What a girl's gotta do: the labor of the biopolitical celebrity in austerity Britain

This article debunks the widespread view that young female celebrities, especially those who rise to fame through reality shows and other forms of media-orchestrated self-exposure, dodge “real” work out of laziness, fatalism, and a misguided sense of entitlement. Instead, the authors argue that becoming a celebrity in a neoliberal economy such as that of the United Kingdom, where austerity measures disproportionately disadvantage the young, women, and the poor, is not as irregular or exceptional a choice as previously thought, especially since the precariousness of celebrity earning power adheres to the current demands of the neoliberal economy on its workforce. What is more, becoming a celebrity involves different forms of labor that are best described as biopolitical, since such labor fully involves and consumes the human body and its capacities as a living organism. Weight gain and weight loss, pregnancy, physical transformation through plastic surgery, physical symptoms of emotional distress, and even illness and death are all photographically documented and supplemented by extended textual commentary, usually with direct input from the celebrity, reinforcing and expanding on the visual content. As well as casting celebrity work as labor, the authors also maintain that the workings of celebrity should always be examined in the context of wider cultural, social and real economies.     

Naturschutz bei der Ausbringung von gentechnisch veränderten Organismen – Teil 2

Im ersten Teil des Aufsatzes ging es um die Beachtung des Naturschutzes bei der Freisetzungsgenehmigung, der IVB-Genehmigung, den nachmarktlichen Ma?nahmen und den sog. vereinfachten/differenzierten Verfahren. über diese klassisch umweltrechtliche Anforderung hinaus ist denkbar, dass manche Fl?chen von GVO ganz freigehalten werden, damit neben der Gentechnik einsetzenden Landnutzung naturn?here ?kosysteme erhalten bleiben. Dieser Frage widmet sich der zweite Teil. Er schlie?t mit einer Zusammenfassung des ganzen Beitrags ab.     

Die Dialektik multikultureller Identität: Kanada als Lehrstück

Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die Konstruktion multikultureller nationaler Identität am Beispiel Kanadas. Mittels einer Untersuchung ausgewählter Artikel zweier großer kanadischer Zeitungen, der Globe and Mail und der Toronto Star in den 1990er Jahren wird gezeigt, dass sowohl Kanada-USA Gegenüberstellungen als auch Vergleiche des englischsprachigen Kanadas mit dem französischsprachigen Quebec eine wichtige Rolle für die Konstruktion des Mythos “multikulturelles Kanada” spielen. Die mittels der Fallstudie gewonnenen Einsichten werden anschließend dazu genutzt, zwei in der Fachliteratur gängige Darstellungen des Kanada-Quebec Verhältnisses zu nuancieren und die Konstruktion eines multikulturellen nationalen Selbstverständnisses theoretisch zu erfassen.     

Risks, Costs and Alternatives in EC Environmental Legislation: The Case of 'REACH'

European Community standards of environmental law are commonly framed in terms of the risks of activities to human health and the environment. Under this cover of uni-dimensional concern, considerations of an activity's benefits, regulatory costs and the availability of alternatives play a crucial role in the regulatory practice. The REACH proposal is a first and ambitious attempt to bring these other dimensions to the fore and give them shape. This article analyses this approach, identifies its merits and flaws, and develops a scheme that makes the complex calculus practicable. It is submitted that the scheme is applicable also in other areas of EC environmental law.     

Assessing a moral panic relating to crime and drugs policy in the Netherlands: Towards a testable theory

Using criteria from recent work by Goode and Ben Yehuda, this article tests the hypothesis that a moral panic relating to (youth) crime has been going on in the Netherlands since 1990. Most of the criteria are met. There is concern about the problem of crime and a consensus on solutions. There are also indications that public disquiet grew out of proportion compared to trends in crime and victimization, and that the panic erupted fairly suddenly. It is not possible to identify a clearer scapegoat than a diffuse image of “the” criminal. It is unclear what caused this panic. It seems unlikely that the panic started as a reaction to public problems, but nor is it possible to state that elites started it or that it was caused by bureaucratic processes at an intermediate level. Several methodological problems connected with the testing of the criteria are discussed. It is recommended that one criterion be added: that of misdirection of reactions to a social problem. It is also recommended that future research should be comparative, either comparing several minor local panics, or comparing panics or non-panics related to equivalent social problems. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Impact of Psychological Injuries on Sexual Harassment Determinations

Although a plethora of studies focus on jury decision making in sexual harassment cases, few studies examine damage award assessments in such suits, and even fewer explore the impact of psychological injury on jurors’ liability and damage award assessments. In the present study, 342 undergraduates read a hostile environment sexual harassment case that manipulated the plaintiff’s psychological injury level (severe vs. mild vs. control) to investigate whether males and females made different damage decisions. Males using a reasonable person standard found more liability as the severity of the plaintiff’s psychological injury increased. However, males using a reasonable woman standard found less liability with the addition of any psychological injury information. Similarly, for mild and severe injuries, males using the reasonable woman standard awarded lower damages than males using the reasonable person standard. Females tended to find more harassment than males, but psychological injury and legal standard had little impact on females’ legal decisions. We discuss these findings in light of the positive relationship often observed between the plaintiff’s injury severity level and pro-plaintiff verdicts.