ABSTRACT
A critical enquiry into Law Reform and Social Change must start with the assumptions and preconceptions built into the very terms signifying the subject. The models (paradigms) adopted for law reform commissions and inherent in notions of social change are basically nineteenth-century models. Law Reform and Social Change are, at least on the surface, conceived and perceived as beneficial actions. Positivism which conceives of society as a natural form upon which we can act as if we stood outside it has become problematic not only as a scientific vision but in its very metaphorical connotation. The corresponding social response is Negativism – that is, resentment as ressentiment. Community is not self evident; for its creation and maintenance it needs social work. The surplus value of this work is society, now more or less embodied in the state. The movement of the particular of social work in the activity of law reform and social change has to proceed in reverse.
