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Studies in Law, Politics, and Society
Co-edited by Susan S. Silbey
JAI Press, 1997
This volume of Studies in Law, Politics and Society, eighth in the series we have been editing, continues themes developed in Volume 16, namely themes concerning the way law constructs and cross boundaries of public and private in the regulation of family life and the challenges to law posed by deviance and criminality. Understanding the regulation of family life is particularly important at a time when so called family values play such a large role in political life. Law both holds the family to be a 'sacred' institution and implicitly privileges one type of family over all others. By studying family we can see how law is, and can proclaim itself to be, two things at once, namely a guarantor of freedom and a force in producing compliance and conformity with mainstream social norms.
Just as issues of family structure and governance have special salience in contemporary political life, so too do concerns for crime and deviance. No one wants to be on the wrong side of the crime issue, no one wants to be labeled 'soft' on crime. Thus politicians continue to stir up fears about crime even as they eagerly claim credit for lowered crime rates. To focus on the family and crime addresses issues that shape the contemporary scene of policy contestation with its increased attention to symbolic commitments.
But this volume is not just about continuity with concerns marked out in earlier issues; it also opens up new avenues of inquiry, in particular about the way in which law helps to shape our imaginative lives. Thus, we are pleased to publish articles that bring cultural studies to law, that examine the aesthetic dimensions of legal life, and that ask about the way law structures vision.