Alexander W. Scherr

Making law, making place: lawyers and the production of space

In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework for theorizing the role of lawyers in legal geography research to foster better understandings of the processes and the people co-constituting space and law. We argue that the practice of law is missing from existing legal geography scholarship. Adding insights from legal studies and geography, we propose an agenda for research that places lawyers at the center of analyses of legal (and political) claims-making, particularly place-claims in land-use disputes. We illustrate our call with an example from a study of conflict over a manufactured housing park in Georgia.

Urban Politics and Mental Health: An Agenda for Health Geographic Research

Siting of mental health service facilities has often been subject to public opposition and political struggles. These processes have produced a landscape of mental health provision that is powerfully uneven and concentrated in economically and socially depressed areas. We argue that understanding this landscape requires an examination of the political processes that shape such siting decisions. Although health geographers (most importantly Dear and Wolch) have periodically engaged with politics, the important role of informal development politics in producing landscapes of health remains insufficiently examined. We introduce the case of residential social service facility (“group home”) siting in central Massachusetts to explore the political dynamics of the production of health. Siting of group homes in Massachusetts is governed by a legal framework that provides social service agencies with legal protection and autonomy from local governments as they make siting choices. This exemption from local zoning ordinances often shifts local politics from formal to informal channels, leading to the application of many forms of soft influence over siting decisions. A comprehensive geographic analysis of mental health should include the social and political processes of siting.