Visiting Researcher Explores Legal Geographies and Social Justice

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Ms Louise Sarsfield Collins, a PhD candidate at Maynooth University in Ireland recently presented a lecture entitled ‘Legal Geographies and Social Justice’ at the Pietermaritzburg campus.

Collins is in South Africa for six months as part of her research and data collection for her work on the legal geographies of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) people in post-colonial states and subsequent sites of vulnerability and resistance.

Her lecture covered an examination of the notion of law, querying what it is and speaking about geographers troubling the notion of the law being natural and neutral. She noted that law and space are co-constitutive, and raised the separation of private and public spaces in the application of the law.

Sarsfield Collins described a case study style of work in legal geography, and pointed to theorists including David Delaney whose theories including concepts like the nomosphere (or how laws are made material), have influenced legal geographies. She touched on terms including heteropatriarchy, and subversive property theorised by Sarah Keenan.

Sarsfield Collins noted that law is not limited to foundational documents, but concerns implementation. Examples from South Africa include the inclusion of traditional laws and societal norms.

‘My concern is that laws and norms are internalised so that social injustice (and other more banal things) come to be viewed as natural, as simply the way things are, without understanding the processes that make this happen,’ said Sarsfield Collins.

She used case study examples such as access to abortions in Ireland and the laws and politics influencing this case, and how legal geographies and space were used to challenge relevant laws.

Speaking about queering legal geographies, Sarsfield Collins brought the focus to her work in South Africa.

‘I want to bring these strands of human geography (legal geography and queer geography) into conversation with each other so that we might better understand the spatio-socio-legal processes of the heteropatriarchy and smash it,’ said Sarsfield Collins.

Sarsfield Collins praised the South African Constitution for its human rights protections, but noted that hate crimes and everyday harassment against LGBTIQ people in particular are still a problem.

‘I’m trying to understand ways in which the law has not yet been made material and become grounded in everyday norms and experience in South Africa,’ said Sarsfield Collins.

Sarsfield Collins’ early findings have included focus on issues of class and socio-economic divides, as well as a rural-urban divide.

Sarsfield Collins also spoke on the National Strategic Plan for 2017-2022 in terms of HIV, STIs and TB. She indicated that queer-friendly medical spaces would be important, and highlighted the role of the church in opening up spaces for dialogue.

Sarsfield Collins is utilising qualitative research methods, including semi-structured interviews, archival work and field observations. She noted her position as an outsider with its advantages and disadvantages, and highlighted her focus on under-researched places in terms of queer and legal geographies in the country.

Sarsfield Collins acknowledged the Irish Research Council and Maynooth University for support for her research.

Words: Christine Cuénod

Photograph: Christine Cuénod