Book Review: Law and Disorder: Sovereignty, Protest, Atmosphere

Abstract

control over bodies, but that political control has been drawn from diseases done to the body. Refuge Beyond Reach begins and concludes with reference to the importance of sanctuary – a physical site of refuge. While sanctuary is a term more recently adopted for its connotations to political protection, COVID-19 reminds us that sanctuary also suggests a place of physical healing. In other contexts, it foregrounds the need for conservation efforts to protect the natural environment. We are now more aware than ever before that refugee populations will continue to seek sanctuary from a range of complex and overlapping political, physical, and environmental hazards. The final corrective I would offer to this book is that FitzGerald’s concluding call that civil society must rise to the challenge of guarding “paths to refuge from the duplicitous attempts to close them” (p. 265) must also be the guiding principle to protect all those who seek refuge, whether political or otherwise.