Anemos‐ity, Apatheia, Enthousiasmos: An Economic Sociology of Law and Wind Farm Development in Cyprus
| Date | 01 March 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2013.00613.x |
| Author | Amanda Perry‐Kessaris |
| Published date | 01 March 2013 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 40, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2013
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 68±91
Anemos-ity, Apatheia,Enthousiasmos: An Economic
Sociology of Law and Wind Farm Development in Cyprus
Amanda Perry-Kessaris*
This piece sketches `an' economic sociology of law: one possible
approach, in relation to one case study of wind farm development in
Cyprus. Carbon emissions are a global threat to which wind farms may
offer something of a solution. But wind farms can also pose local
threats. So they tend to produce conflicts on different levels of social
life: action, interaction, regime, and rationality. As such they are ill-
suited to exploration through law or economics, and ideally suited to
exploration through economic sociology of law. The approach set out
in this article enables social life of all levels, intensities, and types
(including the economic) to be placed on the same analytical page.
What emerges is a most human story of animosity, apathy, and
enthusiasm in which law acts variously as means, obstacle, and
irrelevance.
PRELUDE
Leave the Nicosia-Larnaca highway at the Kalo Chorio roundabout. Skirt the
rolling hills crowned with unhurried blades. Proceed on crunching foot up
the steepening slope, past the olive tree-shaded foxhole and the cobbled-
together fence. Scramble up the bright white, gravely path, dotted with
scented crawlers, thistles, and grasses dancing in the quickening breeze.
Allow the inductive, robotic hum to draw you in. Detach, turn around and
drink in the view. Descend in turmoil: animosity, apathy, enthusiasm?
68
ß2013 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2013 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*SOAS, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London
WC1H 0XG, England
a.perry-kessaris@soas.ac.uk
Thanks to Diamond Ashiagbor, Sabine Frerichs, Terry Halliday, Prabha Kotiswaran,
Martin Krygier, and Joanne Scott for insightful comments; and to Helen Perry for taking
me here, there, and everywhere.
AN ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY OF LAW
The title of this piece promises `an' economic sociology of law ± it sketches
but one possible approach, and showcases it in relation to a single case study:
wind farm development in Cyprus.
1
`At first sight the environmental benefits
of generating energy from wind farms would seem to be overwhelming.'
2
Carbon emissions are a global threat ± economic, emotional, and environ-
mental ± to which wind farms may offer something of a solution. But wind
farms can also pose local threats ± economic, emotional, and environmental.
So they tend to produce conflicts on `different scales' of social life.
3
As such
they are ill-suited to exploration through law or economics, and ideally
suited to exploration through economic sociology of law.
A legal approach entails the `rationalisation of and speculation on the
rules, principles, concepts and legal values considered to be explicitly or
implicitly present in legal doctrine.'
4
From this perspective, `law comes first
and is the substantive focus. There is no need to look any further.'
5
An
economic approach might be said to be similarly constrained, entailing
`rationalizations' and `speculations' regarding rules, principles, concepts,
and economic values thought to be present in human nature, and their impact
on production, consumption, and distribution.
By contrast, and in keeping with its sociological roots, an economic
sociology of law is outward looking. It conceptualizes both the `legal' and
the `economic' as social phenomena occurring on all, interconnected, levels
of social life: `individual actors and their actions', `interactions between
actors'; ` the instit utions of so cial regi mes' into wh ich intera ctions
`aggregate'; and the `rationalities' that `underlie and direct social regimes'.
6
These levels are analytically liberating because they elide boundaries
imposed within the disciplines of economics (such as state, firm, household)
and law (such as private or public, local or international), allowing us more
effectively to capture messy reality. They are presented together, in stylized
form, in Figure 1.
69
1 Interviews and site visits were conducted in Cyprus in April 2012. Interviews are
referred to by code, or not at all, to protect identity. Areas under Turkish occupation
are not covered.
2 S. Jackson, `Wind Power: The Legal and Environmental Issues' (2005) ELFline at 4.
3
J. Holder and M. Lee, Environmental Protection, Law and Policy (2007, 2nd edn.) 698.
4 R. Cotterrell, The Sociology of Law: An Introduction (1992, 2nd edn.) 3.
5 A. Perry-Kessaris, `What does it mean to take a socio-legal approach to international
economic law?' in Socio-Legal Approaches to International Economic Law: Text,
Context, Subtext, ed. A. Perry-Kessaris (2012) 4.
6 S. Frerichs, `Re-embedding neo-liberal constitutionalism: a Polanyian case for the
economic sociology of law' in Karl Polanyi, Globalisation and the Potential of Law
in Transnational Markets, eds. C. Joerges and J. Falke (2011) at 68. Emphasis
added. See, also, A. Perry-Kessaris, `Reading the story of law and embeddedness
through a community lens: a Polanyi-meets-Cotterrell economic sociology of law?'
(2011) 62 Northern Ireland Legal Q. 401, at 402.
ß2013 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2013 Cardiff University Law School
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