To measure the life `as it is' by a life `as it might or should be' is a defining, constitutive feature of humanity. The urge to transcend is nearest to a universal, and arguably the least destructible, attribute of human existence. This cannot be said, however, of its articulations into `projects' - that is, of cohesive and comprehensive programmes of change and of visions of life that the change is hoped to bring about - visions that stand out of reality, (...) adumbrating a fully and truly different, alternative world. For the constantly present transgressive urge to be articulated into such projects, some less common conditions must arise. Utopia is one of the forms such uncommon articulations may take. This article explores the conditions that defined that form - those of modernity in its initial `solid' stage, a form that was marked and set apart from other articulations of the transgression urge by two remarkable attributes: territoriality and finality. It is concluded that in the transgressive imagination of `liquid modernity' the `place' (whether physical or social) has been replaced by the unending sequence of new beginnings, inconsequentiality of deeds has been substituted for fixity of order, and the desire for a different today has elbowed out concern with a better tomorrow. (shrink)

DIVThe author argues for an understanding of judging that rejects foundationalism (the effort to ground legal thought on something), attempts to carve out a "middle way" between formalist and the political visions of law, and offers a reconceptual/div.

Jurisdiction, Scale and Governance: Chronotopes of Law develops a post-metaphysical framework for analyzing the spatio-temporal workings of law and other forms of governance. In this regard, it does not seek merely to combine analyses of legal temporality carried out by anthropologists with analyses of law and space carried out by geographers and socio-legal scholars. Adding two metaphysical abstractions together does not produce anything but somewhat more complex, but equally metaphysical, abstractions. After Kant, 'time' and 'space' are simply categories of human (...) understanding, not metaphysical entities. And, in this book Mariana Valverde develops an anti-metaphysical theoretical approach to law that aims not to theorize the world in general, but rather to be useful to researchers who seek to shed light on the actual workings of law and other forms of governance. Written by one of the foremost theorists in the area, this theoretically innovative work constitutes a major contribution to contemporary studies in law and society. (shrink)