Book Review: Durkheim: Law in a Moral Domain
| Date | 01 September 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390201100313 |
| Published date | 01 September 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
institutions in making advances to marginal borrowers have been accompanied by
financially more sophisticated mechanisms which ensure that the risks can be prop-
erly managed. Obtaining and maintaining decent, affordable and secure housing has
always been a challenge for the poor, who have effectively been excluded from owner
occupation until relatively recently. Compared with the alternatives, the market rents
and insecurity of the private rented sector, or the increasingly inaccessible and resid-
ualized social sector, buying a house may seem a risk worth taking. For many people
it provides their best opportunity for capital accumulation and financial stability.
However, in order to allow the maximum number of people to participate, the state
and the mortgage industry need to provide appropriate safety nets. The authors
provide a masterly explanation of the unsatisfactory system of financial support from
the state via income support and the insurance industry via mortgage payment pro-
tection insurance and powerful evidence of the impact of that lack of support on the
low-earning home owner.
On the other hand, the period when work, welfare and access to home ownership
were appropriately aligned so that sustainable home ownership was available to all
who wanted it is not described within the book. I found this problematic. There are
grave dangers in creating a myth of a golden age, which existed presumably after the
extension of the right to buy and restrictions on lending were relaxed, but prior to the
cutbacks on social security. This would place it in the heady early years of the
Thatcher government – at a time when unemployment tripled.
My concerns do not detract from the value of this book. The experience and exper-
tise of its authors are self-evident. They provide a wealth of information from a variety
of methodological strategies about the nature of marginal home ownership and an
invaluable starting point for further research into its impact.
HELEN CARR
University of North London, UK
NOTE
1. ‘Gloom lifted as prices go through the ceiling’, The Guardian Jobs and Money
Section, Saturday 5 January 2002.
ROGER COTTERRELL, Durkheim: Law in a Moral Domain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1999, 276 pp., £16.95 (pbk).
The ‘Jurists: Profiles in Legal Theory’ series seeks to give friendly critical expositions
of those loosely defined as jurists. The series has included for example those who are
primarily legal philosophers such as Austin and those who are primarily sociologists
such as Weber. It has included both living and dead. The aim of the series is to provide
an accessible and in depth introduction to some of the themes of their writing includ-
ing some biographical information. The emphasis is on criticism from people who
might share some of the general perspectives but are able rationally to reconstruct the
author’s thinking without completely negating it or descending into an essay in
‘destructive hagiography’.
The present book deals with Emile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of soci-
ology. He has long been recognized as one of the founders of the sociology of law.
But even there one gets, argues Cotterrell, a limited view of his work on law. His work
456 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 11(3)
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