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.     

Is There An Expressive Function of Law? An Empirical Analysis of Voting Laws with Symbolic Fines

This article empirically investigates whether law affects behaviorbeyond deterrence ("expressive function of law"). With Swisspanel data, I find that the legal abolition of the voting dutysignificantly decreased average turnout, even though the finesfor not voting have only been symbolic. As for the size of Cantonalturnout reduction, it widely differs between the Cantons andis highly correlated with voter participation before the removalof the voting duty. In contrast to the voting duty, the introductionof postal voting did not affect voter turnout in spite of thesubstantial decrease in transaction costs. Therefore, in publicgood areas such as voting, even a sanctionless law targetingat the civic duty might have a bigger impact on behavior thanactions which affect the costs of provision for the public good.     

Abortion and legal policy

This paper reviews four legal policies in abortion from a critical theory of law perspective. Since the Comstock era, abortion policy has undergone radical shifts from criminalization in the last quarter of the nineteenth century to decriminalization in the late 1960s, followed by legalization and medical control over the last decade. Yet, until recently, little scholarly attention has been given to the social and political implications of these various policy shifts (almost all studies focus on the current legal phase only) often in isolation from other social and political realities. In this paper we draw on historical, demographic, participant-observation, interview, and documentary and legal materials to analyze the transformations of legal control structures in abortion. This shows both the creation of abortion law, which is imbedded in structures of sexual domination, and the contradictions in abortion law, which express antagonisms in civil society as well as promote alliances within ruling groups. The abortion case further clarifies the failure of legality to transcend existing gender inequalities, thereby contributing to further erosion of welfare rights for poor women and their children.     

Long-Term Effects of Homophobic Stigmatization During Adolescence on Problem Behavior in Emerging Adult Offspring of Lesbian Parents

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - The long-term impact of homophobic stigmatization on adolescents with lesbian parents has not been explored. This longitudinal study investigated the effects of...     

The Global South is dead,long live the Global South! The intersectionality of social and geographic hierarchies in global capitalism

Abstract

This article explores two critical approaches to the study of the continuing relevance of the North—South divide. One is based on a postcolonial politics of difference and stresses the fundamental geographic divergences between the North and South. The other, referred to as the global capitalism school, argues that the North—South divide is rendered obsolete by social divisions, represented by the rise of a transnational capitalist class. I criticize the former due to its dismissal of the idea of capitalism as a universal force. In regards to the latter, to determine whether the primary fault line in global capitalism revolves around transnationally organized classes, I conduct an interpretive analysis of the world views of capitalist elites in Latin America. My findings demonstrate the complex, intersecting nature of different axes of identity, and contradict this literature by suggesting the continuing relevance of a place-based North—South divide. In other words, neither position can by itself elucidate the contours of our contemporary global economic system. What I propose is a framework that captures the intersectionality between the social and geographic within a universal story of capitalist globalization. The key is to conceptualize how global capitalism operates as a universalizing force, but not a homogenizing one.     

Regulation by litigation: Not so bad?

This is a review essay concerning the book Regulation by Litigation. Utilizing public choice theory as the basis of its analysis, the book presents three case studies designed to demonstrate that regulation by litigation does not serve the public interest. This review essay attempts to show that public choice theory does not explain the decision to use litigation in these cases, that the alleged failure of litigation in these cases might not be failures at all, and that regulation by litigation is not the unmitigated evil the authors of the book suggest.