[Commons-Law] Law and power

[Anthony McCann]

Aarti <aarti at sarai.net> wrote:
 
<I DEFANGED_am DEFANGED_basically DEFANGED_curious DEFANGED_about DEFANGED_how DEFANGED_the DEFANGED_law DEFANGED_circulates>
 
My first thought is that I don't find it helpful to think that the law circulates. For me, that metaphor does nothing to challenge a positive, reified, naturalized existence for "the law",  further facilitating legal closure, rather that facilitating analysis of what for me are perhaps more helpfully considered as social and political dynamics. (I draw a lot on Foucault in what I do, but I remain unhappy with his metaphor concerning the "circulation of power").  I'm more interested in what concepts of "law" mean in specific circumstances for specific people, what the consequences of those particular understandings might be, and how those consequences might be similar to the social dynamics in other situations where similar understandings dominate.
 
<how do we know the law in everyday life?> 
 
For me, in and through our encounter with (discursive) declarative claims to authority-that-shall-not-be-questioned (which claims may be our own), in and through (often institutionalised) social interaction and social practice.  
 
<the law filters down to us>
 
Therefore whatever we might unstand by "the law" doesn't include us? How might we be participating the dynamics that we seek to understand, or critique?
 
<how does the language of the law enter our language.> 
 
It depends, I would imagine, but in light of the claims to authority-that-shall-not-be-questioned there are various contexts of acquiescence, resistance-then-acquiescence, co-optation, "legitimation", etc. etc. that contribute to our participation in the various "languages of law". My own research suggests that there are certain characters of dispositional inclination that leave people more likely to go along with (or perhaps directly oppose) "legal" claims to authority-TSNBQ, dispositions where we consistently assert to ourselves and/or others (in various ways) that uncertainty can be or should be eliminated. "Legal language" for me is both symptomatic *and constitutive* of such dispositional inclinations, (fostering and facilitating doctrinal, expansionary dynamics, from a social/political perspective).

Crucial in the identification of these claims to "unquestionable" authority are situations of resistance and conflict, where people go, "hey, hold on, I don't think that's right". Tim Cresswell has an article in the book Entanglements of Power on the use of resistance as a diagnostic tool (cultural geographer), drawing on the work of (anthropologist) Lila Abu-Lughod. For me, resistance to such claims provides us with the challenge of the unsettling moment, where we can check ourselves to see if our attitude in response to the claims is with counter-claims of a similar character (offerings to the altar of hegemony, for me, often leaving us blind to the consequences of our participation, despite our best intentions) or is of a more subtle and analytically, attitudinally gentle character (which can indeed be strategic, but considerably more circumspect than unthinking activistic direct action) (not all direct action would be necessarily unthinking, IMO, but it is often the case).
 
(The structuring of expectations implied by the expansion/extension of legal language/thinking in social interaction is addressed to some degree in my dissertation at www.beyondthecommons.org, particularly Ch. 6, (following the 'understanding enclosure' link) but is dealt with in clearer terms in the work that I am doing at the moment, but which is unpublished as of yet, sorry)
 
If you do a search for "Coombe" or "Cover" or "Cotterrell" in my disseration files (PDF and DOC), you will find many quotations about the social impact of legal understandings and legal narratives.
 
All the best,
 
Anthony

 

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