ABSTRACT
This volume is a contribution, from an anthropological perspective, to the understanding of law in globalization processes under conditions of accelerating mobility of people, capital, technology, communication and knowledge. The contributors explore the varying forms this mobility takes and the ensuing consequences with regard to the resulting interactions with national and local institutions, agencies and populations. The book adopts an orientation that is focused on social actors, networks and multiple legal constellations that operate not only in a global, international and national arena, but also at a local level. The end of the Cold War and the ever-expanding financial and economic market, as well as the emergence of theoretical debates over globalization, have all sharpened the general recognition that social, political and economic activities are stretching out across the globe. The result is that events, decisions and activities in one part of the world can come to have immediate significance for individuals and communities in other more distant locations. At the same time, globalization implies intensification, and increasing density, in the flows and patterns of interaction or interconnectedness between states and societies that constitute the modern world community. In other words, alongside the ‘stretching’ goes a ‘deepening’ of connections and activities (McGrew, 1998, p. 325). Acquiring an understanding of what these processes entail is important, for they give rise to global and regional networks of activity, institutions and regimes of governance, social movements, global legal interactions, and other kinds of transnational association.1 They also create the potential for new kinds of political and legal space to emerge, which elude the boundaries of the territorial state and the remit of traditional legal scholarship.
