Wesley Pue, University of British Columbia, and Rob McQueen, Griffith University, have posted an essay, Law's Empire, which introduces a forthcoming symposium issue of Social Identities. Here's the abstract: Scholars of culture, humanities and social sciences have increasingly come to an appreciation of the importance of the legal domain in social life, while critically engaged socio-legal scholars around the world have taken up the task of understanding “Law's Empire” in all of its cultural, political, and economic dimensions. The questions arising from these intersections, and addressing imperialisms past and present forms the subject matter of a special symposium issue of Social Identities under the editorship of Griffith University's Rob McQueen, and UBC's Wes Pue and with contributions from McQueen, Ian Duncanson, Renisa Mawani, David Williams, Emma Cunliffe, Chidi Oguamanam, W. Wesley Pue, Fatou Camara, and Dianne Kirkby. This paper introduces the volume, forthcoming in late 2007. The central problematique of this issue has previously been explored through the 2005 Law's Empire conference, an informal but vibrant postcolonial legal studies network, in publications of Melbourne University’s Postcolonial Studies Institute, UBC Press’ Law & Society series and through special issues of Law Text Culture, Law in Context and The Journal of Social Justice and Global Development.
Here's the table of contents for the symposium issue:
Rob McQueen, `Speaking and listening to words is how we know who we are`: An Introduction to `Laws Empire’
Ian Duncanson `Identities in the Colony and the Family: tragedies of ascription and transgression in two Australian films’.
Renisa Mawani `Legalities of Nature: Law, Empire and Wilderness Landscapes in Canada’
David Williams, `Maori social identification and colonial extinguishments of customary rights in New Zealand’,
Emma Cunliffe `Anywhere But Here: Race and Empire in the Mabo Decision’
Chidi Oguamanam and W.Wesley Pue `Lawyers’ Professionalism, Colonialism, State Formation and National Life in Nigeria, 1900-1960: ‘the fighting brigade of the people’
Fatou Camara ‘Women and the Law – A Critique of the Senegalese Family Law’
Dianne Kirkby ‘Honorary Chinese? Women Citizens, Whiteness and Labour Legislation in the Early Australian Commonwealth’
