Books Received

Criminal Law Forum -     

Constructing an “Iron” Unity: The Statue of Unity and India’s Nationalist Historiography

In October 2018, the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi inaugurated a pet project, the “Statue of Unity”, in Gujarat, India. The world’s tallest statue, the Statue of Unity cost USD416.67 million to construct, and depicts India’s first deputy prime minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as the “Iron Man of India”, staring resolutely out over the controversial Sardar Sarovar Dam. This article examines the meanings of the statue as a political project of memorialisation. We argue that the statue is an attempt to reimagine India’s nationalist historiography around Patel, taking the emphasis off the secular, socialist first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. In doing so, the statue constructs a hyper-masculine idea of India centred on an assimilatory idea of “unity”. The statue’s construction materially enforced this symbolism by pushing aside the site’s previous Adivasi owners, and presents an ordered, majoritarian, business-led vision of public space in Modi’s India. Within this space, the statue materialises Patel as the image of Indian identity. He is made from the stuff of progress, concrete and reinforced steel, and coated in bronze, which links his image with India’s long history of religious statue-making. The project then circulates these ideas through tourist marketing and visitor experience.     

Contingency and “National Awakening”

Abstract

Scholars often describe the early stages in the development of nationalism with the metaphor of “national awakening,” which originally comes from historical actors. Several scholars, notably Ernest Gellner, criticize the metaphor for its implicit teleology and essentialism. Much recent scholarship considers non-national loyalties, such as regionalism, civic pride, monarchism, or national indifference, reflecting an understandable weariness with teleological narratives. Scholars can avoid essentialist teleology by studying failed national movements. The history of “Slovak” national awakening, for example, should address Czechoslovakism and Panslavism. Despite its difficulties, however, the metaphor of “awakening” should be retained as a term of historic periodization.     

“The Big Mo”: The Early Days of Housing Policy Debate

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary year of Housing Policy Debate, this article details the circumstances and the political climate of the late 1980s that led to the origin of this journal. I review the influence and the confluence of the National Housing Task Force of 1987, Jim Rouse (CEO of the Rouse Corporation), the Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs, and David O. Maxwell, then the chairman of Fannie Mae, to create the Office of Housing Research (OHR) within Fannie Mae. The article also highlights the role of the National Housing Task Force and the first Fannie Mae Housing Conference in expanding high-quality housing research in the 1990s through the MIT Housing Policy Project and the research and convening efforts of the OHR in Fannie Mae, which included this journal and a continuance of the Annual Housing Conference thereafter.     

Will Black Lives Matter to the Police? African Americans’ Concerns about Trump’s Presidency

ABSTRACT

Based on a 2017 national survey of 1,000 Black Americans, perceptions regarding the implications of Donald Trump’s election as President on race relations, police-minority relations, and police treatment of Black citizens in the United States were examined. Findings suggest the existence of a “Trump Effect.” With minor variation across demographic groups, the survey respondents expressed overall negative perceptions concerning the effects of President Trump’s election. In particular, they expressed the belief that his presidency shows that the United States is a racist society, will strain police-minority relationships, and will create a climate in which African Americans are more likely to be arrested or subjected to police violence. At issue is not just African Americans’ distrust of President Trump but, importantly, whether his emphasis on “law and order” and dismissal of minority-group concerns attenuates the legitimacy of law enforcement in the eyes of African Americans.     

Law and Rhetoric: Critical Possibilities

What contribution can rhetoric make to socio‐legal studies? Though now a byword for deception and spin, rhetoric was long identified with the very substance of law and politics. Latterly radical scholars have foregrounded an understanding of law as rhetoric in their polemics against legal formalism, but it needs to be complemented by a critical perspective which goes beyond simple revivalism, taking account of rhetoric's own blind spots, inquiring into the means by which some speakers and listeners are privileged and others excluded or silenced. The critical potential of legal rhetoric is tested here through a review of the developing law on mental capacity and the best interests of people with disabilities in England and Wales. Much of what is at stake there is properly grasped in terms of a politics of speech: who is addressed, who can speak, who must speak, and how are they represented in judicial and media discourse.