Money as Punishment: Neoliberal Budgetary Politics and the Fine

ABSTRACT

In August of 2014, a young Indigenous woman, known as Ms. Dhu, died in the lock-up of the South Hedland Police Station after being detained for unpaid fines totalling $3622. Her death drew attention to the fact that fine defaulters – most of whom are Indigenous and female – are once again being imprisoned at astonishing rates in Western Australia, after the practice was more or less discontinued elsewhere. What does the nexus between the fine, incarceration and forced labour tell us about the relationship between money and penality in contemporary neoliberal/neoconservative states? Pointing to the combined influence of the Chicago and Virginia schools of neoliberalism on Australian public policy, I suggest that the recent expansion of monetary sanctions must be understood as a way of transferring the debt burdens of the state downwards, onto those classified as excessive ‘users’ of public services. Not only does the fine blur the boundaries between civil and criminal law, it also harnesses punishment to the fiscal imperatives of an increasingly austere, deficit-averse state.     

Sex Positive: Feminism,Queer Theory,and the Politics of Transgression

From the feminist ‘sex wars’ of the 1980s to the queer theory and politics of the 1990s, debates about the politics of sexuality have been at the forefront of contemporary theoretical, social, and political demands. This article seeks to intervene in these debates by challenging the terms through which they have been defined. Investigating the importance of ‘sex positivity’ and transgression as conceptual features of feminist and queer discourses, this essay calls for a new focus on the political and material effects of pro-sexuality.     

Introduction: Fashion and Feminist Politics of the Present

ABSTRACT

This article introduces the special issue on fashion and features an analysis of the current state of the relationship between the fashion system and feminist scholarship. Important points of convergence are identified, including the link between the so-called democratisation of fashion and the recent resurgence of feminism in mass culture, fashion’s introduction of complex models of identity, embodiment and materiality, its foregrounding of class, and its ability to shed light on the relationship between feminism and neoliberal capitalism. Altogether, fashion emerges as an ideal diagnostic tool for the feminist politics of the present.     

Carrie N. Baker (ed): Fighting the US Youth Sex Trade: Gender,Race, and Politics

Journal of Youth and Adolescence -     

'Deeds and Words': The Woman's Press and the Politics of Print

The political and constitutional impact of the early twentieth-century British women's suffrage movement has been the subject of extensive research since the advent of second-wave feminism, yet the broader cultural impact of the movement remains a developing scholarly area. Murray examines the role of the Woman's Press, the publishing house established in 1907 as a strategic component of the Pankhursts' influential Women's Social and Political Union. The press is located within multiple and interpenetrative analytical contexts: examined in turn are its role in the various power struggles of the WSPU and the broader British suffrage movement; its significance as an independent means of cultural production around the contested site of the suffragette; and its ambiguity as a feminist publishing house run by male pro-suffragist and lobbyist, Frederick Pethick Lawrence. The Woman's Press and its central London retail outlet figured prominently in WSPU administration as a material concern-as literature packing department, revenue raiser and recruiting centre. Yet, symbolically, the Woman's Press was also integral to the campaigning of the WSPU to an extent that has generally remained under-examined. As an independent publishing house the press constituted a vital conduit guaranteeing the entry of suffrage arguments into public discourse, and a crucial tool for appropriating and refashioning the contested image of the suffragette in the wider politico-cultural landscape of the day. Acknowledging the significance of the Woman's Press provides both a necessary historical context for the post-1970 feminist press boom, as well as a counterpoint to the ongoing political-financial conundrums that beset its modern descendents.