Domains of Policy: Law and Society Research on the Family

AuthorAnnie Bunting
Pages199-211
The Handbook of Law and Society, First Edition. Edited by Austin Sarat and Patricia Ewick.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Introduction
Law and society methodologies and theoretical insights have much to offer the study
of the family (Diduck 2003), from historical research on law’s regulation of morality
through the institution of marriage, for example, to studies of the family as a site of
non‐state normative ordering, to interrogations of the impact of social movements
on law reform. Socio‐legal research also contributes to public policy in the area of
the family; debates about the family, and its legal regulation, feature prominently in
public discourse. Indeed, there has been an explosion of policy changes in the area
of family law over the past two decades, provoked by social debates and judicial
decisions (Sutherland 2012). Both the United States and Canada, along with many
European jurisdictions, have debated the extension of the legal definition of spouse
to include cohabiting spouses, whether opposite or same‐sex, and same‐sex
marriage. Foreign ministries have taken up the issue of child, early and forced
marriage at the same time as governments are more heavily scrutinizing spousal and
family sponsorship in immigration. While there is a robust socio‐legal literature in
the area of the family, it nonetheless represents a small proportion of the field of law
and society in North America.1
Many socio‐legal authors start with a question: What is parenthood, childhood, a
spouse or a family? This critical starting point leads to rich studies of what Carol
Smart (2009: 12) refers to as “kin practices” and law as a practice of “kin making or
kinning”. Alison Diduck (2003: 20), drawing on the sociologies of intimacy and the
individual, similarly posits that the “families we live with” are formed and lived in
contrast to the normative almost mythic families of law and policies, “the families
we live by. Diduck argues that this leads to “conflicting ideals within law’s family ….
Domains of Policy
Law and Society Research on the Family
Annie Bunting
13

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