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* I am grateful to Melanie L. Williams and Dermot Feenan, the editors of this special issue of the International Journal of Law in Context, for their many insightful suggestions made in relation to earlier drafts of this paper. I am grateful, also, to discussions with my colleagues Rebecca Probert and Danny Priel.
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Introduction
To study the law 'in context' is to recognise that the law is of one fabric, one 'textile', with its social, political, economic and historical setting; and to acknowledge that the texts of law are dependent upon other literary texts, and interwoven with them. The textile metaphor is especially pertinent to interdisciplinary inquiry, for it reveals that any given object of study can be seen as a tapestry in which disciplinary strands remain more or less distinct (sometimes obvious, sometimes obscured) as they contribute to the whole. In addition to these senses of 'contextual', the present study is intended to be con-textual in the further sense of encouraging texts to be read with an appropriate ethic. What I mean by this is that academic reading and writing ought to be conducted as a living mode of social connection, just as conversation is. It ought not to be conducted in a way that is so far abstracted from felt human emotion and the tangible reality of life as to be disconnected from it and unconcerned with it. In fact, academic scholarship can never be wholly detached from social life, because academics and their work inevitably constitute a part of social life. This may be especially true of scholarship on the subject of law, for it has been observed that 'law is intimately involved in the constitution of social relations and the law itself is constituted through social relations' (Merry, 1992, pp. 209-210). It is incumbent upon scholars to approach their writing and their reading with respect for the life that is inherent in these acts of communication. In the words of James Boyd White, our speech should be 'living speech' (White, 2006). 1 Theoretical language that is abstracted from the life we feel must be guarded against, constantly. There is always a danger inherent in the adoption of a theoretical standpoint...