This collection of essays focuses attention on the global impact of legal policies on levels of poverty. They illustrate the distinct dimensions of poverty in a range of different political and cultural settings and also show how poverty is exacerbated by quite discrete local cultural factors in some instances. There is,nonetheless a universal element which runs through all the contributions. The fate of those who are disadvantaged in society depends crucially on their access to goods through the world of work.

Making Law for Families is the result of a workshop organized by Mavis Maclean and held between May 26 and June 2,1999, at the international Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISL) in Onati, Spain.

This book analyzes the concept of the family in the context of increasing challenges and questions created by multicultural societies in ever more complicated international and transnational legal contexts.

Criminal Policy in Transition comes along at a time when the literature in criminology is desperately short of “global” perspectives. It helps fill that gap while it presents important new insights into changing penal policy and practice. That it raises as many questions as it seems to answer is one of its great strengths. The authors write knowledgeably about their home societies without being prematurely bounded by comparative criteria. As a result,they develop a complex and uneven image of similarities and differences, of divergence and convergence through time.