Legal geography I

Abstract

Although it has been a recognized tendency in human geography and socio-legal studies for nearly 20 years, the project of legal geography has expanded significantly in the last five years in terms of participants, topics of investigation, and theoretical elaboration. This initial report on legal geography emphasizes recent work by geographers, especially younger scholars, and is addressed to the wider community of human geographers. It seeks to convey a sense of the expanded scope of research over the last few years through a discussion of key themes of constitutivity, complexity, and contingency. It suggests that, in many cases, closer critical scrutiny of the involvement of distinctively legal phenomena in the events of particular interest to human geographers can open up productive lines of inquiry that are foreclosed by the conventional neglect of the legal in human geography.

Claiming geothermal water: Critical legal geography and the scalar politics of hot spring development in China

“…This will certainly reshape the current legal geographies of geothermal water resources. For better natural resource governance, it is worth recognising the contradictions and slippages in how laws make a spatial reality (Delaney, 2015).…”

“…Most environmental issues can be better understood within the legal realm of laws, regulations, policies and other state legislation (Andrews & McCarthy, 2014). Legal geography enables researchers to discern the real dynamics behind struggles over natural resources (Delaney, 2015;Jepson, 2012). This study contributes to debates about legal geography and environmental issues by closely scrutinising the biophysical characteristics of natural resources.…”

New Water Regimes: An Editorial

“…In particular, scholarship on critical legal geographies has sought to develop a better understanding of the interactions between law and place/space [1,2]. Legal geography, which starts from the premise that law, society, and space are co-constituted, has expanded significantly in recent years [2,3].…”

(Un)frozen Spaces: Exploring the Role of Sea Ice in the Marine Socio-legal Spaces of the Bering and Beaufort Seas

“…At its core, legal geography explores the relationship between the law and the geographies (spatial and temporal) of political and social life, examining how they each influence, structure, and impact one another (Blomley and Clark, 1990). Here, the general themes of boundary, territory and contested spaces within the environment are well explored and have expanded rapidly within the last decade (e.g., Blomley et al, 2001;Delaney 2014). Legal geography represents a highly interdisciplinary approach to the overall understanding of how law shapes physical conditions, legitimates spatial relations, and contains and/or constrains a physical presence (Holder and Harrison, 2003).…”