Praise for the second edition: “This book is the best available for teaching the role of law in society and making sense of how it operates within the (inter)connections of race, class and gender dynamics often perpetuating oppression. … Locating Law is essential for undergraduate students in justice, sociology and criminology.” – Margot Hurlbert, University of Regina

“Students regularly tell me that Locating Law is their favourite book out of the selections for the Law and Society course. The case studies are sufficiently different from one another that the students deepen their general knowledge, and they appreciate the fact that the chapters are written in a style they can understand.” – Jennifer Jarman, Lakehead University

A primary concern within the study of law has been to understand the “law-society” relation. Underlying this concern is the belief that law has a distinctly social basis; it both shapes — and is shaped by — the society in which it operates. This book explores the law-society relation by locating law within the nexus of race/class/gender/sexuality relations in society.

In addition to updating the material in the theoretical and substantive chapters, this third edition of Locating Law includes three new contributions: sentencing law and Aboriginal peoples; corporations and the law; and obscenity and indecency legislation. The analyses offered in the book are sure to generate discussion and debate and, in the process, enhance our understanding of law’s location.

Elizabeth Comack is a distinguished professor emerita in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Manitoba. Comack’s work in the sociology of law and feminist criminology has been instrumental in setting the course for Canadian scholarship. She is a member of the Manitoba Research Alliance, a consortium of academics and community partners engaged in research addressing poverty in Indigenous and inner-city communities. Comack is the author or editor of 13 books, including Coming Back to Jail: Women, Trauma, and Criminalization; “Indians Wear Red”: Colonialism, Resistance, and Aboriginal Street Gangs (co-authored with Laurie Deane, Larry Morrissette, and Jim Silver); and Racialized Policing: Aboriginal People’s Encounters with Police.

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