Book Reviews 91

becomes more than just a theoretical maxim. It becomes as understandable ascommon sense.

But it is her perspective on law that is most central for readers of this jour-nal. On this subject Darian-Smith argues that law is much more than law inbooks. It is not enough, she argues, to approach law as an abstract language.Rather, law needs to be understood as meaningful social practice that is visi-ble and tangible in everyday life. Darian-Smith recommends that we pay at-tention to the visual ad spatial reordering of territory, and to the symbols oflaw, in order to ground our understanding of law in society. Put this way itsounds almost glib, but her beautiful prose takes this anthropological sensibil-ity to real heights. She is also a master at getting readers to look at thingsdi¡erently using very simple devices. Rotate the conventional map of Europe,she recommends, and one can re-imagine England hanging precariously be-low the New Europe and, one might add, in danger of falling o¡! It is herattention to how things, including legality, appear to people in everyday lifethat is so refreshing. It e¡ectively encourages a re-assessment of what bound-aries, nationalism and ‘the law’ areöand ought to beöin the complicatedworld of globalization.

These two books present very di¡erent views on the transnationalisation oflaw, both theoretically and methodologically. Read in tandem they broughtme to the realisation that the sociology of law is not merely a discourse aboutpower. Like law it is a discourse of poweröor at least it can be. The sociologyof law can be a discourse of power insofar as it can in£uence the groundson which the legitimacy of law rests. In the contemporary period that is nomean feat. These books o¡er alternative yet complimentary ways to approachthis task.

JAMES SHEPTYCKIDurham University, UK

doi:10.1006.ijsl.2001.0135, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

V. RUGGIERO: Crime and Markets: Essays in Anti-Criminology. Oxford Univer-sity Press, Oxford, 2000, 208pp., »45.00 (Hb).

A lesson to be learned from reading Ruggerio’s latest work is that not onlyshould we not judge a book by its cover, but also that we should not judgeone by its sub-title and introduction. The immediate reaction from this re-viewer was ‘‘oh no, not another left-libertarian mobilizing postmodern anti-essentialism to denounce the discipline that pays his salary’’. However, aftergetting down to reading the main body of the book, it quickly became clearthat this was not really the case. This work makes a ¢ne contribution to

# 2001 Academic Press

92 Book Reviews

the burgeoning criminological analysis of crime in post-Fordist market socie-ties. Unlike so many collections of essays, it is clearly written, coherent andthematic, and the author follows his theme through resolutely, moving fromthe general to the particular with some skill.

He uses the introduction to set up criminology as a straw target of insidiouspositivism and sanctimonious moralism caged by the structuralist metaphorof ‘dirt and cleanliness’. This tactic is tedious, pretentious and outdated whenone considers the fact that the radical libertarian positions that eschew bothpositivism and moralism have been in the ascent in criminology for over thelast 40 years. However, after hurriedly ushering us through the gallery of po-mo caveats and expressing an intent to emphasize ‘‘variations, di¡erences andexceptions’’ whilst rejecting essentialism, homogeneity and foundationalism,he then proceeds from the second chapter onwards to explain the similar waysin which a substantial number of individuals cope with the essential, homoge-nizing and foundational properties of post-Fordist market culture. And it’sprecisely at this point of doing what he said he wasn’t going to do that theanalysis bursts into life.

The basic position (essential foundation?) is de¢ned by the ‘causality ofcontraries’, the di¡erent yet similar forms of opportunities and motivationsthat precipitate crime in the locations inhabited by the elites and the lowerorders in market societies. Although he does not support his centralization of‘resentment’ in the causal chain with any discussion of the complex philoso-phy and social psychology of this concept (Nietzsche? Freud?), his account ofthe intersection of ‘‘hidden, parallel and semi-legal economies’’ characterizedby complex mixtures of labour and entrepreneurialismöand how this isstructured by the technical and social divisions of labouröis detailed, infor-mative and skilful. The unashamedly foundational and moralistic critique ofthe tendency of criminal markets to ‘‘reproduce the most repulsive aspects oflegitimate ones’’ echoes the early revulsion expressed by the likes of Engelsand Bonger; neither of whom, as far as I know, were noted anti-foundational-ists. The mobilization of the dirty-clean metaphor that he rejected in the in-troduction (the incongruity of which grows as you progress through the text)adds old-fashioned substance to his critique. People are forced to play the onlygame in town, and when consigned to the margins where opportunities arescarce, or elevated to the top where they are achingly abundant, the tempta-tion is to play it dirty rather than clean.

The argument is more than satisfactorily rescued by the way it £owers intocomprehensibility and relevance after wasting its energy posturing in the intro-duction, and thus its penetrating insights deserve a wide readership, particu-larly amongst a student body currently overdosed on the po-mo solecism thatRuggerio said he was going to talk about but didn’t. He might ¢nd it worthconsidering that not even fashionability is being served by the inclusion of sucha perishable and waning discourse, and to place such a strident statement ofintent right at the beginning is likely to alienate rather than attract readers.

Book Reviews 93

All in all, this book should be judged on its content, and the main body(the critical theory that dare not speak its name) contains more than enoughtopicality, originality, asperity and insightöespecially about the drug busi-ness and state corruptionöto make it an essential text for any course dealingwith the relationship between crime and political economy. Ignore the sub-title, skip the introduction and go straight to chapter two.

STEVE HALLUniversity of Northumbria at Newcastle

doi:10.1006.ijsl.2001.0136, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

ALI WARDAK: Social Control and Deviance: A South Asian Community in Scotland,Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000, 288pp., »39.95 (Hb).

This is the ¢rst in-depth study of social control and deviance within a BritishPakistani community. If this were not reason enough to read the book thenthe fact that little systematic social scienti¢c knowledge is available aboutthese communities o¡ers further enticement. That the study is both clearlywritten and rigorous is an added bonus. Readers interested in adapting socialcontrol theory to speci¢c community and cultural contexts will bene¢t di-rectly, and a more general readership will ¢nd much of interest in how BritishPakistani communities are socially organized. Ali Wardak’s timely survey andethnographic study of young male conformity and deviance in the ScottishEdinburgh Pakistani community sets out to refashion social control theory totake account of culturally speci¢c institutional mechanisms of social controlfound in this community. He concludes that certain mechanisms are more im-portant than others, and that social control and social deviance act togetherto socially organise the community.

The ¢rst part of the study examines how the fundamental community so-cial institutions of family, Biraderi (social network of kinship/friendship rela-tionship), mosque and Pakistani Association interconnect, operate and aremaintained as agencies of social control. However, social control and devianceare necessarily linked because ‘‘social control de¢nes what deviance is, andspeci¢es how it should be dealt with’’ (p. 4). Consequently the second part ofthe study discusses deviance. The ¢rst part deals with the historical back-ground to discrimination and the exclusion of Edinburgh’s Pakistani commu-nity from mainstream Scottish society. The community reacted by becomingrelatively ‘closed’, reinforcing a sense of social belonging and strengthenedcommon social bonds. It is this context and response that promotes orderand regulates behaviour through the social bonding of members to the com-munity’s moral and social order. Part two looks at how these agencies de¢ne

# 2001 Academic Press