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The inaugural Law and Social Sciences Research Network (LASSnet) conference was

held at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi in 2009. A subsequent conference

was held at the Foundation for Liberal and Management Education in Pune in 2010.

These conferences identified a number of priorities for the research, study and

practice of law in South Asia. A key concern was to interrogate how law is

conventionally taught, practiced, and researched as an autonomous and self-sufficient

phenomenon. Those who regard law as autonomous believe it is capable of giving an

account of itself. Law teachers, legal scholars, practitioners, and judges tend to treatthe law as a discipline that can furnish principles to decide 'hard cases' by drawing on

internal logics of consistency and coherence, with inbuilt protocols for determining

legislative intent, fair procedures, and natural justice ensuring access to courts. What

is 'law', properly so called, also tends to be narrowly conceived as what judges,

legislators, or the police 'do' ignoring the diffuse structures of power and

governance, and practices of regulation, normalisation, and biopolitics that penetrate

bodies and condition behaviour.

The notion that law is autonomous (legal formalism or legal positivism) has been

subjected to sustained challenge over many decades by scholars who draw on socialscience methodologies. Broadly conceived, these scholars draw on epistemologies and

pedagogies from the social sciences in order to explain that law is a social,

anthropological, historical, and economic artifact which should be understood and

studied as such. In South Asia, the research, teaching and practice of law that draws

on the social sciences has been relegated to the margins.

LASS was constituted to consolidate the work done so far, to map the field of Law and

Social Sciences in South Asia, and to build scholarly bridges between disciplines

across the region. Its objective is to begin conversations, develop research, and create

an archive of legal praxis that draws on the social sciences. In doing this, LASS seeks

to be innovative in its deployment of social science methodologies, challenging

existing socio-legal approaches that have almost exclusively focused on revealing

hidden social determinants of the legal. LASS calls into question this social

constructivist approach. It promotes research that examines how specific practices

and relations of knowledge and power are constituted. If law a site where

power/knowledge is constituted or exercised, how do we know this? If law is not the

only site, then what sustains economic and political connections as seemingly

disparate as the splicing of a gene and the growing of rice in a rural village? What

research methods can be drawn from the social sciences to identify and explain thelink between knowledge production, techniques of government, and the ever

transforming multiple ways of being in the world?

Alongside these general priorities and questions which LASS has grappled with we

also recognise that Sri Lankan law, society, and economy gives rise to specific

questions and problems. These are not unique to Sri Lanka, and are of wider

significance to South Asia, and regions beyond in what is an increasingly globalised

world. The conference in Sri Lanka seeks to promote research and discussion on a

broad list of themes. The panels will be developed by focusing on a particular theme

below including comparative discussions across South Asia, or through a combination

of themes oriented by the following:

1. Development Development is seen as the solution to most woes in Sri Lanka,

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Organising Committee

Mala Liyanage - Chair/Anchor, Law, and Society Trust, Sri Lanka

Pratiksha Baxi Anchor, LASSnet, CSLG, JNU, DelhiDeepika Udagama School of Law, University of Peradeniya

Ahilan Kadirgamar Graduate Center, City University of New YorkStewart Motha School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London

Gehan Gunatilleke - Centre for the Study of Human Rights, University of ColomboT. Shanaathanan Faculty of Arts, University of Jaffna

Sumathy Sivamohan Faculty of Arts, University of PeradeniyaLiyanage Amarekeerthi Faculty of Arts,Univesity of Peradeniya

Priya Thangaraja Independent ResearcherKamala Sankaran Faculty of Law, Delhi University

Siddharth Narrain Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore

Neloufer de Mel Department of English, University of ColomboJagath Weerasinghe - Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology, Colombo