Modern state law excludes populations, peoples, and social groups by making them invisible, irrelevant, or dangerous. In this book, Boaventura de Sousa Santos offers a radical critique of the law and develops an innovative paradigm of socio-legal studies which is based on the historical experience of the Global South. He traces the history of modern law as an abyssal law, or a kind of law that is theoretically invisible yet implements profound exclusions in practice. This abyssal line has been the key procedure used by modern modes of domination - capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy - to divide people into two groups, the metropolitan and the colonial, or the fully human and the sub-human. Crucially, de Sousa Santos rejects the decadent pessimism that claims that we are living through 'the end of history'. Instead, this book offers practical, hopeful alternatives to social exclusion and modern legal domination, aiming to make post-abyssal legal utopias a reality.
| ISBN: | 9781316610466 |
| Publication date: | 1st June 2023 |
| Author: | Boaventura de Sousa Santos |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 400 pages |
| Series: | Cambridge Studies in Law and Society |
| Genres: |
Comparative law Law and society, sociology of law Sociology |
Modern state law excludes populations, peoples, and social groups by making them invisible, irrelevant, or dangerous. In this book, Boaventura de Sousa Santos offers a radical critique of the law and develops an innovative paradigm of socio-legal studies which is based on the historical experience of the Global South. He traces the history of modern law as an abyssal law, or a kind of law that is theoretically invisible yet implements profound exclusions in practice. This abyssal line has been the key procedure used by modern modes of domination - capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy - to divide people into two groups, the metropolitan and the colonial, or the fully human and the sub-human. Crucially, de Sousa Santos rejects the decadent pessimism that claims that we are living through 'the end of history'. Instead, this book offers practical, hopeful alternatives to social exclusion and modern legal domination, aiming to make post-abyssal legal utopias a reality.
Law and the Epistemologies of the South features in the following genres: Comparative law, Law and society, sociology of law, Sociology
Law and the Epistemologies of the South is available in Paperback, Hardback
Law and the Epistemologies of the South was written by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and published by Cambridge University Press
Law and the Epistemologies of the South has 400 pages
Yes it is part of Cambridge Studies in Law and Society series
£27.90