Book Review: Law and Disorder: Sovereignty, Protest, Atmosphere
| Author | Alison Young |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639211053715 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
That is, in the post-COVID-19 era, it is not only that politics have been deployed to assert
control over bodies, but that political control has been drawn from diseases done to the
body.
Refuge Beyond Reach begins and concludes with reference to the importance of sanc-
tuary –a physical site of refuge. While sanctuary is a term more recently adopted for its
connotations to political protection, COVID-19 reminds us that sanctuary also suggests a
place of physical healing. In other contexts, it foregrounds the need for conservation
efforts to protect the natural environment. We are now more aware than ever before
that refugee populations will continue to seek sanctuary from a range of complex and
overlapping political, physical, and environmental hazards. The final corrective I
would offer to this book is that FitzGerald’s concluding call that civil society must rise
to the challenge of guarding “paths to refuge from the duplicitous attempts to close
them”(p. 265) must also be the guiding principle to protect all those who seek refuge,
whether political or otherwise.
SUSAN BANKI, Senior Lecturer
University of Sydney
Email: susan.banki@sydney.edu.au
ORCID iD
Susan Banki https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9203-4106
References
Cliff AD, Smallman-Raynor MR and Stevens PM (2009) Controlling the geographical spread of
infectious disease: Plague in Italy, 1347–1851. Acta medico-historica Adriatica: AMHA 7(2):
197–236.
Esposito R (2010) Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community Cultural Memory in the
Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Massey D (1994) Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
McNevin A (2011) Contesting Citizenship: Irregular Migrants and New Frontiers of the Political.
New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Meer N, Hill E, Peace T, et al. (2021) Rethinking refuge in the time of COVID-19. Ethnic and
Racial Studies 44(5): 864–876.
ILLAN RUA WALL, Law and Disorder: Sovereignty, Protest, Atmosphere. Abingdon: Routledge, First
published, 2021, pp. 210, ISBN 978-0-367-3370-6 (pbk).
Let’s begin at the end (which, as will be seen, is also a beginning). The ‘end’is the final
chapter of Law and Disorder by Illan Rua Wall, entitled ‘Conclusion: Notes from the
tumult’. In a book concerning the (policing of) the crowd, the masses, the chaos that
results after police intervention in political protest, ‘tumult’could refer to many of the
elements discussed in previous chapters with great care, perspicacity, and thoughtfulness:
the roiling uncertainties that underpin the superficial calm of the king’s or queen’s peace
510 Social & Legal Studies 31(3)
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