Sources of Reform in Britain: A Review Article

Books reviewed in this article:
Anna Clark and Sarah Richardson, History of Suffrage
Gregory Claeys (Ed), The Chartist Movement in Britain 1838–1850     

Battered women: Implications for social control

This paper examines battered women as a systemic problem of social control, involving three structural phases: structure, deconstruction and reconstruction. At the first phase, woman battering occurs in a context of dependency, including economic, social, political, and emotional subordination that maintains the traditional, male-centered family structure. During phase two, or deconstruction, broad societal changes, including the feminist movement, contributes to altered gender definitions and the emergence of a battered women's movement and practice. During this phase feminists served as the chief reform catalyst, introducing protective legislation, educating the public and organizing women's shelters. Phase three, reconstruction, entails the state's direct involvement in the violent relationship in a series of coercive netwidening actions, including arrest of the offender, forcible separation of the couple, and formal sentencing. On the one hand, state intervention substantially reduces the incidence of violence against women in the home. On the other hand, the power of arrest and detention extends state power into new spheres, as the state exploits social problems and weakened social structures in line with its expanding control agenda. Overbureaucratization during this phase also affects feminist practice, as shelters increasingly take on a social provision, sometimes anti-feminist, orientation that further constrains who can be served. The paper raises questions about the extent to which the reconstruction phase, operating in the interests of dominant groups, contributes to the revictimization of battered women.     

Industrialisation and the Sustainability of China’s Agriculture*

The paper argues that the sustainable development of Chinese agriculture is constrained by the continuing adverse effects of the policy of industrialisation. This has resulted principally in an excessive loss of capital from the agricultural to the industrial sector, a loss of strategic natural resources and infrastructure from agriculture and severe environmental degradation associated directly and indirectly with the development of industry. Quantitative links are established between changes in the growth of grain production and the progress of industrialisation in the pre and post reform eras. It is argued that a fundamental adjustment to the relationship between industry and agriculture is needed and that a more favourable socio-economic environment will be required if China is to develop a sustainable agricultural sector within the context of a national autarky objective in the grain sector.     

Vicarious Trauma in Judges: The Personal Challenge of Dispensing Justice

Symptoms of vicarious trauma, coping strategies, and prevention suggestions were investigated with 105 judges. Participants completed a self‐report measure developed for this study. The majority of judges (63%) reported one or more symptoms that they identified as work‐related vicarious trauma experiences. Female judges reported more symptoms, as did judges with seven or more years of experience. In addition, female judges were more likely to report internalizing difficulties, while judges with more experience reported higher levels of externalizing/hostility symptoms. Coping and prevention strategies were multi‐domain (i.e., personal, professional, and societal) and underscored the need for greater awareness and support for judges.     

Church,State, Resistance1

This article problematizes a separation of Church and State that is nevertheless identified as constitutive of politics. Democracy has come to manifest a tension between the ‘autonomy’ of the political and a ‘heteronomy’ that, exceeding rationalist or social contractarian accounts of our co‐existence, is here presented as an irreducible affect of our being together. Autonomy, it is argued, resists heteronomy through all representations of democracy; yet, by contrast, heteronomy resists autonomy, and does so with the force of this affect. So if civil religion is impossible – and if we know only too well where its realizations lead: by default, to republican celebration, or by excess, to fascism – then we must take up again, and from scratch, the question of the affect according to which we co‐exist.