Book Reviews : DAVID DIXON, Law in Policing: Legal Regulation and Police Practices. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, 365 pp., £40.00
| Author | John Baldwin |
| Published date | 01 December 1998 |
| Date | 01 December 1998 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399800700418 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
595
with
limited
success
over
Friedman’s
duality
of
’internal’
and
’external’
legal
domains.
For
instance,
King
advocates
a
Luhmann-inspired
systems
approach
to
law
which
cannot,
he
admits,
deal
with
the
complexity
of
global
legal
processes
(p.
133).
Finally,
Hanne
Petersen
concludes
Part
I
with
a
provocative
and
much
appreciated
essay
in
which
she
raises
the
need
to
rethink
both
’law’
and
’culture’
based
on
the
historical
devaluing
of
gender
and
nature
in
constituting
modernist
cultural
understandings.
In
short,
she
sees
very
little
value
in
doing
comparative
legal
culture
research
at
all
unless
the
subject
matters
are
themselves
reassessed
for
their
contemporary
validity.
In
all
but
this
last
essay
in
Part
I,
attention
to
the
historical
shifts
in
the
political,
economic
and
social
values
that
construct
at
any
particular
moment
an
identifiable
legal
culture
is
significantly
missing.
In
times
of
new
forms
of
ethno-nationalism
and
state-building,
as
well
as
increasing
transnational
legal
exchange,
the
consequences
of
communication
between
various
forms
of
local,
national,
regional
and
international
legal
logics
loom
large.
Returning
to
Sherman’s
essay
on
the
dynamics
of
legal
inter-
action,
the
creating
and
recreating
of
legal
cultures
within
and
beyond
the
nation-
state,
and
the
images
and
narratives
employed
in
both
maintaining
and
blurring
distinctions
between
them,
is
the
fascinating
object
to
which
a
comparative
perspec-
tive
can,
as
indicated
by
the
case
studies
in
Part
II,
make
significant
contributions.
Theorists
of
legal
culture
should
take
note.
REFERENCES
Darian-Smith,
Eve
(in
press)
Bridging
Divides:
The
Channel
Tunnel
and
English
Legal
Identity
in
the
New
Europe.
Berkeley:
University
of
California
Press.
Darian-Smith,
Eve
and
Peter
Fitzpatrick
(eds)
(1998)
Laws
of the
Postcolonial.
Michi-
gan :
University
of
Michigan
Press.
Greenhouse,
Carol,
Kay
Warren
and
Elizabeth
Merz
(eds)
(n.d.)
Ethnography in
Unstable
Places.
(forthcoming).
Gupta,
Akhil
and
James
Ferguson
(eds)
(1997)
Anthropological
Locations:
Boundaries
and
Grounds
of a
Field
Science.
Berkeley:
University
of
California
Press.
Just,
Peter
(1992)
’History,
Power,
Ideology
and
Culture:
Current
Directions
in
the
Anthropology
of
Law’.
Law
and
Society
Review
26:
373-412.
Lazarus-Black,
M.
and
S.
F.
Hirsch
(eds)
(1994)
Contested
States:
Law,
Hegemony
and
Resistance.
New
York:
Routledge.
Maurer,
Bill
(1997)
Recharting
the
Caribbean:
Land,
Law,
and
Citizenship
in
the
British
Virgin
Islands.
Michigan:
University
of
Michigan
Press.
Moore,
Sally
Falk
(ed.)
(1993)
Moralizing
States
and
the
Ethnography
of
the
Present.
American
Ethnological
Society
Monograph
Series,
Number
5.
Starr,
J.
and
J.
F.
Collier
(eds)
(1989)
History
and
Power
in
the
Study
of
Law:
New
Directions
in
Legal
Anthropology.
Ithaca:
Cornell
University
Press.
EVE
DARIAN-SMITH
Department
of Anthropology,
University
of
California,
Santa
Barbara,
USA
DAVID
DIXON,
Law in
Policing:
Legal
Regulation
and
Police
Practices.
Oxford:
Clarendon
Press,
1997, 365
pp.,
£40.00.
In
the
past
decade,
David
Dixon
has
been
one
of
the
most
astute
observers
of
policing
practices
and
his
many
writings
on
the
subject
have
frequently
succeeded
in
shifting
the
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