“The Spectacle of Fearsome Acts”: Crime in the Melting P(l)ot in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Gangs of New York</Emphasis>

This paper explores the multi-layered representations of violence and crime in the recent Hollywood film Gangs of New York [Scorcese (2003) Miramax]. We use our exploration of this film to suggest that popular culture, even through its most mainstream products, can be seen as a critical criminological space where alternative views of law, crime and the state are made available. Rather than understanding Hollywood movies simply as vehicles for disseminating conventional mores, we suggest that they can furnish critical (and complex) points of view on law and crime and that the project of a critical criminology can be strengthened by engaging more forthrightly with these ubiquitous cultural forms.     

Increasing strategic accountability: a framework for international NGOs

The accountability of international development NGOs (INGOs) has attracted a great deal of interest from academics and development practitioners. INGO accountability falls into two categories: practical accountability (for the use of inputs, the way activities are performed, and outputs) and strategic accountability for INGOs' performance in relation to their mission. This article presents a conceptual framework for exploring INGO accountability. It is based on information collected through a literature review and semi-structured interviews with representatives from 20 UK-based INGOs. The research found that INGOs tend to use a number of quality-assurance mechanisms to achieve ‘practical’ accountability. However, it is suggested that this kind of accountability will not necessarily enable INGOs to achieve their missions to alleviate poverty and eliminate injustice. Furthermore, the predominant use of practical accountability has led to a number of gaps in INGO accountability. It is suggested that, like the term ‘participation’ before it, accountability has been co-opted for its instrumental benefits to INGO project performance and management. It is argued that if INGOs are to achieve their missions, this will require more ‘strategic’ forms of accountability, geared towards fundamentally changing those social, economic, and political structures that promote poverty.     

Money,Mortgages, and the Conquest of America

In colonial America, land acquired new liquidity when it became liable for debts. Though English property law maintained a firm distinction between land and chattel for centuries, in the American colonies, the boundary between the categories of real and personal property began to disintegrate. There, the novelty of easy foreclosure and consequent easy alienation of land made it possible for colonists to obtain credit, using land as a security. However, scholars have neglected the first instances in which a newly unconstrained practice of mortgage foreclosure appeared—the transactions through which colonists acquired land from indigenous people in the first place. In this article, I explore these early transactions for land, which took place across fundamental differences between colonists’ and native communities’ conceptions of money, land, and exchange itself. I describe how difference and dependence propelled the growth of the early American contact economy to make land into real estate, or the fungible commodity on the speculative market that it remains today.     

Historicising the Women's Liberation Movement

ABSTRACT

The Women's Liberation Movement of the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s emerged out of a set of economic and social circumstances where women collected together in disparate groups and contexts to express their dissatisfaction with their role and position in society. Through consciousness-raising and activism women raised their voices, profiles and visibility. This important moment of women's history is revisited in this collection of essays, which look afresh at the diversity of the movement and ways in which we might historicise the feminism of the time.     

Balancing acts in construction: A study of two women painters in Denmark and Britain

The construction industry is the most male-dominated labour market in every country in Europe. In Britain and Denmark, women constitute only 1% of those employed in this industry. In spite of the barriers to women entering and remaining in skilled construction work, inroads have been made. Amongst housepainters in Denmark, for instance, women constitute 27% of the workforce and 40% of trainees, and in a number of local authorities' Direct Labour Organisations in Britain, relatively high proportions are to be found. Through the example of two women painters in Britain and Denmark, each with over 14 years' continuous employment, the authors identify the opportunities and obstacles to women entering and remaining in the construction industry. The commonalities and differences between the two countries are illustrated, and it is shown how integration has successfully occurred where social and working conditions are better. The paper concludes that gender segregation and the exclusion of women can be attributed to structural discrimination through training and recruitment mechanisms, the nature of labour relations, employment conditions and the wage system.