Global Reflections on Positionality in Rural Access to Justice Research

This book offers a unique look at rural access to justice through a series of personal and professional reflections by leading scholars in the field. Engaging a “position sensibility”, it explores how our identities, class backgrounds, and professional privileges shape research and writing in rural places—and how those rural places in turn shape us. This is an important collection, for while rural justice gaps are well-documented, considerably less has been written about the distinct opportunities that rural communities present for collaborative research, innovation, and policy development. The book offers us an honest, reflexive accounting of what has been done, why, and what’s next to dismantle academic barriers and promote meaningful work on rural access to justice. As a call to still deeper engagement with rurality, this book will inspire readers to consider rural place in their studies of law—and to consider their own place in scholarship on access to justice.