Engage and evade: How Latino immigrant families manage surveillance in everyday life. By Asad L. Asad. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023. 344 pp. $33.00 hardcover

Abstract

This approach has fundamental existential significance. People are rarely aware that-let alone how-their lives are governed by norms, how norms determine what they choose to do and, just as importantly, how norms influence perceptions of what choices there are to make in the first place. Hydén's reasoning on this subject is based on a profound knowledge of human thought and emotional life. It also provides deep insights into the relationship between the horizons of understanding at the level of individual psychology and the mechanisms of action governed by the laws of social psychology.Hydén's presentation is characterized by intellectual vigor and by a pathos grounded in a deeply felt need to understand a world now in rapid upheaval. The knowledge conveyed in the book is deeply impressive, obviously acquired over a lifetime of professional work. There is only one thing to hope for in terms of the future development of knowledge about the crucial role of norms in society: that sociology of law as the science of norms will establish itself as a field of research in its own right.