‘Legislative frame representation’: towards an empirical account of the deliberative systems approach

The systemic approach to deliberative democracy is an empirically underexplored topic. Since ‘classic’ micro indicators for deliberation are at loggerheads with the idea of distributed deliberation, appropriate assessment techniques for large-scale public deliberation are few and far between. This paper aims at exploring a novel pathway into the empirical translations of the deliberative systems approach, using discourse content and the representation of policy frames in the legislature. I argue that legislative frame representation (LFR) is a crucial indicator for the level of sub-systemic deliberative uptake and policy responsiveness. Next to the necessary theoretical and methodological work, the results of an explorative case study for the immigration discourse in the US and Canada are presented. The results indicate that there are considerable differences in the systems’ capacities to take up discourses from civil society and that LFR can be an important tool to explore deliberative systems empirically.     

`Subjects' of Regulation/Resistance? Postmodern Feminism and Agency in Abortion-Decision-Making

This article explores the epistemological and strategic issues facing feminists embarking upon narrative explorations into women's experiences. It considers the implications for feminist epistemology of acknowledging women's participation in dominant ideologies about their social role. Focusing upon questions of women's agency, it asks how this `conforming knowledge' might complicate postmodernist feminist notions of resisting and reconstructing law's categorisation of `Woman'. It also represents an attempt to clarify, in advance of my own analysis of women's agency in abortion decision-making, why postmodern feminists might talk to women – the `subjects' of law's constructive power. It seeks additionally to open a discussion among a wider audience of feminists about what we might do with the information uncovered through listening to women's own stories in an area pronounced upon authoritatively by a multitude of discourses. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Consanguinity as capital in rights assertions: Japanese-Filipino children in the Philippines

This paper examines the material dimensions of ethnic identity claims by Japanese-Filipino children in the Philippines and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) advocating on their behalf. Most Japanese-Filipino clients of NGOs in the Philippines were raised by their Filipino families with little knowledge of their Japanese fathers and little or no lived experience of Japan. Although these children and young adults are often called “multi-cultural” by NGO workers, they frequently grow up with no connection to Japan other than an awareness of their Japanese parentage and Japanese cultural products equally accessible to most Filipinos. I argue that filiation can be leveraged to gain access to resources not only through the legal implications that are provided by biological relationships, but also through symbolically salient claims for belonging to a nation or people by virtue of descent. This consanguineal capital should primarily be understood in politically symbolic terms, mobilized in processes of claims-making and based on notions of “blood” and belonging and their frequent conflation with ethnicity.     

“Our biggest killer”: multimodal discourse representations of dementia in the British press

A recent (2016) Office for National Statistics report stated that dementia is now “the leading cause of death” in England and Wales. Ever fixated with the syndrome (an unfailingly newsworthy topic), the British press was quick to respond to the bulletin, consistently headlining that dementia was the nation’s “biggest killer,” while (re)formulating other aspects of the report in distorting and emotive metaphorical terms. In this paper we examine how the media, through use of a recurring set of linguistic and visual semiotic tropes, portrayed dementia as an agentive entity, a “killer,” which remorselessly attacks its “victims.” Such a broadly loaded and sensationalist representation, we argue, not only construed dementia as a direful and pernicious disease, but also, crucially, obscured the personal and social contexts in which the syndrome is understood and experienced (not least by people with dementia themselves). This intensely lurid type of representation not only fails to address the ageist misinformation and common misunderstandings that all too commonly surround dementia, but is also likely to exacerbate the stress and depression frequently experienced by people with dementia and their families.     

The sounds of silence: American history textbook representations of non-violence and the Abolition Movement

In this paper we examine how the Abolition Movement’s approach to non-violent resistance has been silenced in four American history textbooks. Despite extensive research that reveals an extensive network of groups dedicated to the peaceful abolishment of slavery little of this historical record is included in the textbooks. Instead, a skewed representation of the movement is conveyed to the reader, one that conveys an image of a movement that contributes to a climate of social violence. Through a critical discourse analytical approach to the data we carefully deconstruct how this process of misrepresentation occurs. By employing the discursive tools of narrative framing, positioning, and stance we lift up what is often hidden from the reader and demonstrate how language use communicates powerful social messaging to the reader. We argue that student readers are left with an impoverished sense of how non-violent democratic change has occurred when presented with a limited portrayal of the Abolition Movement. We therefore emphasize the importance of equipping students with the skills needed to critically interrogate both historical and contemporary sources that purports to convey the inevitability of war to resolve complex social problems; we maintain this is both an educational imperative and a civic obligation.     

程序法的内在张力

程序法在内部有着四个向度的张力,分别是交往向度张力、认知向度张力、空间向度张力和时间向度张力。这四个向度张力的存在,使得程序法各项制度的功能失灵,进而又减损了司法权威,导致司法解纷的目的落空。但是这四个向度的张力乃是程序法天生的不可避免的内在张力,实际上也是程序法和程序法理论发展变迁的动力源泉,因此不可能在一般意义上得到彻底消解。比较现实的选择是在个案审理过程中,就所遭遇到的具体的张力逐个消解。而消解个案审理过程中出现的具体的张力的路径,乃是程序法中自带的程序性商谈机制。为保障程序性商谈机制顺利运行,又须在制度上确保程序参与者之商谈行为符合言语行为有效性要件的要求。就民事诉讼而言,目前较为重要的是进一步强化对妨碍民事诉讼行为的惩戒。     

女性话语·国族寓言·华人文化英雄——从文化研究视角重读当代华语经典《桑青与桃红》

本文从文化研究视角重读旅美台湾作家聂华苓的华语经典小说《桑青与桃红》。认为此作的离散书写和女性话语方式在华语文学史上占有突出而重要的位置,作品叙述了20世纪华人个体的流离创伤体验,同时拥有国族寓言的反思视域,以人物的历史遭际和人格分裂隐喻从抗战到冷战时期的华人离散境遇和文化政治。女性形象桑青/桃红具有华人文化英雄意味。     

Discourse and violence: the friend–enemy conjunction in contemporary Iranian–American relations

Iranian–American relations have been beset by mistrust and occasional outbreaks of vitriol and violence for the past three decades. In this article I attempt to map, theoretically and empirically, the ‘discursive field’ in which relations between Iran and the United States reveal themselves. I am interested in representations of Iran and the United States, and how the fundamental friend–enemy distinction setting the two countries politically apart has come about. I take as a starting point the fact that discourse has a real and present impact on policy and that a lot of what is happening in world politics can be adequately contextualised with an appreciation of the linkages between ‘utterance’ and ‘action’.     

福柯的"作者-功能"说及其理论基础

在巴特喊出“作者死了”之后不久，福柯就提出了“作者一功能”理论，深入推进了对作者问题的研究。与巴特等人论述“作者死亡”不同的是，“作者一功能”说的理论基础是福柯的考古学方法，它与福柯对主体进行的批判紧密相连，它是福柯主体批判的一部分，或者更确切点说，它是后者的一个具体化、一个例证。福柯的“作者一功能”理论对当今的文学和文学理论研究具有深刻启示。     

Apostolic Minds and the Spinning House: Jane Ellen Harrison and Virginia Woolf's Discourse of Alterity

Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928) and Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) are two of the most iconic figures in British feminist history whose enduring influence have helped create and sustain a multitude of feminist discourses. Interestingly, both produced their landmark feminist studies in Cambridge when it was, arguably, the most aggressively anti-feminist institution in Britain at that time. Evidence of the kind of institutionalized disciplinary control Cambridge historically exercised on women can be found in the three Committals books (1823–1894) of the Spinning House (1631–1894) in the University archives. So called because the inmates were given wool to spin, the Spinning House was a penitentiary for young girls who were judged to be compromising the morals of the undergraduates. The Spinning House had its basis in the legal authority of the University which declared ‘That the University by virtue of their Charter sanctioned by Act of Parliament, have an undoubted right to cause the Public Street to be inspected, and loose and disorderly women to be taken up and sent to the Spinning House or the house of correction’. Against the background of the culture encapsulated by the Spinning House, women academics, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, were making tremendous efforts to bring about intellectual equality. And though the two—the spinner and the woman student—occupied mutually exclusive spaces, they were nevertheless held on the margins of the power structure that produced both. This paper examines the socio-historical context and the puritan intellectual politics of Cambridge against which feminist theories of Harrison and Woolf were produced to identify some of the methods with which they negotiated masculine orthodoxy and structured their feminist discourse of alterity.