Social & Legal Studies recent issues

Of 'Normal Sex' and 'Real Rape': Exploring The Use of Socio-Sexual Scripts in (Mock) Jury Deliberation

Ellison, L., Munro, V. E. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:51:24 PDT

This article explores a series of 27 jury deliberations, undertaken by volunteer members of the public, following their observation of a mini-rape trial reconstruction. While research with ‘real’ jurors is prohibited in England and Wales, previous social attitude and experimental studies have suggested that jurors in sexual assault trials may well be influenced by dubious stereotypes about rape, rapists and rape victims. In this article, the authors explore the relationship between these (mis)conceptions about rape and public expectations regarding socio-sexual conduct more broadly. The authors examine the scripts that were invoked, defended and relied upon by mock jurors in order to distinguish ‘normal’ (hetero)sexual seduction from rape. More specifically, this article explores participants’ expectations (both descriptive and normative) in relation to the communication of consent, the role of male initiative, and the location, timing of and parties to sexual intercourse, as well as the relevance of the use of physical force, the fact of the parties’ drunkenness or the nature of their respective post-coital conduct.

Critical Legal Studies and the Politics of Space

Butler, C. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:51:24 PDT

A growing body of work over the past two decades has been explicitly concerned with the interdisciplinary connections between law and questions of space. Traversing topics such as the regulation of the city, control of public space and the symbolic dimensions of spatial conflicts, this literature constitutes an important contribution to critical legal scholarship. However, there is still much work to be done on the development of the theoretical foundations of this field. This article will present the writings of the French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre as revealing a sophisticated theory of space with potentially profound implications for the research program of critical legal studies. Lefebvrean ideas are directly relevant to the renewal of critical approaches to the structure and form of planning law and regimes of urban governance. His work also contains fertile resources for research into the transformation of traditional forms of political citizenship into the broader concept of urban citizenship. Both these examples highlight the importance of the politics of space for critical legal thought and the role Lefebvre’s social theory may play in its future development.

'Gay Couple's Break Like Fawlty Towers': Dangerous Representations of Lesbian and Gay Oppression in an Era of 'Progressive' Law Reform

Cobb, N. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:51:24 PDT

This article reconsiders the politics of knowledge production surrounding the discursively constructed sexual subject in light of the politico-cultural debates that ensued over enactment of the controversial 2007 Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations. Exploring the rise, in the course of these debates, of what it terms the ‘bed and breakfast paradigm’ of lesbian and gay oppression, the article questions whether that paradigm provides a suitably representative account of housing-related discrimination experienced by lesbians and gay men. It then goes on to highlight the silence during the debates that surrounded the pervasive intra-familial discrimination experienced by young lesbians and gay men within the home; a consequence, it finally argues, of law’s power to define the parameters of explanatory discourse around antidiscrimination protections according to an implicit public/private binary.

Racial Ideas and Gendered Intimacies: the Regulation of Interracial Relationships in North America

Thompson, D. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:51:24 PDT

This article compares the regulation of interracial intimacies in North America, contending that anti-miscegenation laws in the United States and Canada’s Indian Act regimes are both striking and comparable examples of the state’s regulation of the intimate sphere. The author argues that the social signifiers of race and gender, tied together with sexuality, are interlocking sets of power relations and these intersecting discourses are integral to understanding the comparative regulation of interracial intimacy in North America. In the circumstances of anti-miscegenation laws and the Indian Act, the transgression of gendered/raced social boundaries, the control of raced/gendered sexualities, the interlocking and mutually reinforcing nature of patriarchal, white supremacist and capitalist systems of domination, the threat of non-white access to white capital, and the predicament of racial categorization exist as a corollary of the state’s regulation of interracial intimate life. This article reveals the law and state as important sites of the creation and manipulation of racial boundaries, acting as producers and reproducers of racial ideas, and demonstrates that the interracial transgressions of sexual space were also perceived as transgressions of social, economic, and political boundaries between races, posing a threat to the dominant white and masculine hegemony in North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Imperialism and Nationalism in Early Modernity: The 'Cosmopolitan' and The 'Provincial' in Shakespeare's Cymbeline

Heinze, E. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:51:24 PDT

The discourses of conquering empire and vassal nation are varied, often internally contradictory. The empire may represent openness and diversity, or militarist brutality. The underling nation may represent autonomy and self-determination, or narrow provincialism. Those discourses spawn ideologies of liberation (‘the empire liberates the nation’, ‘the nation must be liberated from the empire’) and counter-ideologies of oppression (‘the empire oppresses the nation from without’, ‘the empire prevents oppression by dominant national groups of subordinate national groups’). Such concepts are central to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Bound to pay tribute to Caesar Augustus, Britain’s King Cymbeline contemplates a national rebellion against pax romana, while at the same time exercising its own dominance over Wales and other conquered territory in the Isles. Parallels to the reign of James I are apparent, where England is embarking upon its ascent to empire, its pax britannica, in the face of Welsh, Scottish or Irish resistance. Several discourses emerge as hallmarks of power politics in early modernity: cosmopolitan empire, oppressive empire, cosmopolitan nation, oppressive nation.

Vanquishing the Enemy or Civilizing the Neighbour? Controlling the Risks from Hazardous Industries

Haines, F. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:51:24 PDT

Inclusion of the local community in a continuous dialogue aimed at reducing the risks posed by hazardous industries such as chemical plants and oil refineries is an increasingly common feature of some regulatory regimes. This article explores the implications of this regulatory shift for the reduction of risk through research undertaken in a major Australian city. The study found that local communities, when given a formal voice in regulatory regimes, did push industry to consider an extended range of risks. These risks included the risk of explosion or major chemical spill threatening health and the environment (termed here actuarial risks) but also concerns about the orderliness within the local neighbourhood and proper relationships between industry and community (risks of a more socio-cultural nature). Further, the escalation of political risk was critical in determining which actuarial and socio-cultural concerns of the community were listened to. Regulatory innovations involving increased accountability of hazardous industry to the local community may increase pressure on targeted industry to reduce risk, but the ensuing risk management is likely to involve political and socio-cultural as well as actuarial risks.

Book Review: ALEXANDER SOMEK, Individualism: An Essay on the Authority of the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. xx + 307, ISBN 9780199542086

Goldoni, M. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:51:24 PDT

Book Review: JOHN MORISON, KIERAN MCEVOY AND GORDON ANTHONY (eds), Judges, Transition and Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 9780199204946, {pound}85.00 (hbk)

Yusuf, H. O. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:51:24 PDT

Book Review: NICOLA PADFIELD (ed.), Who to Release? Parole, Fairness and Criminal Justice. Cullompton: Willan, 2007, 288 pp., ISBN 1843922274, {pound}45 (hbk)

Wieckiewicz, K. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:51:24 PDT

Book Review: DAVID SEYMOUR, Law, Antisemitism and the Holocaust. London: Routledge Cavendish, 2007, 138 pp., ISBN 0415420407, {pound}22.99 (pbk)

Herman, D. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:51:24 PDT

Book Review: SUDHIR ALLADI VENKATESH AND RONALD KASSIMIR (eds) (2007) Youth, Globalization and the Law. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007, 384 pp., ISBN 139780804754743, {pound}59.80 (hbk)

Hutton, F. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:51:24 PDT

Book Review: CLAIRE MOON (2008) Narrating Political Reconciliation: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2008, 188 pp., ISBN 0739121278, {pound}37.95 (hbk)

Stanley, E. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:51:24 PDT

Jurisdiction and Scale: Legal `Technicalities' as Resources for Theory

Valverde, M. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

Since the 1980s, critical studies of law and space have fruitfully explored the insight that law's mechanisms can be understood in part as mapping exercises. Existing work on law's scales (especially that using a post-colonial studies frame) has delved into the qualitative as well as the quantitative dimensions of scale, thus exposing some key epistemological issues in law. This article moves the discussion forward by demonstrating that theoretical work on `scale' — outside and inside legal studies — could benefit from studying specifically legal mechanisms such as `jurisdiction'. Recent work has shown that the various modes and rationalities of governance that coexist in every political-legal `interlegality' are not necessarily tethered to any particular scale; thus, exploring jurisdiction's effects takes us beyond scale. As an example, the knowledge moves that constitute what in the USA is called `the police power of the state' are briefly discussed. The fact that the gaze of police science/police regulation is not simply geographically local, but is rather specifically urban, shows the importance of understanding the complex governing manoeuvres enabled by the legal game of jurisdiction — especially if work on `scale' and jurisdiction is then supplemented by a consideration of the plural temporalities of governance, since temporality tends to become invisible both in analyses that privilege space and in the somewhat static diagrams of governance that make up the game of jurisdiction.

Underage Sex and Romance in Japanese Homoerotic Manga and Anime

Zanghellini, A. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

This article discusses a genre of Japanese cartoons and comics known as yaoi or BL (`Boys Love') and produced by female artists for essentially female audiences. The subject matter of yaoi/BL works is romantic and sexual relationships between males. Often these works depict homoerotic relationships involving underage people, and as such they are liable to being censored on the basis of legal provisions restricting the circulation and consumption of `child pornography' as defined in some western countries. After identifying the reasons for the social and legal acceptability of yaoi/BL in Japan, the article discusses its vulnerability to censorship in Australia and Canada. It then goes on to examine the distinctive features of the yaoi/BL genre and its value as a form of speech, particularly in light of the fundamental questions it raises in relation to our self-conception as sexual beings. Lastly, after arguing that the harm-fulness of yaoi/BL is very much open to debate, the article concludes by casting doubt on the desirability of restricting the circulation of yaoi/BL material.

Accommodating Power: the `Common Sense' of Regulators

Snider, L. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

This article examines the perspectives, strategies and practical `common sense' of those charged with regulating and enforcing securities laws in the post-Enron era. It argues that crackdown periods following stock market disasters disrupt dominant patterns of governance and empower regulators to proactively enforce laws against powerful financial actors. The article shows how officials negotiate their regulatory terrain and accommodate the economic and social capital of the `stakeholders' they are charged with regulating outside crisis periods and how they re-interpret and redefine their mission in response to political, economic and ideological change. Empirically the article is based on 21 interviews with regulators and enforcement staff in securities commissions and law enforcement, and on the discourses and directives found in key regulatory documents.

Lawless Sovereignty: Challenging the State of Exception

Brophy, S. D. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

Giorgio Agamben describes the origins of sovereign power, that power which constitutes the state of exception, as a force that gains its strength in the `unlocalizable' space between fact and law. Terming this space the `zone of indistinction', Agamben illustrates the particular manner in which the state employs law through exception, helping to reveal the paradoxical and omnipotent qualities of sovereign power. While the implications of his analysis hold that this form of power should be confronted and challenged, Agamben does not arrive at how this may be pursued. By reading Agamben's writings alongside selected anti-colonialist texts by Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, it is possible to gain insights regarding both the dangers inherent to this type of sovereign power, and how it can be challenged. It is argued that the type of state that governs by means of exception creates the conditions that lead to its own undoing. Groups whose consent to the state's juridical order was historically tenuous, if not altogether absent, lay claim to a distinct position that is always already external to state sovereignty and law. Challenges from this position gain force by appealing to an extra-state sovereignty that represents universalized justice rooted in lawlessness.

What's in a Handshake? Legal Equality and Legal Consciousness in the Netherlands

Hertogh, M. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

In this article, I examine how ordinary citizens and legal professionals in The Netherlands understand non-discrimination law, using the theoretical framework of legal consciousness. In 2006, the Dutch Equal Treatment Commission ruled that a school was wrong to suspend a female Muslim teacher who, for religious reasons, refused to shake hands with men. This ruling provoked a wave of controversy. This article examines to what extent these critical reactions were indicative of the overall level of public support for the Dutch Equal Treatment Act. I first provide a brief summary of Dutch non-discrimination law. Next, following recent critiques in the literature, I introduce three modifications to the original legal consciousness framework. People's understandings of legal equality are then examined using data from a large-scale multi-method study, which included an online survey, case-studies and in-depth interviews. Moreover, I provide a brief reconstruction of the handshake case. I argue that the controversy in this case was not an isolated incident, but an important illustration of how non-discrimination law matters — or fails to matter — in The Netherlands.

Gender Recognition in the UK: a Great Leap Forward

Sharpe, A. N. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

Looking Back (To)wards the Body: Medicalization and the GRA

Cowan, S. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

Running To Stand Still

Sandland, R. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

A Return To The `Truth' Of The Past

Sharpe, A. N. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

Book Review: PEG BIRMINGHAM, Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006, 161 pp., ISBN 9780253218650, US$24.95 (pbk)

Schaap, A. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

Book Review: CECILE LABORDE AND JOHN MAYNOR (EDS), Republicanism and Political Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008, 280 pp., ISBN 9781405155809, {pound}19.99 (pbk); ISBN 9781405155793, {pound}55.00 (hbk)

McCorkindale, C. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

Book Review: SCOTT VEITCH, Law and Irresponsibility: On the Legitimation of Human Suffering. London: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007, 157 pp., ISBN 10: 0415442503/442510, {pound}85.00 (hbk)

Lacey, N. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

Book Review: MICHAEL THOMSON, Endowed: Regulating the Male Sexed Body. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2008, 194 pp., ISBN 9780415431330, {pound}18.99 (pbk)

Svoboda, J. S. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

Book Review: LIEVE GIES, Law and the Media: The Future of an Uneasy Relationship, Abingdon: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007, 166 pp., ISBN 9781904385332, {pound}30 (pbk) and K. J. Bybee (ed.), Bench Press: The Collision of Courts, Politics and the Media, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007, 240 pp., ISBN 978084756778, US$29.95 (hbk)

Masterman, R. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

Book Review: RICHARD COLLIER and SALLY SHELDON (eds) Fathers Rights' Activism and Law Reform in Comparative Perspective, Oxford: Hart, 2006, 173pp., ISBN 1841136298/ 9781841136295, {pound}14.95 (pbk)

Raitt, F. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

Book Review: PETER CANE, CAROLYN EVANS and ZOE ROBINSON (eds), Law and Religion in Theoretical and Historical Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 328pp., ISBN 9780521425902, US$55 (hbk)

Malik, M. — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:33:18 PDT

The Screen of the Crime: Judging the Affect of Cinematic Violence

Young, A. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:06:34 PST

Discussions of screen violence polarize around the question of whether images can cause people to behave differently. Proponents of this position point to the influence of images in other contexts; its critics reject the implication that individuals can be so simplistically motivated. Such debate is intensified by events such as the Columbine or Virginia Tech shootings, where cultural products are named as the causes of lethal violence. This article engages with the assumption that the violence in violent imagery is a relatively homogeneous category. It explores paradigms of cinematic violence through the analysis of exemplary scenes from four representative films (The Matrix, Reservoir Dogs , Natural Born Killers and Elephant), each of which has been linked to violence flowing in and from the image. Each shows multiple killings in highly graphic ways, yet each deploys different representational techniques to produce a range of affective responses in the spectator. As such, the article seeks to answer the question of how to judge the affect of cinematic violence and to investigate the implication of the spectator in the affects and aesthetics of screen violence.

From Incarceration to Restoration: National Responsibility, Gender and the Production of Cultural Difference

Murdocca, C. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:06:34 PST

The Criminal Code of Canada contains a sentencing provision aimed at offering alternatives to incarceration for Aboriginal peoples. One of the intentions of this provision is to take national responsibility for the over-incarceration of Aboriginal peoples. Using official documents, the objective of this article is to address the possible meaning of national responsibility that is shaped by the emergence of this legal intervention. The objective is to explore how even as it attempts to address national responsibility in law, the nation remains fundamentally committed to an understanding of colonial history in which it is not guilty of wrongdoing and hence arrives at an official stance that suggests that the Canadian state is not responsible for the continued ramifications of colonialism. This article also demonstrates that the practices of control and containment which are central to the criminal justice system require cultural difference paradigms as their ideological impetus.

Being and Doing: The Judicial Use of Remorse to Construct Character and Community

Weisman, R. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:06:34 PST

This article argues first that attributions of remorse are used in legal discourse to distinguish those whose character is perceived as different from their wrongful act (the remorseful) from those whose character is perceived as consistent with their wrongful act (the remorseless). It then advances an explanation as to why courts emphasize the showing of remorse more than the offering of an apology as the true measure of the wrongdoer's character. Next, using a population of Canadian judgments rendered between 2002 and 2004, It proceeds to identify how judges constitute the category of remorse through the criteria they use to decide which claims to remorse are valid and which are not. Finally, building upon work in the sociology of affect, the article looks at how judicial speech shapes the form that expressions of remorse are expected to take.

Beyond the Dislocation(s) of Human Rights

Tie, W. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:06:34 PST

Approaches that analyse disruptions to the cogency of human rights discourse in terms of `the exception', rather than in terms that are internal to that field, are vulnerable to accusations of nihilism. Three such analyses of dislocation are reviewed here: a betrayal of individual liberty that exceptional political circumstance requires for the securing of a universal right to liberty (Ignatieff, 2004); the complicity of human rights discourse in the strengthening of political powers capable of systematically violating human freedoms (Douzinas, 2000); and the insufficiency of knowledge about human rights abuses to counter people's denials of rights-abuse (Cohen, 2001). In the course of interpreting their respective instances of dislocation, each of the approaches inhabits in a performative manner the same space held by the exception to the discourse. Various challenges arise as a consequence of doing so for those who look to performative engagement with dislocation as a source of progressive socio-legal pulsion. Rather than being nihilistic in form, however, these challenges are political. Moreover, the political issues that emerge differ starkly from one another, reflecting divergences in perspective regarding the nature of performativity. They include a closure of debate that can occur around the political commitments which motivate performative analyses of dislocation and, conversely, the emergence of an undetermined space of political struggle as a consequence of new practices that transpire from performative responses to dislocation.

Love, Freedom and Governance: Same-Sex Marriage in Canada

Osterlund, K. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:06:34 PST

Recent developments in Canadian marital jurisprudence require that we ask: what if love could be mobilized as a technology of power? In this article I propose such an analysis. I establish a recent discursive shift in the meaning of marriage in law, amounting to what I will call a `normalizing love discourse'. I argue that this process of transformation reflects a broader synthesis within liberal governance of freedom, aspiration, feeling and the exercise of power. The shift has operated in two ways: marriage is now defined by love (and the state's sanction of it), and second, love among heterosexuals or among lesbians or gay men has been rendered legally equivalent for the purpose of marriage law. I then draw upon accounts of neo-liberalism to suggest several lines of inquiry that may be fruitful for developing a critical analysis of legal love discourse. I argue that love is being opened as a space for and method of governance, at the paradoxical moment of its (re)privatization in/as marriage.

Unknowable Bodies, Unthinkable Sexualities: Lesbian and Transgender Legal Invisibility in the Toronto Women's Bathhouse Raid

Lamble, S. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:06:34 PST

Although litigation involving sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination claims has generated considerable public attention in recent years, lesbian and transgender bodies and sexualities still remain largely invisible in Anglo-American courts. While such invisibility is generally attributed to social norms that fail to recognize lesbian and transgender experiences, the capacity to `not see' or `not know' queer bodies and sexualities also involves wilful acts of ignorance. Drawing from R. v Hornick (2002) a Canadian case involving the police raid of a women's bathhouse, this article explores how lesbian and transgender bodies and sexualities are actively rendered invisible via legal knowledge practices, norms and rationalities. It argues that limited knowledge and limited thinking not only regulate the borders of visibility and belonging, but play an active part in shaping identities, governing conduct and producing subjectivity.

`I do not Attach Great Significance to it': Taking Note of `The Holocaust' in English Case Law

Herman, D. — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:07:16 PST

The first part of this article traces the history of the word `holocaust' and the phrase `the Holocaust' in English judicial discourse, both in cases where the mass killing of Jewish Europeans in the early 1940s was a relevant issue, and the many more cases where it was not. The second part of the article returns to a selection of the recent cases, arguing that when the Holocaust is referred to in contemporary judgments it tends to be spliced in as a form of stock footage, and suggest that this routinized manoeuvre succeeds in misremembering the past, rather than contributing to any substantive comprehension of the events the phrase is intended to describe. More than this, however, the uses of the Holocaust by the judges may also reinforce particularly English understandings of Jews and Jewishness. Far from acting as a mnemonic device to recall atrocity, the Holocaust can in fact act as an aid to remembering what it is `the English' find distasteful and alien about `the Jew'.

Children and Domestic Violence: Constructing a Policy Problem in Australia and New Zealand

Powell, A., Murray, S. — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:07:16 PST

The intersection of public policy and legislation addressing children and domestic violence is fraught with complexity. Domestic violence responses, child protection responses and family law responses, all potentially collide where a child witnesses or experiences domestic violence. These responses not only operate with different purposes and assumptions, but also construct the problem of domestic violence in different ways. This article is based on the preliminary findings of a larger research project exploring the history of domestic violence policy in Australia. Drawing on Bacchi's (1999) `what's the problem represented to be?' approach we consider how children's experiences of domestic violence are named and framed in Australian and New Zealand law and policy. In identifying and making apparent these particular understandings, and considering the implications of these meanings for current responses, we seek to open up debates on the future direction of domestic violence policy and legislation concerned with children.

Critique of Abel on Popular Justice and the Alexandra Treason Trial

Hund, J. — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:07:16 PST

Popular justice as a field of study is marked by profound conceptual confusion and is regarded by many as an imbroglio of misunderstanding. In this critique I present reasons for believing that this problem has its roots in Richard L. Abel's influential theory of `informal justice'. I show that this term as used by Abel is a logically confused malapropism for popular justice which is based on a fundamental category mistake that vitiates his definitional apparatus (his `general theory') of popular justice from top to bottom. This critique shows that his self-styled `contradictions of informal justice' are artefacts of his own general theory of popular justice and are not based on anything inherently contradictory in the nature of popular justice itself. An additional criticism is that Abel's general theory is a one-sided `lawyer's theory' of justice which excludes by definitional fiat the most basic kind of popular justice of all. This critique concludes by showing how these defects along with other factors have caused Abel to fundamentally misconstrue the Alexandra Treason Trial and to obscure the roles played by popular justice and sociology in this important South African jurisprudential event.

Sacred Mountains and Profane Dollars: Discourses about Snowmaking on the San Francisco Peaks

Sefiha, O., Lauderdale, P. — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:07:16 PST

This research examines media, interview and legal-historical documentation surrounding the current proposal to manufacture snow using reclaimed water at the Snowbowl ski area located on the San Francisco Peaks mountains near Flagstaff, Arizona. The proposal has drawn sharp protest from both American Indian Nations who call the area sacred, and environmentalists who question the safety of the reclaimed water. We examine the process by which local coalitions attempt to define environmental, spiritual, and economic values that will resonate with others. These highly mediated activities create contested territory whereby groups attempt to package and frame specific definitions of these values. This debate exposes hegemonic assumptions that aid us in deconstructing conflicting understandings of colonialism, racism, and other issues that typically go unacknowledged. Weber's discussion of rationality and commensurability is employed for understanding why sacred justice claims continue to be largely ignored. This research indicates that not only is this a case of epistemological incompatibility, but an active attempt to discredit and disenfranchise a specific group. Two interwoven themes emerged from our analysis: `Indians as Greedy' and `Indians as Hypocrites'. These themes are also found in the legal history of sacred site protection in the United States. We argue the fundamental lack of acknowledgement of Indian cosmology persists via a dichotomous conception of religion and civic society, which also suggests a separation of dominant forms of civic decision-making.

Feeling Good: the Ethopolitics of Pleasure; Psychoactive Substance Use and Public Health and Criminal Justice Governance: Therapeutic Jurisprudence and the Drug Courts in the USA

Mackenzie, R. — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:07:16 PST

The drug courts in the United States exemplify how mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion are mediated by complex cultural constructions of ways in which we may `feel good' rather than mad, bad, sad or sick. I argue that such mechanisms, and public health initiatives which seek to persuade us to choose specific means to enhance our health while eschewing others, are engaging an ethopolitics of moralized pleasures associated with the trope of addiction. Technologies of pleasure associated with current public health initiatives encouraging us to manage our risky neurochemical selves are, in some senses, homologous with the practices of the drug courts in the United States. In both, normalization is anchored in the management of pleasures, while notions of addiction support neo-liberal governance strategies. The rhetoric of salvationary narratives is drawn upon as a device of purification which decontextualizes debate, marginalizing counter-theories

Multiculturalism, Multiple Groups and Inequalities

Squires, J. — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:07:16 PST

Multiculturalism without Multiple Cultures?

Thompson, S. — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:07:16 PST

Multiculturalism and Groups

Modood, T. — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:07:16 PST

More on Culture and Representation

Phillips, A. — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:07:16 PST

Review Essay: On a Cosmopolis to Come: COSTAS DOUZINAS, Human Rights and Empire: The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism. New York: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007, 323 pp., ISBN 9780415427593, {pound}25.99 (pbk)

Bohler-Muller, N. — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:07:16 PST