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The Pragmatic Sanction of Materials: Notes for an Ethnography of Legal Substances
Author(s) -
Lezaun Javier
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of law and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.263
H-Index - 48
eISSN - 1467-6478
pISSN - 0263-323X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6478.2012.00568.x
Subject(s) - ethnography , object (grammar) , agency (philosophy) , argument (complex analysis) , law , work (physics) , sociology , political science , law and economics , philosophy , social science , engineering , anthropology , linguistics , chemistry , mechanical engineering , biochemistry
How is the law bound to the material world? This article examines the production of reference materials, artefacts that incarnate legally relevant measurements and serve as a transitional object for the law in its approximation to the stuff of the world. The argument, an opening for an ethnographic investigation into the life of legal materials, is based on a study of the work conducted at the Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM), an agency that, for over fifty years, has fabricated official versions of the objects and substances mentioned in European law.