ABSTRACT
The problem of legal pluralism 168 Indigenous, community and state law 169 Weak and strong versions 171 Pluralism and the classical tradition 172
Globalisation and law 173 Debates about globalisation 175 The field of international arbitration 178 The global law firm 180 Implementing human rights 182
Thinking globally 184 Comparative legal research 185 International regulation 186
Questions 187
Further reading 187
Boxes 8.1 The Cheyenne Way 170 8.2 Towards a new legal commonsense 174 8.3 Three failures of globalisation 177 8.4 Doing a global study 185
This book has been published by a multi-national company, which has offices or representatives in several countries, with the aim of reaching a potential international readership. In theory, courses on sociology of law, socio-legal studies or law and society could be taught in any university around the world. In practice, the largest markets for books of this kind are Britain and the United States – English-speaking countries which have developed university systems. They also have long-established democracies, and a tradition in civil society of reflection and debate about social issues which has generated academic subjects such as sociology, social policy and political science. The largest and most theoretically developed research literatures about law and society have been produced in the developed world. It has been natural to use examples from these countries, rather than from Africa, Latin America, India, the Pacific Islands, China or Japan. This is simply because many of the best resourced and theoretically developed studies are by American law and society researchers. Nevertheless, because it deliberately does not present much detail about particular legal systems, some readers may find this book too international for their tastes. Academic publishing seems to demonstrate that very few textbooks sell well outside a national readership. If this is true, to what extent can one really say that we are living in a globalised world?
