ARTICLE: Costa on a 'Spatial Turn' for Legal History

Pietro Costa's "Uno 'Spatial Turn' Per La Storia Del Diritto? Una Rassegna Tematica (A 'Spatial Turn' for Legal History? A Tentative Assessment)" is now on SSRN.

The abstract reads:

Una nuova sensibilità nei confronti dello spazio (e più in generale delle coordinate spazio-temporali) sembra svilupparsi in numerose scienze umane, dalla geografia alla sociologia, alla storiografia, a partire dagli anni settanta-ottanta del Novecento. Per indicare questo atteggiamento è stato impiegato il termine di ‘spatial turn’. Il problema impostato nel saggio è se e in che modo lo ‘spatial turn’ possa coinvolgere anche la storia delle teorie e delle istituzioni politico-giuridiche.

Numerous human sciences (from geography to sociology and historiography) have been developing a new attitude towards space (and, in general, towards the relationship between space and time), starting from the seventies-eighties of the Twentieth century. This new approach has been labelled as the ‘spatial turn’. Is it possible and convenient that the history of legal-political theories and institutions take the ‘spatial turn’ seriously? The essay collects some information, which can be employed for a better setting of this problem.

 

This is an Italian version of an English article accepted for M Meccarelli and MJ Solla Sastre (eds.), "Spatial and Temporal Dimensions for Legal History: Research Experiences and Itineraries", in Global Perspectives on Legal History Book Series (MPI for European Legal History), Frankfurt
Max Planck Institute for European Legal History Research Paper Series No. 2013-07