Locating Law, 3rd Edition

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.

• : Introduction: Section One: Theoretical Approaches In the Sociology of Law Theoretical Excursions (Elizabeth Comack) : Section Two: Racism and the Law Introduction: Standing Against Canadian Law: Naming Omissions of Race, Culture, and Gender (Patricia Monture): “Managing” Canadian Immigration: Racism, Racialization, and the Law (Lisa Marie Jakubowski & Elizabeth Comack) : Colonialism, Systemic Discrimination,  and the Crisis of Indigenous Over-incarceration: Challenges of Reforming the Sentencing Process (David Milward & Debra Parkes): Section Three: Class Interests and the Law Introduction: Locating Labour Law: Conflicting Perspectives and the Case of Occupational Health and Safety Regulation (Eric Tucker): The Breakdown of Canada’s Corporate Crime Laws: Rhetoric versus Reality (Steven Bittle & Laureen Snider): The Construction of “Welfare Fraud” and the Wielding of the State’s Iron Fist (Janet E. Mosher): Section Four: Gender, Sexuality, and the Law Introduction: Feminism, Law, and “The Family”: Assessing the Reform Legacy (Dorothy E. Chunn): “Sex Was in the Air”: Pernicious Myths and Other Problems with Sexual Violence Prosecutions (Karen Busby) : Governing Obscenity and Indecency in Canada (Richard Jochelson & Kirsten Kramar)

“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.”