Introduction to the Handbook on Space, Place and Law

Abstract

Space, place and law are at a crossroads. Unprecedented social and environmental challenges, escalating community expectations and dire forecasts are finding their match in competing and corrosive forces of regression. Introducing this collection as activity-orientated, reflecting an appreciation of the world, and humans in and of it, as inter-related and co-constituted, and dynamic rather than static, is undertaken in the hope that heightened awareness of the relational-material nature of human existence may assist in avoiding further regression. The chapters provide a diverse representation of voices and cross-section of methodologies, including embodied experiences, legal pluralism and hybridity, alternative viewpoints, transformative law reform, non-human agency, new horizons and ways forward. Cross-cutting themes vital to both current scholarship and contemporary needs include gender equality, more inclusive places and spaces, and justice for First Nations’ peoples. Inter-related is much-needed reform of dominant human-nature relationships, including, but not limited to, property and practices of power.