At the intersection of the humanities and the social sciences, Perreau's research investigates how the law is manufactured in contemporary Western societies. How are juridical categories instituted and, once they are, why do they seem so obvious? While the law is often thought of as nothing more than a technique, Perreau explores its social, political, and aesthetic foundations: what conditions have to be in place for a policy to be successful and become law? His work shows that “nature” is one of the main registers undergirding the manufacture of law in contemporary Western societies. Perreau maintains that our relation to community, a relation commonly designated as “culture,” is understood as if it were a “second nature.” Starting with an epistemological line of enquiry, Perreau's research has very concrete repercussions. He asks how have our daily lives been marked by this imaginary construction of nature, whether in terms of our nationality, our relations to family, our social tastes, or our identities?
