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Law Judicial Power

Violence, Imagination, and Resistance

Socio-legal Interrogations of Power

edited by Mariful Alam, Patrick Dwyer & Katrin Roots

Publisher
Athabasca University Press
Initial publish date
May 2023
Category
Judicial Power, General, Civil Rights, Gender & the Law
Recommended Age
18
Recommended Grade
12
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781778290022
    Publish Date
    May 2023
    List Price
    $29.99
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781771993678
    Publish Date
    May 2023
    List Price
    $29.99

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Description

Much of the discussion of social transformation and resistance in socio-legal studies centres around the question of whether and how the law can be used to achieve practical change. However, the editors of this volume argue that it will never be possible to enact change through the law because it is inseparable from violence, be it metaphysical, social, or political. They posit that a “just world,” free from oppressive power relations, requires us to imagine communities where the state and its law cease to exist. Contributors address the underexplored questions of what alternatives to law could look like: how communities could organize their everyday lives, and how they could address social and interpersonal conflicts outside of an apparatus of violence. These essays contribute to the ongoing interrogation of settler colonialism, racism, and structural violence in Canada by demonstrating how to expose the violence the law produces, how to deconstruct law’s power, and, finally, how to identify modes of resistance that have transformative potential.

About the authors

Mariful Alam is a PhD candidate at York University in the socio-legal studies program.

Mariful Alam's profile page

Patrick Dwyer is a PhD candidate at York University in the socio-legal studies program.

Patrick Dwyer's profile page

Katrin Roots is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has researched Canada’s anti-trafficking efforts for over a decade and is the author of The Domestication of Human Trafficking: Law, Policing and Prosecution in Canada. She is also the co-author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on trafficking law, enforcement and policing technologies and the co-editor (with Mariful Alam and Patrick Dwyer) of Violence, Imagination and Resistance: Socio-Legal Interrogations of Power.

Katrin Roots' profile page