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Making Connections: Law and Society Researchers and Their Subjects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

David M. Engel
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Abstract

This essay explores the theme of the 1998 annual meeting of the Law and Society Association: “Making Connections across Disciplines, Theories, and Methods,” focusing in particular on the connections between researcher and subject and between researcher and researcher. The essay discusses three recent articles, by Joseph Sanders and V. Lee Hamilton, by Barbara Yngvesson, and by Margaret Montoya. These articles illustrate recent creative efforts by law and society researchers to forge new kinds of connections to their subjects. The articles also illustrate fundamentally different conceptions of the role of the researcher and of the methodologies on which sociolegal studies might be based. These differing conceptions are considered as part of a more general argument that epistemological contradictions are an essential part of our efforts to apprehend the world we seek to describe. They connect law and society researchers to one another and ensure the vitality of our field.

Type
1998 Presidential Address
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , 1999 , pp. 3 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

*

Thanks to Joe Sanders, Lee Hamilton, Barbara Yngvesson, and Margaret Montoya for inspiration. Thanks to Frank Munger for his usual insights and encouragement. Thanks to Jaruwan Engel for making it possible for me to write during a difficult time. This essay is dedicated to the memory of my father, Edwin A. Engel.

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