Introduction: Moving Towards an Economic Sociology of Law
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2013.00609.x |
| Date | 01 March 2013 |
| Author | Amanda Perry‐Kessaris,Prabha Kotiswaran,Diamond Ashiagbor |
| Published date | 01 March 2013 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 40, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2013
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 1±6
Introduction: Moving Towards an Economic Sociology of
Law
Diamond Ashiagbor,* Prabha Kotiswaran,** and Amanda
Perry-Kessaris*
This special issue represents a milestone in our on-going journeys towards an
`economic sociology of law' ± that is, shared understandings of how and why
one might use sociologically-inspired approaches (analytical, empirical, and
normative) to investigate relationships between legal and economic
phenomena; and of what might be gained and lost in the process.
We three editors set off on our journeys separately and some time ago. For
the first, the trigger was an engagement with the social dimension of regional
integration, and the `embedded liberal bargain' between European states. For
the second, it was an interest in the role of national legal systems as a
determinant of foreign direct investment in South Asia. For the third editor,
it was a frustration with feminist legal theorizing which, in presenting the
commodification of sex as nothing but violence, obliterated the economic
agency of women.
By early 2011 we had assembled a caravan ± an economic sociology of
law reading group ± along with faculty and students from across London and
the south east of England.
1
Together we have gone back to the classics and
neo-classics,
2
outwards to heterodox economics and legal anthropology,
3
1
ß2013 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2013 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh
Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, England
da40@soas.ac.uk a.perry-kessaris@soas.ac.uk
** Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London, Strand, London
WC2R 2LS, England
prabha.kotiswaran@kcl.ac.uk
1 See .
2 Such as M. Weber, `The Economic System and the Normative Orders' in Max Weber
on Law in Economy and Society, ed. M. Rheinstein, transl. by E. Shils and M.
Rheinstein (1967) 11±40; K. Polanyi, `The Self-Regulating Market and the Fictitious
Commodities: Labor, Land, and Money' in The Great Transformation (1944) ch. 6;
H. de Soto, `The Costs and Importance of the Law' in The Other Path: The Invisible
Revolution in the Third World (1990) ch. 5.
3 B. Fine, `Social capital in wonderland: the World Bank behind the looking glass'
(2008) 8 Progress in Development Studies 261±9; E.F. Schumacher, `Buddhist
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