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Legal Loci and Places in the Heart: Community and Identity in Sociolegal Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Elizabeth Mertz
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Extract

Community has been a central concept of political and legal philosophy since its beginning. It has often served as a frame of reference even when not explored as such. From the well-known opening of Aristotle's Politics to the French constitution of 1958, community has served to designate the human group with which politics and law are concerned and to which all the characteristic phenomena of political life, power, authority, law, and the rest must be referred.

—Friedrich 1959:3

The community myth is that there is now, or ever has been, a “community” in the sense of groups of like-minded individuals, living in urban areas, who share a common heritage, have similar values and norms, and share a common perception of social order… . [T]he idea of community contains many implications of the environment encompassed by the myth. Geographically and ethnically identifiable groups become “neighborhoods,” or moral entities characterized by a sense of belonging, a sense of common goals, involvement in community affairs, and a sense of wholeness.

—Crank 1994:336–37

There exists out there, somewhere, “the black community.” It once was a place where people both lived and worked. Now it is more of an idea, or an ideal, than a reality. It is like the mythical maroon colony of the Isle des Chevaliers (for those of you who have read Toni Morrison's Tar Baby), or like Brigadoon (for those of you who are culturally deprived). “The black community” of which I write is partly the manifestation of a nostalgic longing for a time when blacks were clearly distinguishable from whites and concern about the welfare of the poor was more natural than our hairdos.

—Austin 1992:1769

Type
Introduction
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 28 , Issue 5: Symposium: Community and Identity in Sociolegal Studies , 1994 , pp. 971 - 992
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

I thank Frank Munger, who first invited me to take on this project, for encouragement and guidance; I am also grateful to a number of colleagues for lively discussions that helped me in framing a number of issues discussed here: Richard Delgado, Shari Diamond, Bryant Garth, Lani Guinier, Carol Greenhouse, Jane Larson, Sally Merry, Susan Silbey, Ray Solomon, and Chris Tomlins. Frank, Bryant, and Carol provided very rapid readings of an earlier draft, which were enormously helpful, as was Bette Sikes's editorial guidance.

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