From the bottom of the bottle: justice,prison and social control in the Italian transition

The ‘conflict between politics and justice’ has been a central feature of the Italian ‘transition’ for reasons that touch on the essence of the so-called Second Republic. Apparently dominating the political agenda, it also functioned as a cover for a resurgence of coercive forms of social control in Italy. In response to the social transformations taking place throughout the western world, from the late 1980s the Italian prison system had been expanding and was used to target social marginal groups, especially foreigners and drug addicts. This paper examines how these changes took place, the juridical measures that gave rise to them and their political motivations in the period from the crisis of the First Republic to the declaration of a ‘state of emergency’ in the prison system which (at least for now) seems to have brought to a close the openly populist use of the criminal justice system.     

A crisis of rights and responsibility: feminist geopolitical perspectives on Latin American refugees and migrants

With the advent of the Trump presidency we are facing the most anti-refugee and immigrant administration in recent U.S. history. This follows on the heels of the Obama era, characterized by record deportations and severe U.S. policies of deterrence towards Latin American refugees and migrants in its own backyard. This aggressive expansion of U.S. Homeland Security migration control included: outsourcing enforcement to Mexico; re-introducing migrant family detention; increasing ‘family unit’ raids; and accelerating immigration court hearings. These strategies of state deterrence and enforcement heightened vulnerability of asylum-seeking women and children from Mexico and Central America to human and legal rights abuses. I employ a feminist geopolitical approach to interrogate the intimate and embodied spaces of migration controls that ground the workings of the state in the normalized, routine, and informal practices of state officials and in the experiences of vulnerable yet resilient women and children refugees. Drawing upon examples from two research projects, informed by personal experience as a volunteer, I critically examine the everyday state practices of U.S./Mexico migration enforcement in three arenas - border security spaces, legal spaces, and carceral spaces. I contend that rather than an ‘immigrant or refugee crisis,’ these restrictive and intimate performances routinely deployed by border and legal bureaucrats reproduce and reinforce the structural and systemic crisis of rights and responsibility we are currently witnessing. Through a feminist ethic of care, social justice, and action, migrant and refugee narratives of everyday restriction may be deployed in resisting rights abuses and fostering responsibility, humanity, and hospitality towards newcomers.     

New military femininities: humanitarian violence and the gendered work of war among U.S. servicewomen

This article examines ‘military femininity’ in new gendered forms of labor employed by the U.S. military in the post-September 11 wars. Between 2003 and 2013, when women were technically banned from direct assignment to ground combat units, the U.S. military deployed all-female counterinsurgent teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. In various forms, these teams searched Iraqi women at checkpoints and in home raids, provided medical assistance to Afghan women and children, and participated in highly combative special operations missions alongside Army Rangers and Green Berets in Afghanistan. Recent literature on the gendering of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan focuses mainly on the teams’ deployment of humanitarianism and affect as weapons of war, while older feminist critiques analyze women’s marginalization within military institutions. This article reconceptualizes military femininity, departing from the prevailing marginalization and humanitarian frameworks. Drawing on military and policy documents, first-hand observations of military trainings, and interviews with military trainers, I show how women were integrated into ground combat through the promotion of certain gender essentialisms, such as feminine domesticity, alongside military violence. A new form of military femininity has emerged that eschews humanitarian rhetoric, and instead emphasizes servicewomen’s lethality.     

1950年美国媒体对马克南入藏事件的报道剖析

20世纪40年代,以美国国务院驻中国迪化领事馆副领事身份为掩护的中情局间谍马克南在中国新疆从事秘密谍报活动,并于新中国成立前夕率一行五人队伍自中国新疆秘密入藏。但《纽约时报》等美国媒体却矢口否认马克南的间谍身份,并指责"中国的宣传机器在制造美国特务案例"。美国媒体对马克南入藏事件的报道是历史真实与谎言的混合体,其报道内容的缺失,直接影响了美国民众对事实真相的全面了解和客观判断,对今日美国人"西藏观"的形成产生了消极的影响。     

The quality of (in)justice in London's magistrates' courts

Concerns about structural racism and policing have fuelled public demands in the US, UK and elsewhere to ‘defund’ and demilitarize the police. However, given the interlinked nature of the entire criminal justice system – the police, courts and prisons – further thought needs to be given to how the system should be reformed. This article summarizes research on the nature of injustice experienced in magistrates’ courts in London from the point of view of defendants from black, Asian and ethnic minority communities and ‘the precariat’.     

The Future of International Criminal Evidence in New Wars? The Evolution of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA)

This article explores the intellectual formation of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA). It illuminates how the development of the CIJA was an attempt by state and non-state actors to affect the course of international criminal justice in Syria and Iraq. First, this article argues that the CIJA was the result of four factors: the UK Foreign Office’s desire to support human rights activists in Syria; lessons learned from previous international criminal tribunals; attempts by non-state legal practitioners to invent new ways to overcome the gaps and limitations of the international criminal justice system; and the willingness of Syrian civil society to risk their lives and use the law to hold those responsible for mass atrocities to account. Second, the article argues that as non-state actors with a focus on evidence management, the CIJA may represent an innovative approach to investigating mass atrocities, particularly for activists and civil society actors who wish to play a role in evidence management in new wars. Lastly, it shows how the CIJA may work in parallel with international mechanisms, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other inter-state actors, to collect evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in new wars, particularly when the ICC is unable to do so. This study combines qualitative research with empirical analysis and draws on a range of primary and secondary sources, including a number of interviews conducted with CIJA personnel, former ICC practitioners, and other practitioners in international criminal law.     

The Great Shoe Store Robbery1

This article contributes to the significant debate on the effects of the Australian criminal justice system on Aborigines and in particular Aboriginal youth. This debate fed into nation-wide concern over an ever increasing number of Aboriginal deaths in custody, recently culminating in the Federal Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Through the use of case studies and other ethnographic data drawn from investigations in the country town of Port Augusta, South Australia, the author illustrates how the agents of the legal and welfare systems in this state operate to present a view of Aboriginal juvenile crime as a normal response to these children's social environment and social conditioning. This process in turn, it is argued, reinforces and legitimates Aboriginal juvenile crime and contributes to its continuance, and the subsequent over-representation of Aboriginal youths at all stages of the juvenile justice system. Yet it is forcefully pointed out that Aboriginal children are not passive victims of the legal and welfare systems. Rather, they form their own interpretations of these systems and their ‘criminal’ activities are often attempts at defiance and capturing some form of control of their own lives in the face of a legal/welfare system seeking to impose control over them. Unfortunately, it is these very activities which return Aboriginal children to the legal and welfare systems they act against.     

Origins of Pacific Islands labourers in Fiji

Abstract

The administration of criminal justice in the period 1875–1900 had very different effects on men and women in three separate arenas: colonial towns, plantations and areas subject to chiefly control. In the towns of Levuka and Suva, men were the main concern of the courts; women rarely came before the courts and were almost never imprisoned. On the plantations, British magistrates dealt mainly with alleged breaches of the labour ordinances, with the result that women were prosecuted on an equal basis with men. The gender balance of criminal prosecutions was also closer to equal in the Fijian Provincial Courts, but the nature of the crimes charged against women was totally different from that in the other two spheres of colonial administration, the main concern being breaches of the traditional moral code. Understanding the segmented nature of the judicial system sheds further light on the workings of indirect rule in Fiji and suggests comparisons with colonial administrations in Africa.     

‘Our ongoing fight for justice’: the pasts and futures of genocidio and justicia in Guatemala

ABSTRACT

After the abrogation of the guilty verdict against Efrain Ríos Montt, young people from the group Sons and Daughters of the Disappeared (H.I.J.O.S.) issued the following statement: ‘More than a failure, this can breathe life into our ongoing fight for justice’. While this affirmation seems at first eccentric, or incidental, this article demonstrates how H.I.J.O.S.’s claim situates the Ríos Montt verdict within a longer history of justice and genocide in Guatemala. First, I trace the history of the meaning of justice and genocide among urban ladino university students from the 1940s to the 1990s. Next, I discuss youth politics and culture in the postwar period and locate H.I.J.O.S. within this context. Finally, I demonstrate how H.I.J.O.S.’s ongoing fight compels us to rethink the meanings of justice. Against apparently objective sums of the dead and disappeared that might be calculated and have their debts settled, a call emerges for ‘justice-ongoing’ after the annulment of the Ríos Montt verdict, one that insists upon incalculability and the imperative to remember and to remain provoked. For H.I.J.O.S.’s justice-ongoing, the past is not merely passed.     

1949—1951年美国如何阻挠和破坏西藏和平解放

1949—1951年间,美国策划达赖喇嘛出走,破坏西藏和平解放。起初,美国反对达赖喇嘛离藏,支持噶厦抵抗人民解放军解放西藏。美国后来认识到不可能阻挡人民解放军的进军,因而要求达赖喇嘛流亡锡兰或泰国,不得已时到美国"避难"。《十七条协议》公布后,美国反对达赖喇嘛返回拉萨,要求达赖喇嘛在靠近西藏的地区流亡或"访问"印度。中华人民共和国中央人民政府采取因地制宜的措施,达赖喇嘛最终返回西藏并通电拥护《十七条协议》。美国的企图必然破灭,西藏的和平解放是历史发展的必然。     

1949—1951年美国如何阻挠和破坏西藏和平解放

1949—1951年间,美国策划达赖喇嘛出走,破坏西藏和平解放。起初,美国反对达赖喇嘛离藏,支持噶厦抵抗人民解放军解放西藏。美国后来认识到不可能阻挡人民解放军的进军,因而要求达赖喇嘛流亡锡兰或泰国,不得已时到美国"避难"。《十七条协议》公布后,美国反对达赖喇嘛返回拉萨,要求达赖喇嘛在靠近西藏的地区流亡或"访问"印度。中华人民共和国中央人民政府采取因地制宜的措施,达赖喇嘛最终返回西藏并通电拥护《十七条协议》。美国的企图必然破灭,西藏的和平解放是历史发展的必然。     

Examining the Impact of Turkey's Approach Vis‐à‐Vis Syria into Turkey's Iraq Policy

The tension between “international order” and justice has long been a focus of critical attention of many scholars. Today, with the rise of the humanitarian crises, the debate is once again visible, and Turkish foreign policy is one of the most important areas of observation of this tension. Indeed, the U.S.‐led invasion of Iraq in 2003 paved the way for Turkey to actively engage in regional affairs. Meanwhile, the need to bring human justice into world politics makes Turkish foreign policy decision makers operate on a much more humanitarian basis. Nevertheless, active humanitarian engagement poses an important challenge to traditional Turkish foreign policy as it is mainly based on the notion of “non‐interference,” as well as on the elementary components of international order, by raising suspicions on the intentions of the Turkish authorities. This article aims to explore the challenges Turkey has been facing since the U.S.‐led invasion of Iraq, and diagnose Turkish foreign policy vis‐à‐vis Iraq in the shadow of the Syrian civil war from Hedley Bull's framework of “order” and “justice.” It argues that Turkey's recent fluctuations in the Middle East could be linked to Turkey's failure to reconcile the requirements of “order” with those of “justice” and the Turkish governing party's (AKP) attempts to use justice as an important instrument to consolidate its power both in Turkey and in the Middle East.     

The Life of the Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Beyond the esoteric deliberations of Islamic jurists and their exegesis of criminal and private law doctrines, Iranian law lives a life of its own. It is a life of routine practices of judges, court clerks, lawyers and clients, each of whom is striving to turn the law to their own advantage. It is also a life of contested legality, a relentless struggle over the right to determine the law in a juridical field which is infused with strife and hostility. These conflicts are reproduced daily as two competing conceptions of law, and their corresponding perceptions of legality clash in pursuit of justice. The Iranian judiciary’s concept of law, its reconstruction of Islamic jurisprudence and methods of dispensing justice, which on the surface are reminiscent of Max Weber’s “qādi-justice,” collide with the legal profession’s formal rational understanding thereof. However, Iranian judges are not Weberian qādis, and the legal profession is not a homogenous group of attorneys driven by a collective commitment to the rule of law. To understand their conflict, we need to explore the mundane workings of the legal system in the context of the transformation of Iranian society and the unresolved disputes over the direction of its modernity.     

Engaging territorio cuerpo-tierra through body and community mapping: a methodology for making communities safer

We propose a new way of collectively creating data about gender violence through active participation and mapping women’s bodies and communities. We see this process of data creation, self-awareness and action as inherently linked to the native concept territorio cuerpo-tierra, the landscape of bodies-lands. The concept erases Western notions separating bodies and land and helps to decenter the public–private divide, which is an important obstacle to eliminating violence against women. Drawing on data from our work with Mexican women in the, U.S. and Mexico, we illuminate the continuity of women’s individual bodily experience of violence and collective spatial knowledge of community safety. We conclude that the process and outcomes of body and community mapping linking bodies and land, afford planners the prospect of engaging as partners and co-actants with community members in the goal of making places safe for women.     

Mine closure,women, and crime in Matjhabeng,South Africa

Research from the Global North suggests that crime increases during a mining boom but not during mining decline. Our evidence from the South African gold mining town of Matjhabeng (formerly Welkom) shows that crime increases during mining decline and affects women in particular. We use social disruption theory to explain women’s experiences of crime and also their involvement in it. We find that criminal activities harm women in particular, that crime has become entrenched within female-headed households, and that women are conflicted in their roles as parents and become participants in crime and beneficiaries of criminal activities. It is a matter for concern that research generally ignores the sociospatial nature of mine closure and its effects on women.     

‘She is but a Woman’: Kitty Byron and the English Edwardian Criminal Justice System

In 1902, Kitty Byron stabbed her cohabitee, Reginald Baker, on a public street. Though her murder was premeditated, and she was of a lower class than her married lover, Byron gained the sympathy of the press and public, primarily due to the gender failings of her partner. Based on the legal records of the Home Office and newspaper reports, this case study illustrates the limitations of the criminal justice system in dealing with women's violence, especially in an age of increasingly sensational press coverage. The courts showed surprising sympathy to a ‘fallen’ woman, but at the cost of simplifying her story, confirming misogynist stereotypes and underestimating the danger she posed.     

Women’s sense of farming: ecofeminism in sustainable farming and local food in Vermont,U.S.A

Abstract

Women’s Sense of Farming is a qualitative study of women farming as part of the local food movement in Vermont, U.S.A. The study puts the lives of women farmers in conversation with ecofeminist theory in order to examine how women farmers simultaneously enact critiques of culture, while also mimicking dominant narratives. The study subjects’ narratives of their lives show how they navigate the reason/nature dualism (as articulated by philosopher Val Plumwood). The result of the study is a set of values and experiences that show the successes and challenges of local food farmers working toward social, environmental, and economic sustainability.     

The Failure of Popular Justice in Uganda: Local Councils and Women’s Property Rights

Advocates of alternative dispute resolution argue that informal, community‐based institutions are better placed to provide inexpensive, expedient and culturally appropriate forms of justice. In 1988, the Ugandan government extended judicial capacity to local councils (LCs) on similar grounds. Drawing on attempts by women in southwestern Uganda to use the LCs to adjudicate property disputes, this article investigates why popular justice has failed to protect the customary property rights of women. The gap between theory and practice arises out of misconceptions of community. The tendency to ascribe a morality and autonomy to local spaces obscures the ability of elites to use informal institutions for purposes of social control. In the light of women’s attempts to escape the ‘rule of persons’ and to seek out arbiters whom they associate with the ‘rule of law’, it can be argued that the utility of the state to ordinary Ugandans should be reconsidered.     

Born in the U.S.A.: citizenship acquisition and transnational mothering in Turkey

This article explores the practice of giving birth in the U.S. for the purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for the newborn children, among upper and upper-middle class mothers who otherwise are permanently located in Turkey. Focusing on their motivations, anxieties and practices, we situate our analysis with respect to discussions of intensive mothering, transnational motherhood and multi-layered meanings of citizenship. We suggest that the motivations women have for traveling to and staying in the U.S. in the later stages of their pregnancy reveal a new terrain of intensive mothering, tied to locally specific perceptions of future unpredictability and restrictions on individual choice. This particular discourse of intensive mothering involves the promotion of individualistic-decision-making and individualized efforts to control macro-processes, and reveals how citizenship acquisition for the children reproduces and disguises inequalities at the transnational level. Yet, this is also an intensely emotional process, not only indicative of the pressures on mothers, but also women’s multilayered conflicts of belonging and identity across spaces and scales of citizenship.     

(En)Gendering the Maoist Insurgency in India: Between Rhetoric and Reality

ABSTRACT

This paper attempts a gendered analysis of the ongoing Maoist insurgency in India, particularly focused on women’s position within the movement, the continuum of gender based violence that they experience and the potential for transformative politics. The contemporary Maoist movement in India has been informed by a stated commitment to ‘progressive’ gender politics and social transformations; in that it marks a departure from the Naxalite movement of the 60s and 70s. Yet women remain concentrated in the group’s lower ranks and are absent from leadership positions. In addition, sexual and gender based violence and discrimination within the movement further undermine the commitment of the revolution to create opportunities for transformative politics including gender justice and equality. We consider it important that women’s lived experiences of the conflict - as combatants, supporters as well as civilians affected by it - are brought to the foreground. Drawing from postcolonial feminist approaches, we reflect on the challenges and possibilities for feminist politics and ethics within the Indian Maoist movement. We conclude that the rhetoric and reality of gender equality within the Maoist movement provides a unique opportunity to further investigate and analyze the ways in which feminist activism and the women’s movement in India have alienated the concerns of marginalized women from dalit and adivasi communities.