Law and the Paranormal: A Critical Perspective on Legal Rationality

This thesis develops a genealogy tracing how law has constructed witchcraft and related ‘paranormal’ practices throughout English legal history. It shows how early modern witchcraft laws evolved into modern fraud and consumer protection laws regulating mediumship, astrology, and fortune-telling. It argues that this development provides a case-study reflecting the emergence of several elements of the modern legal system. These include its conceptions of private property, contract, and the legal subject, but also, probabilistic causation and the juridical valorisation of natural-scientific empiricism. Linking this evolution to the emergence of capitalism, the thesis builds a unique theoretical framework drawing inspiration from critical realism, systems theory, and Marxian-inspired legal approaches, using its genealogy to offer a novel lens on law’s constitutive role within capitalist social relations. Accordingly, it posits that modern law expresses, and is bounded by, a rationality that struggles to reify certain concepts and practices, particularly paranormal practices, because of its capitalistic axioms.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Sagar, Andrew

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Deakin, Simon
• Adams, Zoe

• Capitalism
• Law
• Paranormal
• Rationality

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/f65feb28-34d7-4d38-9525-1144232e78fd/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.104909

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/363028