Faisal Chaudhry is an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts School of Law. He also holds a concurrent appointment in the Department of History as well. His academic background includes positions at the University of Dayton and the University of Pennsylvania. Chaudhry's historical research centres on the interplay between law, empire, and political economy in South Asia, with a focus on the historical convergence of legal and economic concepts. In his contemporary scholarship, he examines the role of law in supporting markets and the complex impact of property rights institutions on our overall well-being.

• Introduction Section One: The Legal History of Colonial Rule in the South Asian Subcontinent and the Ontologization of <'The Law> ': The Problem and a Proposed Analytical Framework 1: The History of British Colonial Rule in South Asia as a History of Legal Development 2: Beyond Law and History: Naturalization and its Limits in Jurisprudential Inquiry 3: Denaturalizing the Law: Historical Ontology as a Method / A Method for Historical Ontology Section Two: Laws and the Land: Property and Revenue in the Discourse of the Company's India from 1757 to 1857 4: From Plassey to the Permanent Settlement in the Company> 's Bengal: Property, Constitution, and a Historical Ontology of the Laws 5: Beyond the Permanent Settlement: Property Discourse and Non-Zamindari Revenue Systems Section Three: The Law and its Basic Elements: Rights as Realms and the Will of Juridical Persons in the Discourse of Classical Legal Thought in the Crown's India from 1857 to c.1920 6: Crown Rule and the Legalization of Property: Rights as Realms of Proprietary Interest 7: The Private and the Public Will in the Indian Contract Act 8: From Contract to the Nascent Anthropological Discourse about Status 9: The Restitution of Conjugal Rights and the Nature of Marriage: Constituting the Subsystems of the (Religious) Personal Law as a Law of Status Conclusion Bibliography

This book makes a significant contribution to both urban and political sociology. It offers a fresh and compelling perspective on urban displacement by emphasizing the political rather than economic origins of evictions, effectively challenging dominant explanations (...) The book will engage and inform scholars working on land policy, the political economy of development, state-society relations, and social movements. In addition, ethnographers will find Levenson's discussion of ethics and positionality in the study of urban squatter settlements particularly insightful.