The Sociology of Law as a ‘Means against Struggle Itself’
| Author | Mariana Valverde |
| Date | 01 December 2006 |
| Published date | 01 December 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663906069551 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LAW AS A
‘MEANS AGAINST STRUGGLE
ITSELF’
MARIANA VALVERDE
University of Toronto, Canada
KEY WORDS
autopoiesis; legal knowledge; legal reasoning; pragmatism; Nietzsche
Legal conditions may be nothing more than exceptional states of emergency ...
A state of law conceived as sovereign and general, not as a means in the struggle
between power-complexes, but as a means against struggle itself . . . would be
a principle hostile to life, would represent the destruction and dissolution of
man, an attack on the future of man, a sign of exhaustion, a secret path towards
nothingness. (Nietzsche, 1887/1996: 57, emphases added)
AUTOPOIESIS WAS introduced into law as a new way of answering an
old question: the question of the boundaries of law (cf. Priban and
Nelken, 2001). This same question was answered differently by
Pierre Bourdieu (1987), who, preferring to talk about fields and forms of
capital rather than about organisms and systems, also applied a pre-existing
theory of social relations – one emphasizing domination – to the sphere of
law. This generated an analysis in which law appeared merely as another field
of capital accumulation, another field of group power, another field of profes-
sionalization and domination through habitus and through information.
The choice made by both Bourdieu and Luhmann/Teubner to engage in
boundary-mapping exercises does not appear problematic at first sight.
Scholars as well as regulators routinely engage in mapping the boundary
between, say, ‘politics’ on the one hand and ‘economics’ on the other. The
boundaries can be drawn historically, or by means of empirical social
research, or by use of theoretical tools like systems theory.
But why is it so important to engage in boundary-mapping exercises? Is
the question of the place, location, and borders of ‘law’ necessarily the most
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, www.sagepublications.com
0964 6639, Vol. 15(4), 591–597
DOI: 10.1177/0964663906069551
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