Editorial voices

Jack Smith is an artist on the margins of official narratives of art of the 1960s. This essay attempts to read his works as a means of questioning the challenges posed to normative readings of the work of culture, by presenting ideas about queer performance. Smith's almost hysterical identification with Maria Montez, a 1940s film siren, is privileged in my reading. Her key film, Cobra woman, turns on the image of a wound that will not heal. In this essay, I read the wound as signaling the breaches in our attempts at full communication, and compare this state of being to the idiosyncratic form of the camp effect, which functions as a kind of hieroglyph, or broken sign. Read through Maria Montez, the ‘failures’ of Smith's practice are explored in order to invogorate the seemingly exhausted discourse on camp, as well as to pose a critique of the ways in which certain bodies are failed by dominant culture.     

From blues women to b-girls: performing badass femininity

This article introduces the concept of badass femininity, a marginalized femininity captured in the performances of contemporary b-girls (women breakdancers) and blues women of the 1920s. The author uses the work of Hortense Spillers, Maria Lugones, Chela Sandoval, and Angela Davis to argue that non-normative gender performances from the fringes of society are necessary consequence of histories of enslavement, genocide, and exploitation. Badass femininity is a one version of a multiplicity of femininities. It re-signifies qualities typically associated with masculinity through women whose work in dance and music move these gender performances from the margins to center stage.     

Hope in Context: Developmental Profiles of Trust,Hopeful Future Expectations,and Civic Engagement Across Adolescence

Hopeful expectations for the future have been shown to play an important role in the positive development of youth, including youth contributions to society. Although theory and some research suggest that familial socialization may influence future-oriented cognitions, little work has focused on the possible interrelation of parent–child relationships and the development of hope, particularly during adolescence. Accordingly, the first goal of this study was to identify developmental profiles of youth with respect to hopeful future expectations (HFE) and parental trust across adolescence. Next, we explored whether these developmental trajectories were related to youth Contribution, indexed by community leadership, service, and helping attitudes and behaviors. We used growth mixture modeling to simultaneously examine trajectories of adolescents’ perceived connections with parents (indexed by parent trust) and HFE among 1,432 participants (59 % female) from Waves 3 through 6 (Grades 7 through 10) of the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development. A four-profile model provided the best fit to the data, with the following profiles: Moderate HFE/U-shaped Trust; Moderate HFE/Increasing Trust; Both Decreasing; and Both High Stable profiles. We then explored whether hope-trust profiles were related to youth Contribution in Wave 7. Contrary to hypotheses, results indicated that the profile reflecting the greatest discrepancy in HFE and trust across early to middle adolescence (i.e., Moderate Hope/U-shaped Trust) was associated with the highest mean Contribution scores. The implications of the findings for future theory and research are discussed.     

Seeking Justice and Redress for Victim-Survivors of Image-Based Sexual Abuse

Feminist Legal Studies - Despite apparent political concern and action—often fuelled by high-profile cases and campaigns—legislative and institutional responses to image-based sexual...     

Caught in quicksand? Compliance and legitimacy challenges in using regulatory sandboxes to manage emerging technologies

Regulatory sandboxes have become the latest development in regulatory reform, starting first in financial regulation and now expanding to other sectors. While sandboxes offer notable potential benefits for managing emerging technologies, achieving desirable policy outcomes with this novel regulatory instrument also comes with technical and political challenges. This article offers a framework to characterize regulatory sandboxes in any sector, involving a blend of (1) approval regulation with broad-based standards, (2) restricted discretion by the regulator for specific norms, (3) process-oriented regulation, (4) an outcomes-orientation, and (5) structured regulator–regulatee information sharing or dialogue. Using this model, the article outlines issues in compliance and legitimacy, including in trust and accountability, responsive enforcement, the politics of participation, and post-sandbox oversight. The article concludes by calling for greater scrutiny when considering implementing a sandbox instrument, with attention to sector-specific concerns, and offering directions for empirical evaluation of regulatory sandboxes.     

Revisiting Kantian Retributivism to Construct a Justification of Punishment

The standard view of Kant’s retributivism, as well as its more recent reworking in the ‘limited’ or ‘partial’ retributivist reading are, it is argued here, inadequate accounts of Kant on punishment. In the case of the former, the view is too limited and superficial, and in the latter it is simply inaccurate as an interpretation of Kant. Instead, this paper argues that a more sophisticated and accurate rendering of Kant on punishment can be obtained by looking to his construction of the concept of justice. In so doing, not only is a superior account of Kant furnished, but also one up to the task of resolving the vexed issue of justifying legal punishment.

Public vs. elite opinion on correctional reform: Implications for social policy

Demands for changes and reform in our correctional system have a long history. Currently many of those active in determining policy are advocating a shift away from the use of imprisonment to greater local supervision. However, many of these “elites” perceive the public as unreceptive and thereby an obstacle to change. This study focuses on an analysis of public opinion in the state of Washington and a comparison of those attitudes with the attitudes of elites (decision makers) in the state. Further, the study describes elite perceptions of public opinion and the implications of those perceptions for social policy. The public is found to be far less punitively oriented than elites expected and far more receptive to the reforms advocated.     

Keeping Cyprus off the agenda: British and American relations at the United Nations, 1954-58

From 1954 to 1958, the Greek government sought to raise the issue of self-determination for Cyprus at the United Nations as a means of pressing for the union of the island with the Greek state - enosis. The British government's objective was to ensure if possible that Cyprus was not debated using the legal argument that it was a domestic issue in which the UN had no rights. The British accepted, however, that other political and strategic arguments would be needed to defeat the Greeks and looked to the US government to support them in the UN forums. This article examines the positions of the British and Americans governments and shows the difficulties which the issue created for both in the UN in the period.