networks of violence in the production of young women’s trajectories and subjectivities

This paper focuses on the deployment and interdependence of different expressions of gendered and classed violence in shaping the choices, trajectories and subjectivities of young women on vocational beauty therapy courses. It takes as its premise the understanding that, far from simply being an aberrant expression of interpersonal or intergroup aggression, violence is embedded in social life in multiple and complex ways, reverberating through women’s lives to reproduce disadvantage and subordination. The paper draws on theoretical and empirical investigations of the interrelationships between structural, direct and symbolic expressions of violence and asks what this literature can offer in challenging normative, often individualised, conceptions of violence. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) beauty therapy courses and the young women undertaking them, I explore the accounts of students and their tutors on becoming and being ‘beauty girls’. I consider what these accounts might tell us about how forms of symbolic and interpersonal violence intersect with, reproduce and legitimise the violence involved in unequal and unjust socio-economic structures. I argue that the ways in which different forms of violence mutually reinforce each other at a micro-level produce an embodied ‘sense of limits’ that ultimately reproduces the structural violence of gendered and classed inequalities. The examples given illustrate both a ‘chronology of violence’ in young women’s lives, and the way in which those lives can be understood, at least in part, as embedded in and shaped by networks of violence. Finally, I briefly consider examples of dissent and resistance, the conditions under which they might be possible and the ways in which, through the interplay of different forms of violence, they might also be curtailed.     

Responding to Terrorism? Human Rights Organization Shaming and Terrorist Attacks

Why do Human Rights Organizations (HROs) target or “shame” countries for human rights abuses? The literature using country-level factors to explain why one country is likely to be targeted over another is growing but many questions still remain. Terrorist activity in a country should have a positive effect on the amount of shaming directed at a country. HROs are in the publicity business and have organizational interests to shame states already receiving attention. Findings show that there is a connection between certain types of transnational terrorist incidents occur in a country and the amount of HRO shaming of governments, even after accounting for the human rights practices within the state.     

The Economic Constitution of the European Community: From 'Rome' to 'Maastricht'

Abstract: The present paper analyses, from an economic point of view, the changes in the economic constitution of the European Community since its foundation in 1958. In order to identify the various changes, we start by developing an economic frame of reference. Our proposition is that the constitution of the European Community (EC) came closest to this frame of reference: an economic constitution for a market system. In the subsequent parts, we try to show that the process of European integration was largely based on the introduction of non-market elements. Our final argument will be that as far as the economic constitution is concerned, the Treaty on European Union (TEU) is dominated by traits which are Characteristic of modern welfare states.     

Continuity and Change in Legal Positivism

Institutional theory of law (ITL) reflects both continuity and change of Kelsen's legal positivism. The main alteration results from the way ITL extends Hart's linguistic turn towards ordinary language philosophy (OLP). Hart holds – like Kelsen – that law cannot be reduced to brute fact nor morality, but because of its attempt to reconstruct social practices his theory is more inclusive. By introducing the notion of law as an extra-linguistic institution ITL takes a next step in legal positivism and accounts for the relationship between action and validity within the legal system. There are, however, some problems yet unresolved by ITL. One of them is its theory of meaning. An other is the way it accounts for change and development. Answers may be based on the pragmatic philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, who emphasises the intrinsic relation between the meaning of speech acts and the process of habit formation.     

Success of a tax amnesty: At the polls,for the fisc?

This paper provides a model for analyzing an individual's voting decision on tax amnesty and the change of his reporting behavior given amnesty is granted/rejected. Success at the polls is predicted to increase with higher penalties meted out to detected evaders while success in terms of reporting would be jeopardized. These and other implications of the model are empirically tested for two Swiss tax amnesty proposals, one rejected, the other approved by a majority of citizens/taxpayers.     

Types and Causes of lawyers' Professional Liability Claims: The Search for Facts

Lawyers have become concerned about the rising numbers and the rising amounts of professional liability claims, which have in turn driven up liability insurance premiums and temporarily even caused an alarming contraction in the supply of insurance coverage. This article examines the state of factual information that could be used to measure and explain the development. It goes on to discuss the potential role that increased knowledge of the types and causes of professional liability claims could play in efforts to reverse the development, followed by a discussion of the difficulties of obtaining usable data from the two principal potential sources—lawyers and their insurers. The second half of the article describes and evaluates the work of the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Lawyers' Professional Liability in developing, in cooperation with the major insurers, a comprehensive data collection and reporting system for lawyers' professional liability claims.