Tort law, a fundamental building block of every legal system, features prominently in mass culture and political debates. As this pioneering anthology reveals, tort law is not simply a collection of legal rules and procedures, but a set of cultural responses to the broader problems of risk, injury, assignment of responsibility, compensation, valuation, and obligation.
Examining tort law as a cultural phenomenon and a form of cultural practice, this work makes explicit comparisons of tort law across space and time, looking at the United States, Europe, and Asia in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. It draws on theories and methods from law, sociology, political science, and anthropology to offer a truly interdisciplinary, pathbreaking view. Ultimately, tort law, the authors show, nests within a larger web of relationships and shared discursive conventions that organize social life.

"Rights of Inclusion" provides an innovative, accessible perspective on how civil rights legislation affects the lives of ordinary Americans. Based on eye-opening and deeply moving interviews with intended beneficiaries of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), David M. Engel and Frank W. Munger argue for a radically new understanding of rights - one that focuses on their role in everyday lives rather than in formal legal claims. Although all 60 interviewees had experienced discrimination, none had filed a formal protest or lawsuit. Nevertheless, civil rights played a crucial role in their lives. Rights improved their self-image, enhanced their career aspirations and altered the perceptions and assumptions of their employees and coworkers - in effect producing more inclusive institutional arrangements. Focusing on these long-term life histories, Engel and Munger incisively show how rights and identity affect one another over time and how that interaction ultimately determines the success of laws such as the ADA. For anyone concerned with rights, disability and the law, "Rights of Inclusion" should be a landmark work.

Tort law, a fundamental building block of every legal system, features prominently in mass culture and political debates. As this pioneering anthology reveals, tort law is not simply a collection of legal rules and procedures, but a set of cultural responses to the broader problems of risk, injury, assignment of responsibility, compensation, valuation, and obligation.
Examining tort law as a cultural phenomenon and a form of cultural practice, this work makes explicit comparisons of tort law across space and time, looking at the United States, Europe, and Asia in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. It draws on theories and methods from law, sociology, political science, and anthropology to offer a truly interdisciplinary, pathbreaking view. Ultimately, tort law, the authors show, nests within a larger web of relationships and shared discursive conventions that organize social life.

Why do Americans seem to sue at the slightest provocation? The answer may surprise you: we don't! For every "Whiplash Charlie" who sees a car accident as a chance to make millions, for every McDonald's customer to pursue a claim over a too-hot cup of coffee, many more Americans suffer injuries but make no claims against those responsible or their insurance companies. The question is not why Americans sue but why we don't sue more often, and the answer can be found in how we think about injury and personal responsibility. With this book, David M. Engel demolishes the myth that America is a litigious society. The sobering reality is that the vast majority of injury victims more than nine out of ten rely on their own resources, family and friends, and government programs to cover their losses. When real people experience serious injuries, they don't respond as rational actors. Trauma and pain disrupt their thoughts, and potential claims are discouraged by negative stereotypes that pervade American television and popular culture. (Think Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad, who keeps a box of neck braces in his office to help clients exaggerate their injuries.) Cultural norms make preventable injuries appear inevitable or the victim's fault. We're taught to accept setbacks stoically and not blame someone else. But this tendency to "lump it" doesn't just hurt the victims; it hurts us all. As politicians continue to push reforms that miss the real problem, we risk losing these claims as a way to quickly identify unsafe products and practices. Because injuries disproportionately fall on people with fewer resources, the existing framework creates a social underclass whose needs must be met by government programs all citizens shoulder while shielding those who cause the harm. It's time for America to have a more responsible, blame-free discussion about injuries and the law. With The Myth of the Litigious Society, Engel takes readers clearly and powerfully through what we really know about injury victims and concludes with recommendations for how we might improve the situation.

The first reader on Asian law and society scholarship, this book features reading selections from a wide range of Asian countries - East, South, Southeast and Central Asia - along with original commentaries by the three editors on the theoretical debates and research methods pertinent to the discipline. Organized by themes and topical areas, the reader enables scholars and students to break out of country-specific silos to make theoretical connections across national borders. It meets a growing demand for law and society materials in institutions and universities in Asia and around the world. It is written at a level accessible to advanced undergraduate students and graduate students as well as experienced researchers, and serves as a valuable teaching tool for courses focused on Asian law and society in law schools, area studies, history, religion, and social science fields such as sociology, anthropology, politics, government, and criminal justice.

The first reader on Asian law and society scholarship, this book features reading selections from a wide range of Asian countries - East, South, Southeast and Central Asia - along with original commentaries by the three editors on the theoretical debates and research methods pertinent to the discipline. Organized by themes and topical areas, the reader enables scholars and students to break out of country-specific silos to make theoretical connections across national borders. It meets a growing demand for law and society materials in institutions and universities in Asia and around the world. It is written at a level accessible to advanced undergraduate students and graduate students as well as experienced researchers, and serves as a valuable teaching tool for courses focused on Asian law and society in law schools, area studies, history, religion, and social science fields such as sociology, anthropology, politics, government, and criminal justice.

This book addresses some of the most difficult and important debates over injury and law now taking place in societies around the world. The essays tackle the inescapable experience of injury and its implications for social inequality in different cultural settings. Topics include the tension between physical and reputational injuries, the construction of human injuries versus injuries to non-human life, virtual injuries, the normalization and infliction of injuries on vulnerable victims, the question of reparations for slavery, and the paradoxical degradation of victims through legal actions meant to compensate them for their disabilities. Authors include social theorists, social scientists and legal scholars, and the subject matter extends to the Middle East and Asia, as well as North America.

Many commentators on the contemporary United States believe that current rates of litigation are a sign of decay in the nation's social fabric. Law and Community in Three American Towns explores how ordinary people in three towns located in New England, the Midwest, and the South view the law, courts, litigants, and social order.

Carol J. Greenhouse, Barbara Yngvesson, and David M. Engel analyze attitudes toward law and law users as a way of commentating on major American myths and ongoing changes in American society. They show that residents of "Riverside," Sander County, and Hopewell interpret litigation as a sign of social decline, but they also value law as a symbol of their local way of life. The book focuses on this ambivalence and relates it to the deeply-felt tensions express between community and rights as rival bases of society.

The authors, two anthropologists and a lawyer, each with an understanding of a particular region, were surprised to discover that such different locales produced parallel findings. They undertook a comparative project to find out why ambivalence toward the law and law use should be such a common refrain. The answer, they believe, turns out to be less a matter of local traditions than of the ways that people perceive the patterns of their lives as being vulnerable to external forces of change."