Book Review: In the Grip of Freedom -! Law and Modernity in Max Weber
| Date | 01 June 2002 |
| Published date | 01 June 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390201100208 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
308
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 11(2)
its functional value as a resource. The symbolic meaning of land is as strongly articu-
lated as on Zakynthos, but differently. The difference is located in the contrasting
relations of power in each case. This idea of power breaks the surface at other points
in this collection, silently but significantly underlying many of the disputes over con-
tested lands.
As Strang makes clear in her perceptive chapter on Australia, there can be no easy
binary distinctions: things are ‘not so black and white’. She recognizes the dynamic
nature of law and its role in expressing social identities. The boundaries it draws are
metaphors of intellectual, spatial and economic boundaries that serve to define social
identities. In Australia, there has been a subtle but persistent influence of Aboriginal
values which changed the dominant concepts of the relationship with land, and which
found expression in legislative changes such as the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976.
More complex values, making explicit the spiritual and mythical dimensions of land-
scape, have emerged to challenge the conception of land as purely an economic
resource. The mythical is not supplanted by the legal, but the legal is shaped by the
mythical. The spiritual and social identification with the land can be seen most clearly
in the mainstream discourse about cultural heritage, which focuses specifically on the
location of social being in the land. It is in this context (which is not unique to Aus-
tralia) that the close ties between land and identity become most apparent. This is not
to say that land issues are no longer contentious in Australia. It is clear that they are
still, but the boundaries have blurred, ‘integrating mythic and legal lands into a more
holistic landscape’.
This suggestion that the binary opposition between the mythical and juridical
obscures the complex reality of relationships with land becomes apparent in other
contributions to the volume. The themes emerging in the book are diffuse and some-
times contradictory, a reflection of the variety and intense nature of the relationship
between people and the land.
PENNY ENGLISH
School of Law, Middlesex University, UK
CARY BOUCOCK, In the Grip of Freedom – Law and Modernity in Max Weber.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000, 240 pp., £16.00 (pbk).
There are some writers who are of such stature that each generation feels an obligation
to critically reinterpret them. Max Weber is such a writer and Cary Boucock’s book,
sub-titled ‘Law and Modernity in Max Weber’, seems to promise such a reinterpreta-
tion, particularly in the light of our contemporary postmodern turn. Unfortunately,
it does not fulfil that promise. Three-quarters of the book is devoted to a more or less
uncritical and somewhat repetitive exposition of familiar Weberian themes, which is
largely oblivious of many of the social and legal developments in the near century
since Weber’s death, which fails to engage seriously with Weber’s...
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