Collaborative Research Networks
Organizers
Michele Statz, Kathryne Young
Work on rurality often takes place at the margins of other law and society subdisciplines. In response, the Law and Rurality CRN seeks to foreground the rural, promote interdisciplinary research at the intersection of law and rural socio-spatiality, and highlight rurality as a critical, compelling space for law and society inquiry. Sociolegal work on the rural already touches many substantive areas, including migration and citizenship, gender and sexuality, social networks, court systems, incarceration and crime, food systems, and racial, ethnic, and class identities. Yet rurality is not always made explicit as an interpretive framework or a methodological consideration. This CRN offers interdisciplinary attention to the complexity of socio-legal phenomena in rural contexts, and provides space to further theorize the impacts of rurality on law and social processes. Through sustained scholarly exchange and collaboration, the Law and Rurality CRN supports research and methods aimed at eliciting diverse perspectives and experiences across the varied “rural lawscape.” This CRN will provide a centralized point of focus for to scholarship that has until now been at the margins of the field, thereby addressing a critical and marked gap in the LSA and in socio-legal studies more generally.