On the joys of publishing law and society books—plus a few editorial secrets.
It’s that time of year again—time for editors to emerge from their cluttered, manuscript- and proposal-laden cubicles, as law and society scholars simultaneously emerge from their even more cluttered offices. Both groups will have to reorient to the dim lights of conference rooms as they attend the year’s grand soirée in sociolegal research, the Law and Society Association meeting. This year, downtown Seattle will be inundated with some of the best and brightest minds committed to social scientific, interpretive, and historical analyses of law across multiple social contexts. Given the conference’s theme—“Law’s Promise and Law's Pathos in the Global North and Global South”—it’s fitting that the conference will be held in Seattle, home of the 1999 WTO Protests.
As a law and society editor, I don’t want to just publish books. I want to help start a conversation.
It would be easy to claim that Law and Society, and the research currently being produced in the field, is more relevant than ever. I could point to a number of recent events that sorely need (and in some cases have received and been enriched by) the attention of this sector of the academy: police brutality, immigration/migrant issues, marriage equality, workers’ rights, etc. But that would be a false claim: Law and Society has always been vital, even before it had a formal name and an annual conference.
I feel lucky and grateful to cast my lot with this enthusiastic group of diverse scholars. Don’t tell anyone else, but LSA is one of my favorite conferences of the year. I love how it gathers together researchers from many different subjects and subdisciplines, and how people are actively involved in listening across disciplinary divides in order to deepen everyone’s research. My conversations on any given day at the LSA meeting can range from prisoner politics to the history of intellectual property law.
This is the kind of mental potpourri that editors relish, because at the root of our passion for editing usually lies a well-guarded secret: many editors couldn’t make up their minds when it came to their own course of study. A surprising revelation, given how opinionated we are! So editors cultivate lists that cover a wide array of topics, and they develop a sense of the broader scope of their field(s) of acquisition. This allows editors like me the ability to dash from one topic to the next. We are the proverbial foxes: we may know many things at once, while our authors (the hedgehogs) know a few big things really well.
Since I’ve already told you one secret, here’s another: as a law and society editor, I don’t want to just publish books. I want to help start a conversation. I may not even actively participate in that conversation, but I do want to walk into the room, place a question at the center, and slowly back away as a ripple effect of debate takes hold. As an editor it’s my job to help an author best articulate their own big questions, and to usher them to the right room.
I’m pleased to say that Stanford Press’s law list has started a great number of conversations in the past few years. Austin Sarat’s brilliant, gruesome book about the death penalty in America has inspired discussions about the legal legitimacy of capital punishment—not only within the academy, but in major media outlets. Osagie Obasogie’s path-breaking (and award-winning!) study of racial bias and blindness has challenged the way that race is perceived in society, and it critiques the notion of colorblindness in law, public policy, and culture. Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ new book confronts conventional and hegemonic thinking about human rights to help us face the obstacles of human suffering and social injustice in an increasingly globalized world. Irus Braverman’s new book, Wild Life, updates the emerging consensus that all forms of wild nature may need to be managed in perpetuity.
I could go on—and if you come visit the SUP table at LSA, I will give you an earful. The Press also has a number of exciting forthcoming titles that I will be bringing with me to next year’s LSA in New Orleans. It’s been a privilege to work with these authors, and to read and engage with their work, sometimes on a sentence-by-sentence level.
I’m sure that we at Stanford Press will continue to help spur these vibrant conversations. I’m always on the hunt for the next conversation starter: books that are well-written, rigorously engaged with their subject, and sometimes just a tad bit edgy. Some of my favorite books are the ones you pick up off the shelf, scan the description, and think to yourself: “I cannot believe someone hasn’t written about this already”— not because it’s uncovered ground, necessarily, but because it’s so well-conceived, so well-articulated, and so immediately relevant that you know it will become a standard text in the field and beyond.
Michelle Lipinski (@MMLipinski) is the Acquisitions Editor in Anthropology and Law at Stanford University Press. Before coming to SUP, she worked in editorial roles at Oxford University Press.
See Also
Friday, May 29
Osagie K. Obasogie answers your questions at LSA.
Stanford University Press blog
What can blind people tell us about race?
Stanford University Press blog
A Call For More-Than-Human Legalities ⇨
On law and societies in the "Anthropocene."
Stanford University Press blog
Human Rights: A Fragile Hegemony ⇨
Human rights, as popularly conceived, have a troubling genealogy.
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