SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This piece sketches ‘an’ economic sociology of law: one possible approach, in relation to one case study of wind farm development in Cyprus. Carbon emissions are a global threat to which wind farms may offer something of a solution. But wind farms can also pose local threats. So they tend to produce conflicts on different levels of social life: action, interaction, regime, and rationality. As such they are ill‐suited to exploration through law or economics, and ideally suited to exploration through economic sociology of law. The approach set out in this article enables social life of all levels, intensities, and types (including the economic) to be placed on the same analytical page. What emerges is a most human story of animosity, apathy, and enthusiasm in which law acts variously as means, obstacle, and irrelevance.