Book Reviews: NICHOLAS K. BLOMLEY, Law, Space, and the Geographies of Power. New York and London: The Guilford Press, 1994, 260 pp
| Author | Carl F. Stychin |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399600500314 |
| Date | 01 September 1996 |
| Published date | 01 September 1996 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
445
French
succeeds
in
establishing
a
picture
of
the
Tibetan
legal
system
that
presents
Buddhism
as
a
system
of
cosmological
regulation
that
is
embedded
in
the
rituals
and
practice
of
the
law.
In
the
practice
of
Tibetan
law
is
seen
the
Buddhist
cosmology
in
action.
The
significance
of
this
text
cannot
be
restricted
to
comparative
and
Buddhist
legal
studies,
but
extends
into
the
increasingly
important
field
of
legal
philosophy.
French
is
owed
a
debt
for
having
placed
Tibet
on
the
legal
map.
REFERENCE
ROSHAN
DE
SILVA
WIJEYERATNE
Kent
Law
Scbool,
Eliot
College,
University
of
Kent,
UK.
Tambiah,
Stanley
J.
(1970)
Buddhism
and
the
Spirit
Cults
in
Northeast
Thailand.
Cam-
bridge :
Cambridge
University
Press.
NICHOLAS
K.
BLOMLEY,
Law,
Space,
and
the
Geographies
of Power.
New
York
and
London:
The
Guilford
Press,
1994,
260
pp.
Nicholas
K.
Blomley
has
set
himself
an
ambitious
project:
to
begin
an
exploration
of
the
’geographies
of
law’
aimed
at
an
audience
of
lawyers
and
geographers
interested
in
critical
theory.
He
seeks
to
challenge
a
legal
closure
effected
along
spatial
lines
that
has
served
to
construct
the
geographies
of
law
as
objective
and
prepolitical.
In
engaging
in
this
task,
he
also
attempts
to
challenge
disciplinary
closure
that
has
obviated
the
links
between
the
two
fields.
Blomley
begins
by
speaking
to
his
two
audiences
explicitly.
After
a
thorough
review
of
the
history
of
the
Critical
Legal
Studies
movement,
he
challenges
legal
scholars
to
recognize
how
they
have
failed
to
consider
the
political
importance
of
space
to
law.
He
then
appeals
to
geographers
to
pay
heed
to
how
they
too
have
largely
constructed
law
and
space
as
analytically
separable,
with
the
effect
of
presenting
the
legal
enter-
prise
as
rational
and
politically
disinterested.
Geographers
thereby
have
avoided
con-
sidering
the
power
of
law
to
constitute
social
relations.
A
central
theme
of
the
work
comes
to
the
fore
in
these
introductory
two
chapters,
namely,
the
importance
of
a
recognition
of
local
legal
knowledge.
In
other
words,
law
cannot
be
detached
from
the
particular
places
in
which
it
acquires
meaning.
Yet
law,
according
to
Blomley,
is
con-
stituted
largely
as
a
seamless,
unitary
system,
rather
than
a
patchwork
of
legal
spaces.
Thus,
Blomley
advocates
a
’spatially
informed
legal
critique’
(p.
58).
Having
laid
this
foundation,
he
proceeds
to
a
diverse
range
of
case
studies
to
demon-
strate
how
space
is
constructed
and
represented
in
liberal
legal
discourse
and
how
that
construction
leaves
gaps
for
oppositional
readings
of
place
and
space
drawn
from
local
knowledge.
The
case
studies
are
indeed
varied -
drawn
from
the
USA,
Canada,
and
Britain -
but
they
are
united
in
their
focus
on
the
centrality
of
work
and
the
economy
in
the
constitution
of
place
and
space.
Blomley
starts
with
an
analysis
of
the
role
of
Coke’s
Institutes
and
Reports
in
constituting
English
common
law
as
geographical
through
the
link
between
the
common
law
and
the
English
nation
as
a
place
of
conti-
nuity
and
stability.
This
abstraction
of
the
law
from
local
custom
is
closely
bound
up
with
classic
liberal
theory.
The
legal
subject
is
seen
either
as
completely
individualis-
tic
or
as
a
citizen
of
the
nation
state.
The
loss
of
an
intermediate
legal
geography
of
’community’
is,
for
Blomley,
in
need
of
rectification.
Blomley’s
achievement
in
this
study
is
to
situate
Coke
by
demonstrating
how,
at
the
same
historical
moment,
the
atlas
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