Injury and Injustice: The Cultural Politics of Harm and Redress (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society) - Softcover

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.

Anne Bloom is Executive Director of the Civil Justice Research Initiative, a think tank affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, Irvine Schools of Law. Her background is in both academia and public interest law. Previously, she was Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Law at McGeorge Law School, Director of Public Programs at Equal Justice Works, and a staff attorney with the national public interest impact litigation firm, Public Justice. She holds both a J.D. and a Ph.D. in political science and has authored many articles on injury-related topics.

David M. Engel is Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the State University of New York, Buffalo. He is a former President of the Law and Society Association and the recipient of its 2017 Kalven Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Law and Society. Engel's research examines law, culture, and society in America and Thailand. His book, The Myth of the Litigious Society: Why We Don't Sue (2016) explains why American injury victims generally avoid claiming. His scholarship on Thailand, where he has lived, worked, and taught for many years, includes the book, Tort, Custom, and Karma: Globalization and Legal Consciousness in Thailand (2010), which examines the effects of global transformations on Thailand's legal culture. Engel is a visiting professor at the Chiang Mai University Law School, where he received an honorary doctorate in 2011. He currently serves as an Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Journal of Law and Society and is a member of the inaugural Board of Trustees of the Asian Law and Society Association.

Michael McCann is Gordon Hirabayashi Professor for the Advancement of Citizenship at the University of Washington. McCann is author of over sixty article-length publications and author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of eight books, including the multi-award winning monographs Rights at Work (1994) and (with William Haltom) Distorting the Law (2004); each of these latter books won numerous professional prizes. McCann has been awarded many National Science Foundation and other grants; was a Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow in Law and Public Affairs (Princeton); won the Stanton Wheeler Mentorship Award (2017) from, and was elected President of, the Law and Society Association (2011–13).