Annual Index 2002

China's rural land rights regime is being reformed. Most explanations for the reforms focus on the efficiency effects anticipated from the strengthening of villagers' land rights. In contrast, this article argues that rural land rights reforms are intended to resolve the intra-state and state-society contention generated by China's market transition and globalization, and to mediate villagers' dispossession of their land and their transformation into a proletariat.     

Complicating Complicity: Aiding and Abetting Causing Death by Dangerous Driving in R v Martin

The law of complicity, particularly relating to joint enterprise liability, appears to becoming more and more complicated. Cases on secondary liability for murder in the Court of Appeal demonstrate that this area of law is difficult to interpret and to apply. Even more complex is the question of how to apply these cases to offences other than murder. This case note attempts to address the Court of Appeal's questions in the case of R v Martin as to how the jury ought to be directed in a case of aiding and abetting causing death by dangerous driving.     

Law From Below: Women's Human Rights and Social Movements in New York City

Despite the ambivalent history of the domestic application of human rights in the United States, human rights increasingly offer important resources for American grassroots activists. Within the constraints of U.S. policy toward human rights, they provide social movements a kind of global law "from below": a form of cosmopolitan law that subalterns can use to challenge their subordinate position. Using a case study from New York City, we argue that in certain contexts, human rights can provide important political resources to U.S. social movements. However, they do so in a diffuse way far from the formal system of human rights law. Instead, activists adopt some of the broader social justice ideas and strategies embedded within human rights practice.     

THE RADICAL POTENTIAL OF BECOMING-WOMAN AND INTRA-ACTION IN THE MUSIC OF ANNE BOYD

Anne Boyd (b. 1946) is recognised in the public domain as one of Australia's distinguished composers. Her work belongs in the Western art music tradition and emerges out of her entanglements with the Australian landscape and the music of South-East Asia. This article considers what some of these entanglements have produced and, in so doing, shifts the emphasis from questions of reflection and representation—in which Boyd's music might be understood to reflect in a representationalist mode those aspects of her identity that are bound with the Australian landscape—to exploring in a performative manner how her music offers glimpses into different aspects of the creative process in action. I consider Boyd's selected musical works and critique various biographical writings on Boyd, drawing on the work of Deleuze which I entangle with Barad's concept of intra-action. My aim is to offer a different model for thinking about the network of mutual engagements that are coimplicated in the music's becoming. I view Boyd's music as a becoming-woman, an animate flow and a dynamic process of intra-activity.     

The unavailability of information on insurance unavailability: Insurance redlining and the absence of geocoded disclosure data

Abstract

The availability of insurance in urban communities has long been a contested public policy issue. One of the central points of contention has been the value of publicly available data on the geographic distribution of property insurance policies. This debate has intensified since the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which requires geocoded disclosure of mortgage lending activity, was passed. A small number of states have required disclosure of limited data. But precisely what data are available has been unclear, and their utility has been debated.

This survey of all state insurance commissioners documents what is in fact the very limited availability of insurance disclosure data. Only eight states require any disclosure of geocoded data, and just four of them make company‐level data available to the public. Data from one of those states, Wisconsin, are used to show how such data could benefit insurers, consumers, and regulators.     

Coxsackie B3 myocarditis in a case of sudden unexpected death in young athlete: histopathological, immunohistochemical and molecularpathological for diagnosis

We present two non fatal cases of intoxication with carbofuran (CBF) documented by hair analysis. Carbofuran and 3-hydroxycarbofuran (OHCBF, its main metabolite) hair concentrations were determined using a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method. The obtained results were surprising if we consider several hair analyses previously published and based on a theory of the presence of xenobiotic in the only segment that comprised its intake. Among the two intoxication cases, we noticed the presence of CBF and OHCBF in hair segments corresponding to 45 days before, and more than 100 days after, the day of intoxication. Additionally, repeated hair samplings and subsequent analysis revealed a decrease of the carbofuran's concentration during the hair life.     

Language,gender and ‘reality’: Violence against women

This paper examines the theory behind and some examples of the relationships between gender, language, cognition and perception in the context of the criminal justice system. In particular, we consider the language of domestic violence and sexual assault and how words and communication styles can affect and are affected by what we think and believe to be ‘reality’. The paper illustrates how the language used to describe violence against women may operate to minimise these acts, and the dominant conversational style and female violence victims' genderlect may collide to produce evidentiary issues and a credibility gap. We argue that there is an inherent dilemma in engaging with legal constructs which continue to negate women's understandings of reality, and that the voices of female rape and domestic violence victims remain muted by the baritone ‘voice’ of the legal system.