‘Mutual aid is present in every crisis’: An Interview with Dean Spade

The Covid-19 pandemic unravelled a crisis of the modern state, and its legal institutions on the one hand, and on the other hand of our interpretive frames—both philosophical and scientific. It is here that the idea and practice of mutual aid gains significance, both to think about how we can respond to acute crises of planetary scales as well as to the crisis of critique in the discipline of law. The task of mutual aid is not to rehabilitate law out of its crisis or to restore conditions and systems back to a state prior to a crisis. This is because, as Dean Spade says in this interview, ‘they are not broken systems needing to be fixed. They are working exactly as they were designed to work, constantly sharpening violence against targeted populations and enriching a very few people.’ Spade—Wismer Professor of Gender and Diversity at the Seattle University School of Law and a founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project—is a key scholar-activist voice on mutual aid in North America and Europe. He is author, most recently, of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (And the Next). In this conversation with Oishik Sircar, Spade discusses his theoretical and political influences, how he relates the idea of crisis to critique, his sobering assessment of the limitations not only of law reform but of the role of legal education in radical transformation, his own understandings of mutual aid, his favourite words, why and how he does not see himself only as a legal scholar-activist, and his vision of hope and hopelessness in times of acute and intense crises.

     

Feminist lawyering,violence against women,and the politics of law reform in India: An interview with Flavia Agnes

The history of the women’s movement’s relationship to law in India cannot be written without acknowledging the pioneering work of activist, advocate, and scholar Flavia Agnes. Her own life’s journey, engagement with the movement, involvement in women’s rights litigation, feminist jurisprudential scholarship, and outreach work through Majlis (the organisation she co-founded) offer key insights into the kind of movement-based legal pedagogy, awareness, and training that the women’s movement has fostered in India. Flavia’s activism and scholarship over the last three decades have opened up sophisticated critiques of rape law and family law reform in India that have become foundational to the field of what can be called Indian feminist jurisprudence. This interview offers insights into the autobiographical, the feminist, and the scholarly convergences in Flavia’s thinking and writing. She speaks with candour and conviction and introduces ways of thinking about feminist lawyering, violence against women, and the politics of law reform in India that are historically and theoretically grounded in an ethics of self-reflexivity and quotidian wisdom that the insulated nature of clinical legal education in India has much to learn from.

     

How are U.K. churches using social media to engage with their congregations?

Churches are important non‐profit organisations that are increasingly adopting social media. In order to contribute to understanding of the value of social media as a communications channel for non‐profit organisations, this article examines, and develops a typology of, the uses of social media by two global churches with a strong presence in the United Kingdom, Hillsong, a megachurch, and the Church of England. Informed by previous typologies of the use of social media in both commercial and non‐profit contexts, content analysis was conducted of Hillsong's and the Church of England's social media platforms on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. This analysis provided the basis for the formulation of a typology of uses, the main categories of which are building a brand, building the church community, outreach, and developing spiritual mission. Differences between the approaches adopted by the Church of England and Hillsong are outlined. Suggestions are offered for future practice and further research.     

Marrying European and Domestic Politics? The Marriage Referendum in Croatia and Value-Based Euroscepticism

On 1 December 2013, Croatia voted in a referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage. While recent scholarship has highlighted the symbolic nature of the referendum in domestic politics, its European dimension has not been considered. Using Leconte’s notion of value-based Euroscepticism, this article explores the role of European politics in the marriage referendum, using electoral data at the municipal level. The analysis demonstrates that the referendum, at least partly, was a proactive attempt to halt the Europeanisation of same-sex marriage. The article also sheds light on local resistance to EU homonationalist politics.     

Proto-fascism and State impunity in Majoritarian India: An Interview with Teesta Setalvad

This interview with Teesta Setalvad was conducted in the wake of the February 2020 anti-Muslim violence in North East Delhi. Drawing on her vast experience as a human rights activist, journalist, and peace educator, Setalvad’s responses map the continuum — across years, anti-minority pogroms and ruling parties with divergent ideologies — of the cultures of hate, and the practices of state repression and impunity in a proto-fascist India. Setalvad offers an interrogation of the ideology of the Hindu right, delves into the historical trajectories of the rise of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). She also charts the repeating patterns of police and media complicity in fomenting anti-minority hate and critically analyses the contradictory role of the criminal law and the Constitution of India in both enabling and resisting communal violence. In conclusion, she offers hopeful strategies for keeping alive the promise of secularism.