Left realist criminology: Strengths,weaknesses and the feminist critique

Although there is an already large British literature both supporting and attacking left realism, and a growing North American interest on the subject among criminologists, there has been surprisingly little written which attempts to locate both the strengths and weaknesses of the left realist position on crime control. Perhaps the place where the left realists may be weakest is in response to a feminist critique. Actually, it is not only left realism but the socialist left in general which has been unsuccessful in providing adequate responses to the issues brought forth by feminists. This paper attempts to locate the position of left realism within the left criminology debate, and to find its strong and weak points. Further, it attempts to explicate the feminist critique, and to suggest responses critical criminologists might explore, such as those proposed by peacemaking criminology. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** AW502012 00004     

The Continuing Problem of the Universal to Questions of Justice: A Feminist Reading of Lars von Trier’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dogville</Emphasis>

What are the terms of evaluation that seem relevant in deciding whether a film is feminist or anti-feminist? Which critical practices should be engaged in such an evaluation? In recent and contemporary critical feminist practices, feminist arguments are no longer based on a stable subject category of “woman” and there is no longer any particular methodology upon which feminist theorists rely. The category of “woman” has been revealed to be not an ahistorical, stable category but an effect of material and representational practices. Further, feminist methodologies have been concerned to contextualize the framing of the questions they ask, as well as their place in the methodologies they employ. In addition to the refusal of an essentialized female subject, feminists have called into question the idea that it is possible to produce a “feminist method” based on the standpoint of a female subjectivity, even where this subjectivity is admitted as a construct, arguing that this extrapolation to the general from a particular point of view produces political, and frequently racist, effects. In this essay, I consider Lars von Trier’s controversial film Dogville (2003) as a case study to explore the relation of practices of representation to questions of feminist justice. I argue that the film does a lot of good critical work in showing the ways in which certain practices of representation can be mobilized to produce a collectivity (or “sovereignty”) that is seen to emanate from “the people” and to thereby instantiate authority, while simultaneously disguising the material and political effects of its subjugation of “others.” However, in doing this work the film produces its own problematic construction of universality and particularity. Further, the film instrumentalises representations of sexual violence and subjection in order to prove its point, and as productive as these tactics are to illuminating questions of social justice, I argue that this representational practice produces effects that need to be read as anti-feminist.     

Criminology as Peacemaking,Feminist Ethics and the Victimization of Women

This paper identities similarities between the ethical concerns and priorities of criminology as peacemaking and those of feminist ethics, two areas of scholarship that have developed largely since the early 1980s. Criminology as peacemaking and feminist ethics are remarkably similar in their conceptions of justice and morality. Within the context of peacemaking and feminist ethical concerns, the second section of the paper examines conflicting feminist perspectives on policies concerning the victimization of women, reasons for those differences, and ways they might be resolved.     

试析女性主义心理学的三种研究取向

西方主流心理学植根于经验实证主义传统,认为科学是客观的和价值中立的。这种观点与女性主义理论格格不入。女性主义心理学试图调和女性主义理论与传统心理科学观之间的冲突,在其研究历程中形成了三种研究取向：一是实证主义取向的女性主义心理学,强调遵循实证主义研究传统,重新改造主流的心理科学,以服务于女性主义目标;二是现象学取向的女性主义心理学,强调从女性立场出发,创建一个全新的,“以女性为中心”的心理科学来代替传统的心理科学;三是后现代取向的女性主义心理学,强调采用解构的方法,重新解读主流心理学中的关于女性的所谓“科学的”知识,揭示心理学中的男性中心主义偏见。     

Battered women and the state: From the failure of theory to a theory of failure

Within the context of legal reform, the Battered Wife Movement has divided feminists on the question of criminal justice as a desirable component of a feminist agenda. Thus it provides a good example of the dilemmas of developing a feminist theory about the state as the basis for informed practice. In this paper, Currie overviews the way in which the BWM has been transformed from a radical demand for the redistribution of social power into an expansion of current patriarchal institutions. As an example of the institutionalization of feminist issues, however, she rejects explanations of this transformation as simply ideological revision by the state. Rather, Currie notes that it occurs through and not against feminist discourse, meaning that we must acknowledge theory as practice if we are to develop a truly subversive and liberatory discourse within feminist scholarship.     

试析女性主义心理学的方法论

女性主义方法论的探讨与争论是女性主义心理学研究的焦点:女性主义心理学研究区别于非女性主义心理学研究最重要的特征在于其女性主义方法论;女性主义心理学批判心理学中量化研究与质化研究范式之争为虚假的两极之争,倡导多元方法论;女性主义认识论上的分歧导致其对于知识与性别的关系的不同主张,并最终导致了女性主义心理学在方法和方法论取向上的不同偏好。     

Feminist lawyering,violence against women,and the politics of law reform in India: An interview with Flavia Agnes

The history of the women’s movement’s relationship to law in India cannot be written without acknowledging the pioneering work of activist, advocate, and scholar Flavia Agnes. Her own life’s journey, engagement with the movement, involvement in women’s rights litigation, feminist jurisprudential scholarship, and outreach work through Majlis (the organisation she co-founded) offer key insights into the kind of movement-based legal pedagogy, awareness, and training that the women’s movement has fostered in India. Flavia’s activism and scholarship over the last three decades have opened up sophisticated critiques of rape law and family law reform in India that have become foundational to the field of what can be called Indian feminist jurisprudence. This interview offers insights into the autobiographical, the feminist, and the scholarly convergences in Flavia’s thinking and writing. She speaks with candour and conviction and introduces ways of thinking about feminist lawyering, violence against women, and the politics of law reform in India that are historically and theoretically grounded in an ethics of self-reflexivity and quotidian wisdom that the insulated nature of clinical legal education in India has much to learn from.

     

A left realist approach to antifeminist fathers’ rights groups

Despite earlier critiques of left realists’ failure to adequately address feminist concerns, recent left realist theorizing and empirical research have made valuable contributions to the understanding of woman abuse and other forms of gendered violence. Left realism has further potential to contribute to the criminological understanding of woman abuse and its contributing socioeconomic and cultural contexts. This article describes left realists’ early efforts to include gender in analyses of crime. It then summarizes feminist critiques of left realism and reviews the work that has responded to them. Drawing upon two prominent strands of feminist left realist theorizing about violence and gender, the paper proposes a preliminary left realist theory of antifeminist fathers’ rights group activism. It then outlines a provisional research agenda on antifeminist fathers’ rights groups, and proposes short and long term policies and practices to enhance the safety of abused mothers and their children following divorce or separation.     

Motivating Questions and Partial Answers: A Response to Prosecuting Domestic Violence by Michelle Madden Dempsey

Michelle Madden Dempsey’s compelling book sets out a normative feminist argument as to why and when prosecutors should continue to pursue prosecutions in domestic violence cases where the victim refuses to participate in or has withdrawn their support for the prosecution. This paper will explore two of the key aspects of her argument—the centrality and definition of the concept of patriarchy, and the definition of domestic violence—before concluding with some final thoughts as to the appropriate parameters of feminist prosecutorial decision-making. The paper argues that Madden Dempsey could offer a more detailed and nuanced argument about the role that patriarchy plays, particularly its relevance in marking out appropriate cases for pursuit; and that her thesis requires a more convincing exposition of the precise reasons for offering such a narrow account of domestic violence.     

Using feminist judgments in the property law classroom

This article describes how the Feminist Judgments book will be used as a resource for a new, compulsory LLB property law module. The module (which was still in the planning stages at the point of writing) takes the development of co-ownership law as its subject matter. Students will be guided to read cases that reveal both the evolution of different legal solutions to co-ownership disputes and the gendered situations of the parties concerned, and will be assessed in part by writing a judgment of their own. The feminist judgments will provide students with models of feminist analysis and judgment-writing. The aim is to bring feminist scholarship into the core curriculum and to learn useful critical, research and writing skills.     

Face Off: The Ironic,The Irenic and the Face Between

The formation of a school, whether feminist, critical, Marxist or other involves the establishment of a doctrine – literally a teaching – and a group of students or followers – the disciples who form the discipline. No doctrine without disciples has been the history of the schools and the formative principle of academic movements. They exist in the end to convert their students, old to young, male to female, female to male, or female to female, or any other possible combination of orientations. And conversion implies orthodoxy, institutionalization and hierarchy or at least a relation to hieros and hierarchy. This paper examines these themes in terms of the specific example of feminist legal studies and a curious recent discursive event, a polemical exchange on the identity of the movement, the face of feminist legal studies, as viewed through a eulogy and a challenge to that praise. Thanks to Richard Collier, Margaret Davies, Margaret Halliwell, Elena Loizidou, Desmond Manderson, Ngaire Naffine for correspondence, for relevant discussions, and candid responses. Especial thanks to Thanos Zartaloudis for a peculiarly detailed and hospitable reading, offered at a time when it would have been much easier, both just and more appropriate for him to say very little, almost nothing. And emotive thanks as well to Linda Mills for her customary frankness and finely honed attention.     

Justice and the neutral state: A postmodern,feminist critique of lehning's account of justice

In this journal, Lehning (1990) defended the liberal view of political justice, arguing on behalf of a comprehensive principle of state neutrality as the linchpin of justice. By failing to deal with the postmodern challenge to the Enlightenment-liberalist conception of neutrality and by thoroughly ignoring the feminist understanding in which neutrality actually conceals a masculinist bias, Lehning's analysis is seriously undermined with respect to its possibility for understanding, let alone for accomplishing political justice.     

Can feminist judges make a difference?

Many of the expectations and aspirations about the ‘difference’ that women judges would make have proved unrealistic, given the inevitable diversity and often conservatism of women appointed as judges. On the other hand, we might reasonably expect feminist judges to ‘make a difference’. This essay focuses on feminist judges, and seeks to identify what it is that we might reasonably expect of them. This in turn requires consideration of who counts as a feminist judge, what might be included in a feminist approach to judging, and what institutional norms inherent within the judicial role might constrain the adoption of a feminist approach. The essay concludes that feminist judges both can and ought to make a difference across a wide range of judicial activities.     

Legal Feminism and Foucault – A Critique of the Expulsion of Law

Contemporary theorists have become increasingly receptive to the selective incorporation of Foucaultian theory within feminist frameworks. However, the reception of Foucault within feminist legal critique has been less enthusiastic. The most celebrated theorist to argue for the incorporation of Foucaultian insight within the feminist analysis of law is Carol Smart. While conceding the significant contribution of her work, this article will argue that her interpretation of the Foucaultian thesis on law is considerably more problematic. Illustrating the extent to which she adopts an unnecessarily pessimistic prognosis for the development of Foucault within legal analysis and reform, this article will examine an emerging counter-interpretation of Foucault that presents the possibility for a more promising application, seeking to provide a defence both of the utility of Foucault for feminist jurisprudence, and of the utility of legal reform strategies being exercised for feminist purposes.     

Intersectionality,Rural Criminology,and Re-imaging the Boundaries of Critical Criminology

One of the significant shortcomings of the criminological canon, including its critical strands—feminist, cultural and green—has been its urbancentric bias. In this theoretical model, rural communities are idealised as conforming to the typical small-scale traditional societies based on cohesive organic forms of solidarity and close density acquaintance networks. This article challenges the myth that rural communities are relatively crime free places of ‘moral virtue’ with no need for a closer scrutiny of rural context, rural places, and rural peoples about crime and other social problems. This challenge is likewise woven into the conceptual and empirical narratives of the other articles in this Special Edition, which we argue constitute an important body of innovative work, not just for reinvigorating debates in rural criminology, but also critical criminology. For without a critical perspective of place, the realities of context are too easily overlooked. A new criminology of crime and place will help keep both critical criminology and rural criminology firmly anchored in both the sociological and the criminological imagination. We argue that intersectionality, a framework that resists privileging any particular social structural category of analysis, but is cognisant of the power effects of colonialism, class, race and gender, can provide the theoretical scaffolding to further develop such a project.     

Pussy Riot and feminist cultural criminology: a new ‘Femininity in Dissent’?

This comment considers the mainstream, online Western news media’s reaction to the imprisonment of three members of the Russian feminist punk band, Pussy Riot, in August 2012. Of particular concern is the band’s style of feminist political protest; it argues that their case is of significance to feminist cultural criminology. Drawing on Young’s analysis of media censuring of feminist political protest as deviance, the contrasting, positive representation in this case of Pussy Riot as dissidents is explored. This positive representation can be understood with regard to Western geopolitical concerns, but also stresses the effectiveness of Pussy Riot in communicating their political message.     

Culture and domestic violence: transforming knowledge development

Cultural competence continues to receive limited attention in domestic violence service provision from research to the evaluation of programs. Yet with changing demographics reflecting larger numbers of people of color and increasing needs for more effective responses, it is critical that we change the way we think about domestic violence. Using a feminist framework, this article examines how knowledge has been developed in domestic violence and its consequence related to service provision and perceptions. The article ends with recommendations as to how to better include culturally competent responses in domestic violence.     

Fifty Years After the 1967 Crime Commission Report

In the 50 years since the U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice under President Johnson issued its report, feminist activism and both feminist and mainstream research have resulted in defining domestic violence (DV) as a social problem. This awareness of the seriousness and expansiveness of DV has spurred the development of unprecedented programs and policies. Although DV policing changes have been significant, so too have been the development of and changes in safehouses, no‐drop court policies, domestic violence courts, community‐coordinated responses, and batterer intervention programs. In this article, we review the nonpolice responses to DV cases and outcomes and provide recommendations. First, research and policies need to more regularly be aimed at addressing victims’ safety and their diverse needs and experiences. Second, assessments should include addressing the processing of these cases through the impact of responses by individual community and criminal legal system actors (e.g., victim advocates, police, prosecutors, and judges) to victims and offenders.     

Feminist ideology in the United States: Its development from 1966–70 as the indicator of a general social movement

Conclusion The feminist ideology called attention to the fact that societies prepare women for the socio-economic roles they must fill and that in the United States an outdated biological determinism was creating value incongruence in the socialization of women. Because this biological conception existed throughout the legal, political, economic, and family structures, women were being discriminated against in all aspects of their lives. Now, more than ten years since initial mobilization, the feminist perspective, like the more general sociological perspective before it, has permeated “popular wisdom” in a myriad of subtle ways. This change in perspective is not yet complete, but it is not likely to change its course until the sociological perspective from which it is derived is itself reformulated through another expansion of intellectual frontiers.     

Domestic Violence, Character, And Social Change In The Welfare Reform Debate

This article addresses the recently discovered connection between domestic violence and welfare dependency." Empirical research among welfare populations shows that over 50% of women receiving welfare are or have recently been battered, and that partner abuse is a major reason for the continuing poverty of many women.
The question the author asks and begins to answer is why this connection has not previously been identified or publicized by either the battered women's movement or the anti‐poverty movement, and what the challenge may be to both movements as they attempt to address it in the context of welfare reform. The author argues that the connection has not been previously addressed because of the somewhat conflicting ideologies underlying both movements. The battered women's movement is defined in part by its strong moral denunciation of male abusers and assertion of the victimization of women by men. The anti‐poverty movement is reluctant to demonize half of the poor population, particularly in light of the conservative welfare reformers' emphasis on "character" as the main cause of poverty. The article argues that we must – and can – find a way to synthesize the feminist emphasis on interpersonal justice and morality with the anti‐poverty movement's recognition of the larger social causes of poverty. The perspectives of both movements must be enlarged to recognize the multiple layers of victimization which poor women and men endure; and both movements will be revitalized by this cross‐fertilization.