ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews existing legal theory in the light of its materialism. It shows that many of the counter-traditions of legal theory of the twentieth century did in fact revolve around materialist concerns. Many legal theorists have not paid a great deal of attention to the intrinsic relationship between law and social existence and have largely assumed that social behaviour is shaped by, follows, or reflects an abstract law. By contrast to the largely abstract ideas of law promoted by natural law theory and positivism, the counter-traditions of the twentieth century promoted a much more grounded view of law and a more 'materialist' one, taking that term in its broadest sense. Postmodernism and materialism have therefore often been seen as inconsistent and it is true to say that much postmodern-influenced theory has been oriented toward the ideational and conceptual, rather than the physical and material.
