
Lawrence Friedman, chapter 8 with David Engel, chapter 9 with Keith Hawkins, and
chapter 15 with Gerald
Rosenberg.)[1] It is
easy, we suggest, for legal scholars asking socio-legal questions to be
intimidated by the apparent mystery of research methods,
and to be held back
from conducting empirical work because of their lack of formal training.
Piercing criticism from social scientists
of scholarship by
lawyers—attacked as insufficiently attentive to the “rules” of
empirical research methodology—can
all too easily be read as only
discouraging exploration or raising barriers to participation in the
interdisciplinary
dialogue.[2]
However, as a number of the chapters in this book demonstrate, formal
training, although invaluable, is not always a pre-requisite
to the conduct of
high quality socio-legal research (see, for example, chapter 2 with Stewart
Macaulay, chapter 7 with Alan Paterson,
and chapter 16 with Michael McCann). We
do not suggest that training in research methods is unimportant – far from
it. There
is no immunity from the obligation to be as complete and transparent
as possible in describing one’s steps in empirical research,
and training
can provide both the vocabulary and imagination necessary for conceptualizing
and communicating good scholarship. Yet,
we suggest that an awareness of
methodological issues and the requisite sensitivity to methodological questions
can still be gained
where formal training has not been available. In the world
of computer programming, software developers openly speak of the
“naïve
implementation” of a solution - the first, simplest, and
often “textbook” way to get a piece of software up and
running. But
they cannot end there, if they are to be successful. Software may even be
released to the public in “Beta”
form, with many problems yet to be
identified and new versions to be released. Law and Society research typically
proceeds on a similar
basis: beginning with a naïve design, but informed
and evolved through experiences in the field and engagement with the data.
Only,
we have not done so well at naming and accepting the importance of
“naïve fieldwork” in the research process.
In this
understanding, then, being methodologically thoughtful—that is,
possessing the capacity to move from the naïve understanding of one’s
project to the more sophisticated,
and to discover the questions, theoretical
potential, and epistemological problems latent in your engagement with the world
as you
see it—is ultimately much more important that being
methodologically trained. Some of the interviews in this volume should
give
considerable encouragement in this regard, as examples of how to enter the field
even when formal training is lacking, while
developing one’s capacity for
empirical research in the process.
MAS, of course, is not restricted to those
without formal methods training. It also refers to debilitating doubts about the
extent
to which one’s research projects has met the methodological
standards of the field and so may constitute acceptable scholarship.
Many
scholars, us included, know the feeling of things having “gone
wrong” or having realized well after the fact that
a step taken was less
than ideal, or worse. Such doubts about methods holds some people back from
seeking publication in the best
journals of the field. The sentiment that
“this can’t possibly be good enough to publish in the Law and
Society Review” is a self-fulfilling prophecy when one never submits
it. Since we began this project, many people have told us of graduate
students—those in different careers today—who went out into the
field, sometimes to foreign countries, to begin their
research. Finding
“the real world” so different from their theoretical expectations
and the approach they had designed
for it, they became frustrated, lost in the
ambiguity, and never completed their degrees.
Most forbidding of all, doubt
and anxiety generate a collective silence that no one person can break. We
suggest that research methods
need to be demystified and understood as social
practices, just as surely as socio-legal scholars believe that law’s claim
to autonomy and superiority must be laid bare. The collection of interviews in
this volume makes an important step towards that goal.
Serendipity and Bad Fortune
W. H. Auden suggested that “a poet will always have a sneaking regard for luck because he knows the role which it plays in poetic composition.”[3] Before embarking on this project we sensed that, just as in the arts, serendipity played a significant role in the production of social science. Of course, others have pointed to serendipity. Consider an example from a recent, excellent collection of methodological essays (see Figure 1).[4]
Figure 1: Serendipity in Methodology – One Formulation
Source: Schmitter (2008), Figure 14.3.
Amid the grand unified theory represented in the figure, incorporating all of
the logics of enquiry and analysis, a thin line labeled
“serendipity” cuts across and intervenes. It seems out of place, a
sharp juxtaposition between the concreteness of the
process and the “black
box” that happens at some point in good research. But how can this
mysterious dimension be explored
and communicated to others? Is serendipity more
than insight, or even genius that cannot be acquired, only possessed?
Serendipitous
experiences may be too idiosyncratic and context-dependent to
articulate in a systematic way, but that is not to say we shouldn’t
attempt an investigation into the craft that occurs at this level of
specificity.
Of course, amid the chance developments and insightful
realizations that help to refine a research project, the research process throws
up bad fortune as well as good. Our second instinctive hypothesis was that
ambiguity and difficulty were the rule rather than the
exception in empirical
research. We suspected that behind most research projects—right up to the
most insightful socio-legal
projects, the ones we teach and turn to for our own
inspiration—were stories that would settle the nerves of every aspiring
researcher. By reaching out to leading scholars in the field, and asking for
their reflections on their projects, we appreciated
that we were putting people
into an academic confessional. We knew we would hear of challenges and how many
of these hurdles were
overcome (or else these works would not exist as well-read
and much-discussed contributions to the field), but we would also draw
attention
to mistakes and the limitations of these studies. Our approach is not to meet
candor with criticism. While there are unquestionably
norms and best practices
for research methods, analysis, and interpretation, we maintain a less normative
stance, one that views
ambiguity and difficulty as essential elements of
the research process. For research to be at the cutting-edge, the researcher
needs to be discovering new areas of study,
finding new communities or subjects
of research, or testing new analytical frames. The ambition to discover
something new about the
world brings the research into engagement with the
world. A judge may believe that his or her task is to find the most closely
matched
precedent to answer the case at hand (however discretionary we know that
task to be); a researcher who is not simply replicating
existing research does
not have that comfort. Every research project is, in some way, a project of
“first impression”,
a de novo attempt to find the world
through a new slice or with a new lens. Uncertainty and doubt will be the
researcher’s faithful companion.
This collection of interviews, if it
adequately captures the way research methodology works “in action”,
does not free
anyone of the need to be thoughtful, intentional, and reflective
about methods. What it might do, however, is relieve many of the
worries that
plague students and scholars.
Law and Society in the Confident Age
Though not a guiding purpose of this volume, in the
course of conducting the interviews we came to appreciate the collection as
having
a secondary value, functioning as an oral history, of sorts, of well
known and well regarded Law and Society research projects. Law
and Society as an
academic field and an organization are now firmly established, and the findings
of affiliated scholars have found
their way into curricula and policymaking
around the globe. Yet, fortunately, the field is young enough that many of its
founders
are around to tell their tales. The organizational history of Law and
Society has been told in other
places.[5] Also, the
stories of many research projects, including some of those in this book, have
been re-told at conference panels or lectures
to students, and occasionally
published as individual pieces. Still, while our primary emphasis has been on
understanding how projects
took shape and overcame challenges, we have
appreciated our position of hearing these stories and believe that others will
too. Both
for those with long-standing familiarity with the projects in this
volume, and for those coming to these analyses anew, there is
an intrinsic
interest in hearing the research stories which underpin them, one that requires
no justification.
Of course, there are many limitations to this volume if
approached as history. Having focused on the social realities of research,
our
dialogues with authors leave unexplored—or edited out due to limitations
of space—many features an historian might
think to ask or include. Perhaps
more significantly, the interviewees, while representing a diverse group of
scholars and projects,
were not sampled with a broader historical record in
mind. Having initially toyed with the notion of constructing a collection of
the
“classic” works in the field, we quickly retreated from that frame
for somewhat obvious good reasons. To attempt
to capture a group of studies
which represented “the classics” would be an almost impossible task
and necessitate a controversial
claim, especially in a field as diverse as Law
and Society.[6] Further,
it would have restricted our focus to the earlier period of the Law and Society
movement. This would have undermined our
primary goal of creating a useful
resource for junior researchers of various intellectual interests and
methodological approaches.
In our collaborative discussions about the plan of
the book, we frequently pointed to more recent works that we thought presented
wonderful models of field research but that may not yet have attained the iconic
status possessed by older works. We also wanted
to focus on projects which
turned their attention to important new domains or have applied exciting new
analytical frames. The interviews
with Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth (chapter
20), John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos (chapter 21), and John Hagan (chapter
22), each
focusing in their own way on globalization, are cases in
point.
Even if not a rigorous history in any meaningful sense, it is
difficult not to be impressed by the interplay of forces that have helped
to
generate many major research projects in the field. Rather than reducing
research to an individual enterprise, the interviews
in this book repeatedly pay
a debt to mentors, such as J. Willard Hurst, or the concentrations of colleagues
found at key institutions
in the development of the field, such as the American
Bar Foundation, the University of Wisconsin, Yale University, the Oxford Centre
for Socio-Legal Studies, or yet others. Though merely scratching the surface, by
tracing out the common intellectual and institutional
roots of these empirical,
socio-legal projects, these interviews contribute a deeper appreciation of the
emergence of Law and Society
as a field confident in its ability to contribute
to the understanding of law in action.
Methods and Approach
In our conversations with the scholars in this volume
and with interested colleagues, we could not avoid the recursive suggestion
that
the interviews we were conducting might be put to use in a sociological study of
the sociology of law. Our actual ambitions
were much more modest, but we
nevertheless recognized that it would be supremely ironic if we did not, in a
collection such as this,
turn the spotlight on ourselves long enough to speak in
detail, and with candor, to the methods and approaches we adopted in producing
this book.
The idea for the project was floated over beers at The
Brewer’s Art, an upscale brewpub in Baltimore, where the Law and Society
Association annual meeting was held in 2006. We were already friends, having
worked as Research Fellows at Oxford University’s
Centre for Socio-Legal
Studies. Having previously enjoyed the experience of editing together a
collection of essays,[7]
we set our minds to the conception of another project which would allow us to
work together again. Our own memories of having completed
doctoral research in
the Law and Society tradition were sufficiently recent, perhaps even a little
raw, that we could see the value
of a volume such as this. In particular, for
each of us—in one case a little known, and now fairly old, volume of
reflective
essays[8] and
in the other a review essay based on a close examination of an empirical
project[9]—had
been of such inspiration and comfort to us, respectively, that we were confident
of the pedagogical pay-off of research
narratives over and above the methods
textbooks. Unusually, perhaps, for projects conceived in a brewpub the night
before, we pitched
the idea the next morning to John Berger at Cambridge
University Press—making it seem like it was a well-formed idea, of
course—and
his distinct enthusiasm launched our efforts.
One of our
first decisions was to choose particular projects, rather than authors with an
outstanding corpus of work. That meant
excluding many luminaries and some of our
favorite authors when their individual projects duplicated the approaches and
themes already
selected for inclusion. Our concern for the representativeness of
various methodologies, approaches and subjects meant that many
fine examples of
empirical scholarship, particularly given the depth of excellent ethnographic
fieldwork in Law and Society, could
not be included. Our emphasis on empirical
research projects naturally led us to reject numerous classic pieces that were
based on
keen insight into the empirical world but that did not tell the story
of a discrete
project.[10] Our
process of selection led us to produce a diverse list of works across a wide
time span. However, the selection was complicated
by not knowing what the
response to our invitations would be. We proceeded in waves, prepared to extend
different invitations depending
on the responses. As it happened, the response
rate to our invitations was 100%, so we never drew from our contingent list of
possibilities.
We chose an interview format for the main chapters, rather
than seeking authored essays. We did this for two reasons. First, for entirely
practical reasons, we believed that potential contributors from a wider range of
approaches (and frequently we had specific scholars
in mind) would be more
willing to agree to an interview than to authoring an essay. Second, and more
substantively, we were keen
to capture a more immediate and conversational tone
to the pieces. We instinctively felt that this format would make the book more
accessible and easier to use for readers, creating pieces that can be paired
with the primary texts as a form of commentary and reflection
on the works. We
were keen to establish a contrast to the more prosaic, and at times drier, style
of methods textbooks. We also believed
that capturing something of the spoken
voice of the authors would enliven the narratives and somehow bring them closer
to the reader.
It would help convey the essential humanity of research, an
underlying aim of the volume as a whole. Last, while some useful collections
have provided scholars with narratives about the methodological practices used
in the field,[11] we
knew from more isolated examples and our own experience with interview methods
that interviewing would allow us to ask authors
to “unpack” the
emotional dimensions of their projects or go deeper into various aspects of
their experiences. Interviews
simply allow one to access more spontaneous and
candid answers than an editor giving written comments to a draft of a chapter.
Most of the interviews for the book were conducted at the Law and Society
Association Meeting in Berlin the following year, 2007.
This was a
cost-effective and efficient way of carrying out the work. It was also
exhausting. Before Berlin we had ‘piloted’
the interview approach
with two contributors from Oxford University whom we knew, Keith Hawkins and
Doreen McBarnet. Other interviews,
for pragmatic reasons, were conducted after
Berlin (John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos, John Heinz & Edward Lauman, John
Hagan,
John Conley and William O’Barr, and Alan Paterson). The interview
with John Conley and William O’Barr was conducted by
telephone conference
call, as was the interview with Patty Ewick, though Susan Silbey had been
interviewed in person in Berlin. Although
Bill Felstiner had been interviewed in
Berlin, Austin Sarat contributed answers in writing to an edited text of the
Felstiner interview.
We prepared a set of universal questions which were
asked of all participants and were sent to them in advance of the interviews.
These questions covered issues such as the intellectual background of the
projects, the setting up of projects, how projects were
first intended or
designed, the acts of analyzing and writing up fieldwork, the emotional demands
of the research, and the authors’
reactions to the reception of their work
in the scholarly community. Additionally, we asked numerous questions specific
to the projects
being discussed. Interviews lasted between one and three hours,
with an average of approximately 90 minutes, producing transcripts
of between
approximately 10,000 words and 30,000 words. Our biggest challenge was to edit
those transcripts down to chapters of around
4,000 to 5,000 words. It should go
without saying then, that, without fail, interviews were far richer than this
book could accommodate,
and so we grew in appreciation of the choices that we
were making. Each interview received a two-stage process of editing, with one
of
us doing an initial cut and the other reviewing the edit against the original,
and frequently making considerable changes, both
cutting further and saving some
material from the cutting-room floor. Some interviews suggested a dominant
narrative quite readily,
while others were more chimeric. We chose not to ensure
uniformity of issues addressed across the chapters, but rather to retain
what we
felt were the most interesting and useful aspects of each interview. Having said
that, and as the concluding chapter by Bert
Kritzer highlights, there is still
considerable overlap between chapters in terms of the subjects discussed and
themes which emerge.
It also took us much longer to edit the transcripts than we
had originally anticipated – something, of course, that we should
have
foreseen on the basis of the research narratives we had listened to!
The
authors were promised that we would send the edited transcripts for their
approval. We invited them to amend the text where they
wished, including our
introduction to their chapter, and to suggest methodological keywords to be
included in their chapters. Every
author made some changes to their texts. Most
amendments were minimal. It took considerable nerve for some contributors to see
their
words on the page—what had been said in the comfortable and relaxed
atmosphere of Berlin—and to not shrink from our call
to allow their
doubts, mistakes, and reflects to go forward to press. We thank them for their
fortitude.
The one exception to our decision to conduct interviews is the
concluding chapter authored by Bert Kritzer, which pulls together the
insights
from the interviews in aggregate and reflects on the state of law and society
research. Bert Kritzer struck us as, perhaps
without peer, the scholar most
qualified to reflect on the reflections. The editor of Law & Society
Review from 2003 to 2007, and co-editor (with Peter Cane) of the Oxford
Handbook of Empirical Legal Studies, for the past three decades he has been
one of the leading producers and consumers of empirical Law & Society
research. In particular,
he has long taken a reflexive interest in the
research process, and has written much about how empirical research projects
have come
to pass.
The last matter to be decided in the production of the
book was how to title it. One of us is more demanding than the other (in a
good
way, it is hoped) regarding titles, asking that they be catchy and
memorable.[12] In
these interviews, we frequently asked authors how their books and articles got
their titles, and some of those answers made it
through the editing (see, e.g.,
Feeley, Chapter 4; Engel, Chapter 8; and Rosenberg, Chapter 15;). We struggled
to title this book,
having so many concepts and themes seemingly at play. One of
our colleagues early on gave us the promising suggestion of “Law
and
Society in Action,” a clever twist on an old theme, and we ran with it for
months. “Beyond Methods” was also
considered, later in the process.
Both fell afoul of the judgment of our editor at Cambridge, who sensibly advised
us that a plain
and descriptive title sells more books by giving readers and
libraries a better sense of why they need the book. The title and subtitle
of
this chapter, like gravestones for dead ideas, memorializes our journey through
the difficult job of naming one’s projects.
Organization of the Book
This book is not designed to be read cover-to-cover,
and so in some respects the order of the material may be irrelevant. In our
formal
proposal to Cambridge University Press we had suggested organizing the
book into sections reflecting the various research techniques
used and the
traditional subject foci of the Law and Society field. This would have mirrored
the approaches taken to research methods
textbooks and to various Law and
Society Readers. Several attempts in this vein left us frustrated that this
approach might obscure
more than it revealed for a volume such as this.
Particularly where single projects have used multiple methods, separating
chapters
out according to individual techniques would be problematic. Further,
in a developing field where research questions and analytical
constructs build
on and re-frame prior work, and where path-breaking work embraces and extends a
range of traditional themes, it
seems counter-productive to reduce projects to
one, or even a dominant, research concern. So serendipity intervened, just as
Figure
1 suggests it should—when attempting to place one’s data
alongside the conceptual framework—and we devised a new,
more satisfying
order of the chapters. The interviews, accordingly, follow a chronological
sequence according to the date of publication
of the main research publication
being discussed.[13]
In the end, the chronological frame helped us see the interviews in a way that
confirms an initial hypothesis: that uncertainty
and ambiguity are not products
of a particular age of a field, when it is new, but are ever-present. Hopefully
these interviews
will help lessen the anxieties that attend this condition.
[1] For other
personal accounts of the draw of socio-legal studies for lawyers, see Bradney, A
(1998) ”Law as a Parasitic Discipline
Journal of Law and Society,
vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 71 – 84; Cotterrell, R. (2002) ”Subverting
Orthodoxy, Making Law Central: A View of Sociolegal Studies”
Journal of
Law & Society, vol. 29, no, 4, pp.
632-44
[2] Lee
Epstein and Gary King, “The Rules of Inference,” University of
Chicago Law Review, vol. 69, no. 1 (2002), pp.1-133. See also, Robert
Spitzer, Saving the Constitution From Lawyers (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2008), pp. 1-55.
[3] W. H. Auden,
The Dyer’s Hand and other essays (London: Faber and Faber,
1963), p.47
[4]
Philippe Schmitter, “The Design of Social and Political Research”,
in Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences, Donatella Della
Porta and Michael Keating, eds. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2008), p. 294, Figure
14.3.
[5] See, for
example, Felice J. Levine, “Goose Bumps and ‘The Search for
Intelligent Life’ in Sociolegal Studies: After
Twenty-Five Years”
Law & Society Review vol. 24(1):7-33 (1990); and Bryant Garth and
Joyce Sterling, “From Legal Realism to Law and Society: Reshaping Law for
the
Last Stages of the Activist State,” Law & Society Review
32:409-71 (1998). For accounts of the development of socio-legal studies in the
UK, see Philip A. Thomas, ‘Socio-Legal Studies:
The Case of Disappearing
Fleas and Bustards’ in Thomas, ed., Socio-Legal Studies (Aldershot,
Dartmouth, 1997); and William Twining, “Remembering 1972: The Oxford
Centre in the Context of Developments in Higher
Education and the Discipline of
Law” Journal of Law and Society, vol. 22:35-49 (1995). See,
generally, Encyclopedia of Law & Society: American and Global
Perspectives, David S. Clark, ed., (Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications,
2007).
[6] But see,
Carroll Seron, ed., The Law and Society Canon (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006);
and Seron, C. and Susan S. Silbey, “Profession, Science and Culture: An
Emergent Canon of Law and
Society Research,” in The Blackwell Companion
to Law and Society, Austin Sarat, ed., (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) pp.
30-59.
[7] Human
Rights Brought Home: Socio-Legal Perspectives on Human Rights in the National
Context (Oxford: Hart Publishing,
2004).
[8] Robin
Luckham, ed., Law and Social Enquiry: Case Studies of Research (Uppsala:
Scandinavian Institute of African Studies,
1981).
[9] Herbert M.
Kritzer, “ ‘Data, Data, Data, Drowning in Data’: Crafting
The Hollow Core”, Law and Social Inquiry, 21:761-804
(1996).
[10] A
prime example is Marc Galanter’s, “Why the ‘Haves’ Come
Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal
Change,” Law &
Society Review 9:95-160
(1974).
[11] June
Starr and Mark Goodale, eds., Practicing Ethnography in Law: New Dialogues,
Enduring Methods (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan,
2002).
[12]The
other, having once been told by a colleague that he had conjured up the
“second-worst titled book in academia”, has
long-since abandoned
pride in the titling
process.
[13] A
number of authors produced additional outputs from the same projects. Details of
these are given at the beginning of the chapters.
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