The Geography of Law: Landscape, Identity and Regulation

Description

The essays in this collection relate notions of space and representations of interior and exterior spaces to concerns for individual identity and autonomy as these are framed by practices of governance or codified by law. They examine the manner in which imaginative frameworks forming an environment for human action are objectified through practices aimed at governing relations between people or conversely, the way in which legal codes and statutes rely upon there being a relationship between individuals and their surroundings. The Geography of Law brings together research from a range of disciplines to question how urban spaces, works of architecture and landscape, and representations of socio-legal ideas in texts, city plans and paintings, engage with the construction of identity, character and values, both historically and the present day. Essayists question the usefulness of space and regulation as categories of critical analysis, scrutinize familiar uses of these categories and invent new ones. This motivation behind the collection is based on an assumption that space and law carry moral worth and elicit moral considerations however variable their value might be. Contributors include: Michael Austin (School of Architecture at Unitec, Auckland); Richard Blythe (School of Architecture at the University of Tasmania and founding partner of the Sydney/Hobart based architectural practice Terroir); Michael Levine (Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Australia, Perth); Peter Kuch (School of English at the University of New South Wales, Sydney); John Macarthur (School of Geography, Planning and Architecture at the University of Queensland, Brisbane); Kristine Miller (Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis); Richard Mohr (Legal Intersections Research Centre and the Faculty of Law, University of Wollongong, Australia); George Pavlich (Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta, Edmonton); William Taylor (Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts at the University of Western Australia, Perth).

William Taylor teaches architectural design, history and theory in the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape Visual Arts at The University of Western Australia, Perth.

...a significant endeavor to collect a series of case studies from around the globe and mainly in Australia... the volume enhances our ability to unveil the political interests behind the legalization of geographical space and to depict its ramifications on land design. -- Gad Barzilai * The Law and Politics Book Review, Vol 16, No 10 *