ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that informal and communal forms of law, such as that of social centres, occupy and enact a form of spatio-temporal 'nonlinear informality', as opposed to a reified linearity of state law that occurs as a result of institutionalising processes of private property. It introduces social centres and then looks at the complexity framework and its relation to nonlinearity as a concept and framework in law. The chapter considers state law and how it seeks to appear organised in a linear manner and why. After that, legal pluralism is considered as an explication of informal and formal laws, the move of institutionalisation that occurs between them and the role of linearity and nonlinearity within this. It turns to the ascribed social centre law to understand how it is performed and how the philosophical underpinnings of autonomism in social centres, and the practices that ensue, offer a description of nonlinearity and nonlinear law.
