Music reflects subjectivity and identity: that idea is now deeply ingrained in both musicology and popular media commentary. The study of music across cultures and practices often addresses the enactment of subjectivity "in" music - how music expresses or represents "an' individual or "a" group. However, a sense of selfhood is also formed and continually reformed through musical practices, not least performance. How does this take place? How might the work of practitioners reveal aspects of this process? In what sense (...) is subjectivity performed in and through musical practices? This book explores these questions in relation to a range of artistic research involving contemporary musical practices, drawing on perspectives from performance studies, phenomenology, embodied cognition, and theories of gendered and cultural identity. (shrink)

Law's article begins by restating the classical ANT position that objects do not exist `in themselves' but are the effect of a performative stabilization of relational networks. In addition, these material enactments inevitably have a spatial dimension; they simultaneously establish spatial conditions for objectual identity, continuity, and difference. Space must not be reified as a natural, pre-existing container of the social and the material, but is itself a performance. Moreover, there are multiple forms of spatiality beyond the Euclidean space of (...) regions, and objects may exist and achieve homeomorphism within several different spatial systems. Technologies such as the Zimbabwe Bush Pump present a fluid object which is able to exist and cohere without the presence of fixed boundaries or the permanence of a particular functional definition. The network logic, however, which gravitates towards stability and functionality, tends to exclude and silence this spatial Other. An alternative political ontology is needed which goes beyond the reification of network space in order to give voice to the fluid objects which escape its unidimensional functionality. (shrink)

This study describes metonymic argument alternations, in which a constructional slot can be filled by any of a set of semantic roles that index one another, and provides a diachronic corpus analysis of two such alternations in French. In the Reveal secret frame and other communication frames, the Medium can indexically replace the Speaker and the Topic can indexically replace the Information. A regression analysis shows that while topic for information metonymy is more syntactically and pragmatically restricted, medium for speaker (...) metonymy has seen an increase in usage over time across the frame. This change is related to sociocultural developments and has implications for the study of figurative language and lexical semantic change. While it is well understood that figurative mechanisms such as metonymy affect language change, here it is demonstrated that cultural shifts drive changes in metonymies themselves, with corresponding impacts for linguistic structure. (shrink)

This article considers the changing perceptions, expressions and representations of violence in South Africa post-1994, with particular reference to photography. Following the evolution of the documentary tradition in its relationship to the political history of South Africa, I will suggest that since the release of Nelson Mandela and the first democratic elections in South Africa, photography has taken a new turn, particularly with regard to its representation of violence, which had been its primary iconography up to that watershed moment. I (...) will follow three arguments in my explication of the ways in which violence has both altered South African society and assumed a different place in the collective mind of South Africans living in a country that is politically free but grappling with an ever-rising wave of violent crime. (shrink)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Revisiting Dawkin’s proposal of memes – a piece of thought copied from person to person – raises the question: can narrative, and by extension narratology, be utilized to explore the ‘infecting’, or transferring agent of cultural ideas, identity and the creation of self? Intriguingly, and perhaps even more relevant to the role of emergent models and the shifting divide between engineered and organic constructions, what role does media play in the fabrication of self? This article proposes to examine various attempts (...) to define modes of being using the formative and delimiting lens of narrative. It will investigate the role of media as the carrier agent for memetic modes of being, and their application in creating and sustaining cultural individuation. Jung’s declarative of the collective unconscious and archetypes, as well as Hofstadter’s loops, a common, but neglected field of enquiry that interrogates how memetic transference begins with the stories we tell, will inform the exploration of narrative as a means to define, delineate and bound the self. (shrink)

This article examines the social development of Hong Kong's cultural and national identity since its return from the UK to the People's Republic of China nearly six years ago, focusing on the extent to which Hong Kong students are now inculcated in traditional Chinese music and express their devotion to the PRC through singing the national anthem. Hong Kong music teachers experience conflicts concerning their roles as music teachers and as purveyors of values education. These observations raise fundamental questions concerning (...) the sociopolitical function of values education in the music classroom. (shrink)

According to relativists, people who speak simply of what's ‘true’ are naïve. ‘Whose truth?’ asks the relativist. ‘No claim is ever true, period. What's true is always true for someone. It's true relative to a particular person or culture. There's no such thing as the absolute truth on any issue.’ This sort of relativism is certainly popular. For example, many claim that we are wrong to condemn cultures with moral codes different from our own: their moralities are no less (...) valid. Similarly, some claim that while astrology and Feng Shui might be ‘false’ from a Western, scientific viewpoint, they are ‘true’ when viewed from alternative, New Age points of view. What's ‘true’ and what's ‘false’ ultimately depend on where one is standing. Is this sort of relativism about truth tenable? (shrink)

Evidence suggests that the incidence of research misconduct is not in decline despite efforts to improve awareness, education and governance mechanisms. Two responses to this problem are favoured: first, the promotion of an agent-centred ethics approach to enhance researchers’ personal responsibility and accountability, and second, a change in research culture to relieve perceived pressures to engage in misconduct. This article discusses the challenges for both responses and explains how normative coherence through values alignment might assist. We argue that research (...) integrity and research ethics convey mixed messages, which are likely to contribute to a form of normative confusion. For the successful adoption of an agent-centred approach, normative coherence is needed between the two. To facilitate normative coherence, we propose that research ethics and research integrity be underpinned by a shared set of moral values that can be enacted via codes and guidelines and imbue research environments. Furthermore, to facilitate culture change, the same normative coherence is necessary at all levels of an institution. Only via values alignment between institutional aims, management, institutional practices and researchers can an ethical culture become truly embedded in research institutions. (shrink)

This article considers the changing perceptions, expressions and representations of violence in South Africa post-1994, with particular reference to photography. Following the evolution of the documentary tradition in its relationship to the political history of South Africa, I will suggest that since the release of Nelson Mandela and the first democratic elections in South Africa, photography has taken a new turn, particularly with regard to its representation of violence, which had been its primary iconography up to that watershed moment. I (...) will follow three arguments in my explication of the ways in which violence has both altered South African society and assumed a different place in the collective mind of South Africans living in a country that is politically free but grappling with an ever-rising wave of violent crime. (shrink)

Australia is second only to Israel in being the world’s most culturally diverse nation, based largely on high levels of immigration in the second part of the 20th century. From the 1970s onwards, Australia formally recognized the massive social changes brought about by postwar immigration, and provided legislation to incorporate cultural diversity into everyday lives. One such ‘legislative’ enactment saw the establishment of multicultural broadcasting in Australia, as arguably a world-first, both in its comprehensiveness and diversity. Today, Australia has a (...) public sector corporation, the Special Broadcasting Service, administering five radio services in 68 languages. Also, the Community Radio sector produces multicultural programming in 100 languages through a number of its 330 broadcast and 207 narrowcast stations. This article examines the relationship between radio and its communities. It argues that despite the ‘profile’ of SBS television, radio is much closer to its constituent communities, and therefore plays a greater role in enabling those communities to speak their own histories, beyond the confines of a consensual Anglophile paradigm. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to intervene in debates about the digital and, in particular, framings that imagine the digital in terms of epochal shifts or as redefining life. Instead, drawing on recent developments in digital methods, we explore the lively, productive and performative qualities of the digital by attending to the specificities of digital devices and how they interact, and sometimes compete, with older devices and their capacity to mobilize and materialize social and other relations. In doing so, (...) our aim is to explore the implications of digital devices and data for reassembling social science methods or what we call the social science apparatuses that assemble digital devices and data to ‘know’ the social and other relations. Building on recent work at CRESC on the social life of methods, we recommend a genealogical approach that is alive to the ways in which digital devices are simultaneously shaped by social worlds, and can in turn become agents that shape those worlds. This calls for attending to the specificities of digital devices themselves, how they are varied and composed of diverse socio-technical arrangements, and are enrolled in the creation of new knowledge spaces, institutions and actors. Rather than exploring what large-scale changes can be revealed and understood through the digital, we argue for explorations of how digital devices themselves are materially implicated in the production and performance of contemporary sociality. To that end we offer the following nine propositions about the implications of digital data and devices and argue that these demand rethinking the theoretical assumptions of social science methods: transactional actors; heterogeneity; visualization; continuous time; whole populations; granularity; expertise; mobile and mobilizing; and non-coherence. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida offers his recent commentary on the early career of Paul de Man as an urgent intervention in a discussion he fears is going awry. The most pressing danger he sees in the recent revelations is that they have played into the hands of de Man’s antagonists, who are now ready to denounce the whole of his career and even deconstruction itself. Against such indiscriminate critiques Derrida hurls the epithet: totalitarian. He is attempting to reseize the initiative in the (...) discussion and to reset the terms of the debate. His agenda extends across historical, theoretical, and political questions.He wants to affirm that a radical, indeed absolute break separates the later from the earlier de Man. He also wants to show that the young de man, however firmly committed to fascist ideology and however much an accomplice of the Nazis occupying Belgium, at the same time regularly distanced himself from that ideology and even undermined its meanings. Moreover, Derrida boldly takes up the challenge that these revelations have cast on the intellectual movement he and de Man have shaped. Can deconstruction come to grips with the political and intellectual history of its own leading American proponent? And can deconstruction in the process make a distinctive contribution to the understanding of fascism and intellectuals’ participation in it? John Brenkman is associate professor of English at Northwestern University. He is the author of Culture and Domination . Jules David Law is assistant professor of English at Northwestern University. He is currently working on a book-length study of the metaphors of surface, depth, and reflection in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British prose. (shrink)

The proposed volumes are aimed at a multidisciplinary audience and seek to fill the gap between law, semiotics and visuality providing a comprehensive theoretical and analytical overview of legal visual semiotics. They seek to promote an interdisciplinary debate from law, semiotics and visuality bringing together the cumulative research traditions of these related areas as a prelude to identifying fertile avenues for research going forward. Advance Praise for Law, Culture and Visual Studies This diverse and exhilarating collection of essays explores (...) the many facets both historical and contemporary of visual culture in the law. It opens a window onto the substantive, jurisdictional, disciplinary and methodological diversity of current research. It is a cornucopia of materials that will enliven legal studies for those new to the field as well as for established scholars. It is a 'must read' that will leave you wondering about the validity of the long held obsession that reduces the law and legal studies to little more than a preoccupation with the word. Leslie J Moran Professor of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London Law, Culture and Visual Studies is a treasure trove of insights on the entwined roles of legality and visuality. From multiple interdisciplinary perspectives by scholars from around the world, these pieces reflect the fullness and complexities of our visual encounters with law and culture. From pictures to places to postage stamps, from forensics to film to folklore, this anthology is an exciting journey through the fertile field of law and visual culture as well as a testament that the field has come of age. Naomi Mezey, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., USA This highly interdisciplinary reference work brings together diverse fields including cultural studies, communication theory, rhetoric, law and film studies, legal and social history, visual and legal theory, in order to document the various historical, cultural, representational and theoretical links that bind together law and the visual. This book offers a breath-taking range of resources from both well-established and newer scholars who together cover the field of law's representation in, interrogation of, and dialogue with forms of visual rhetoric, practice, and discourse. Taken together this scholarship presents state of the art research into an important and developing dimension of contemporary legal and cultural inquiry. Above all, Law Culture and Visual Studies lays the groundwork for rethinking the nature of law in our densely visual culture: How are legal meanings produced, encoded, distributed, and decoded? What critical and hermeneutic skills, new or old, familiar or unfamiliar, will be needed? Topical, diverse, and enlivening, Law Culture and Visual Studies is a vital research tool and an urgent invitation to further critical thinking in the areas so well laid out in this collection. Desmond Manderson, Future Fellow, ANU College of Law / Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University, Australia. (shrink)

This article considers an international sample of venture capital and private equity funds to assess the role of law, corruption, and culture in setting fund manager fees. With better legal conditions, fixed fees are lower, carried interest fees are higher, clawbacks are less likely, and share distributions are more likely. Countries with lower levels of corruption have lower fixed fees and higher performance fees, and are less likely to have clawbacks and cash-only distributions. Hofstede's measure of power distance is (...) negatively related to fixed fees and the use of cash-only distributions, but positively related to performance fees and clawbacks. Overall, the data strongly indicate that corruption, culture, and legal settings are much more significant in determining fees than fund manager characteristics and/or market conditions. (shrink)

A myth exists that Jews can embrace the cultural components of Judaism without appreciating the legal aspects of the Jewish tradition. This myth suggests that law and culture are independent of one another. In reality, however, much of Jewish culture has a basis in Jewish law. Similarly, Jewish law produces Jewish culture. Roberta Rosenthal Kwall develops and applies a cultural analysis paradigm to the Jewish tradition that departs from the understanding of Jewish law solely as the embodiment (...) of Divine command. (shrink)

How did the events of the early modern period affect the way gender and the self were represented? This collection of essays attempts to respond to this question by analysing a wide spectrum of cultural concerns - humanism, technology, science, law, anatomy, literacy, domesticity, colonialism, erotic practices, and the theatre - in order to delineate the history of subjectivity and its relationship with the postmodern fragmented subject. The scope of this analysis expands the terrain explored by feminist theory, while its (...) feminist focus reveals that the subject is always gendered - although the terms in which gender is conceived and represented change across history. Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture not only explores the representation of gendered subjects, but in its commitment to balancing the productive tensions of methodological diversity, also speaks to contemporary challenges facing feminism. (shrink)

In this remarkable study, David A. J. Richards combines an interpretive history of culture and law, political philosophy, and constitutional analysis to explain the background, development, and growing impact of two of the most important and challenging human rights movements of our time, feminism and gay rights. Richards argues that both movements are extensions of rights-based dissent, rooted in antebellum abolitionist feminism that condemned both American racism and sexism. He sees the progressive role of such radical dissent as an (...) emancipated moral voice in the American constitutional tradition. He examines the role of dissident African Americans, Jews, women, and homosexuals in forging alternative visions of rights-based democracy. He also draws special attention to Walt Whitman's visionary poetry, showing how it made space for the silenced and subjugated voices of homosexuals in public and private culture. According to Richards, contemporary feminism rediscovers and elaborates this earlier tradition. And, similarly, the movement for gay rights builds upon an interpretation of abolitionist feminism developed by Whitman in his defense, both in poetry and prose, of love between men. Richards explores Whitman's impact on pro-gay advocates, including John Addington Symonds, Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde, and André Gide. He also discusses other diverse writers and reformers such as Margaret Sanger, Franz Boas, Elizabeth Stanton, W. E. B. DuBois, and Adrienne Rich. Richards addresses current controversies such as the exclusion of homosexuals from the military and from the right to marriage and concludes with a powerful defense of the struggle for such constitutional rights in terms of the principles of rights-based feminism. (shrink)

The volume brings together a collection of original papers on some of the main tenets of Joseph Raz's legal and political philosophy: Legal positivism and the nature of law, practical reason, authority, the value of equality, incommensurability, harm, group rights, and multiculturalism. James Griffin and Yael Tamir raise questions concerning Raz's notion of group rights and its application to claims of cultural and political autonomy, while Will Kymlicka and Bernhard Peters examine Raz's theory of multicultural society. Lukas Meyer investigates the (...) applicability of the notion of harm in the intergenerational context. Other papers are devoted to fundamental theoretical tenets of Raz's work. Hillel Steiner and Andrei Marmor examine Raz's account of value pluralism and incommensurability in light of what these authors consider to be goods whose equal distribution must be valued for its own sake. Robert Alexy and Timothy Endicott discuss traditional issues of jurisprudence and legal philosphy with special attention to Raz's contribution. Rüdiger Bittner, Bruno Celano, and J. E. Penner discuss and criticize aspects of Raz's theory of practical reason. Jeremy Waldron presents a critique of Raz's interpretation of authority.This volume concludes with a chapter by Joseph Raz in which he responds to arguments in the foregoing essays. (shrink)

The volume brings together a collection of original papers on some of the main tenets of Joseph Raz's legal and political philosophy: Legal positivism and the nature of law, practical reason, authority, the value of equality, incommensurability, harm, group rights, and multiculturalism.

The observed Taiwanese neonatal professionals' more conservative attitudes than their worldwide colleagues towards end-of-life (EOL) decision making may stem from cultural attitudes toward death in children and concerns about medicolegal liability. Healthcare practice is rooted in local culture and laws; however that should be adjusted to patients' best interests. Improving Taiwanese neonatal professionals' knowledge and competence in EOL care may minimize ethical dilemmas, allow appropriate EOL care decision making, avoid infants' suffering, and ease parents' bereavement grief.

The volume presents a set of invited papers based on analyses of legal discourse drawn from a number of international contexts where often the English language ...

In the context of globalization, the existence of multiple legal cultures appears as a new form of legal pluralism and poses important challenges to jurisprudence and legal theory. On the one hand, the peaceful coexistence of several legal cultures demands a reasonable level of sustainable diversity; on the other hand, the processes of legal convergence can conceal new ways of legal imperialism, by means of legal transplant. In view of this, we understand there is a possibility of building a cosmopolitan (...) law, but this requires a new model of jurisprudence, released from the monist conception of state law, a formula that can go beyond the framework of old 19th century jurisprudence, in order to respond to the new circumstances of interdependence, globalization and multiculturalism. (shrink)

Tolerance implies both renunciation and negotiation, concepts that assume truth as relative. The rationality of religious faith does not acknowledge the existence of a shared truth, but history reminds us that religions could be directed through their social representatives to engage in social realities. This had been the case with Islam, despite the existence of strong structuring of knowledge and the Ulemas who play a vital role in its control and reproduction.

The present paper addresses the mutual relationship between society and law in shaping women’s law in Islam from the perspective of the sociology of law. It analyzes the role of pre-Islamic social, political, and economic structures in the Arabian Peninsula in modeling women’s law and highlights some customary laws which were rejected or revived and integrated in Islamic jurisprudence. In this regard, the paper reviews issues such as polygyny, rights to inheritance, marriage, the process of testimony and acceptable forms of (...) evidence in legal matters, diyya, the exclusion of women from the judiciary and the system of issuing fatwa, natural right of guardianship of underage children after divorce, and regulations related to the veil. Finally, referring to the manner of the Prophet of Islam, the paper suggests that ʿurf can be considered as a source of Islamic legislation alongside other commonly known sources of fiqh. (shrink)

This article examines the debate on whether to analyse ‘honour crimes’ as gender-based violence, or as cultural tradition, and the effects of either stance on protection from and prevention of these crimes. In particular, the article argues that the categorisation of honour-related violence as primarily cultural ignores its position within the wider spectrum of gender violence, and may result in a number of unfortunate side-effects, including lesser protection of the rights of women within minority communities, and the stigmatisation of those (...) communities. At the same time it is problematic to completely dismiss any cultural aspects of violence against women, and a nuanced approach is required which carefully balances the benefits and detriments of taking cultural factors into account. The article examines the issues within the context of the legal response to cases involving honour-related violence, arguing that although the judiciary has in a number of cases inclined towards viewing ‘honour’ as primarily cultural rather than patriarchal, in some cases they have begun to take a more gender-based or ‘mature multiculturalism’ approach. (shrink)

This article challenges stereotypical conceptions of Law and Science as cultural opposites, arguing that English criminal trial practice is fundamentally congruent with modern science’s basic epistemological assumptions, values and methods of inquiry. Although practical tensions undeniably exist, they are explicable—and may be neutralised—by paying closer attention to criminal adjudication’s normative ideals and their institutional expression in familiar aspects of common law trial procedure, including evidentiary rules of admissibility, trial by jury, adversarial fact-finding, cross-examination and the ethical duties of expert witnesses. (...) Effective partnerships between lawyers and forensic scientists are indispensable for integrating scientific evidence into criminal proceedings, and must be renegotiated between individual practitioners on an on-going basis. Fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars with a shared interest in forensic science should dispense with reductive cultural stereotypes of Science and Law. (shrink)

"This edited collection is the result of a workshop organised in March 2014 at the University of Birmingham's Institute for Advanced Studies, entitled: Hybridity: Exploring Power, Social Structures, and Institutions Beyond the Liberal West.--ECIP introduction.

The 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions provides an international policy lens for analysing broad debates on issues of cultural globalization and development. The interdisciplinary contributions in this volume offer a fresh understanding of these key issues whilst examining cultural globalization, which is conceived in terms of artistic expressions and entertainment industries and interpreted anthropologically as the rituals, symbols, and practices of everyday life. The broad gamut of theories, methods, and evidence collected (...) by the editors outlines UNESCO's accomplishments, shortcomings, and future policy prospects. This edited collection has a clear message: The Convention is a useful and important instrument in the debate on cultural diversity, but not broad enough or sufficient to confront major challenges concerning human rights, sustainability, and cultural diversity as a whole. (shrink)

When discussions of scientific method shift from natural sciences to social sciences, we tend to feel that we are turning from strict sciences to subject matters which may have achieved some measure of intellectual competence but which lack the rigor, objectivity and principles of organization found in mature science. This sense of a difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences is connected with questions of the meaning and rôle of laws. To the extent to which social and historical (...) events have not been reduced to laws or perhaps cannot be, the disciplines which study such events are considered immature or imperfect sciences. To the extent to which social sciences do not offer predictions, they are felt to have little application to the solution of actual and immediate problems. When a bridge has to be built over a chasm, the laws of the natural sciences can be brought to bear. But when a treaty is to be drawn, where, it is asked, are the social and historical laws which can be applied to the situation? (shrink)

This book explores the challenges of informed consent in medical intervention and research ethics, considering the global reality of multiculturalism and religious diversity. Even though informed consent is a gold standard in research ethics, its theoretical foundation is based on the conception of individual subjects making autonomous decisions. There is a need to reconsider autonomy as relational-where family members, community and religious leaders can play an important part in the consent process. The volume re-evaluates informed consent in multicultural contexts and (...) features perspectives from Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It is valuable reading for scholars interested in bioethics, healthcare ethics, research ethics, comparative religions, theology, human rights, law and sociology. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 209 Seiten: 357-370.

All major western countries today contain groups that differ in their religious beliefs, customary practices or ideas about the right way in which to live. How should public policy respond to this diversity? In this important new work, Brian Barry challenges the currently orthodox answer and develops a powerful restatement of an egalitarian liberalism for the twenty-first century. Until recently it was assumed without much question that cultural diversity could best be accommodated by leaving cultural minorities free to associate in (...) pursuit of their distinctive ends within the limits imposed by a common framework of laws. This solution is rejected by an influential school of political theorists, among whom some of the best known are William Galston, Will Kymlicka, Bhikhu Parekh, Charles Taylor and Iris Marion Young. According to them, this 'difference-blind' conception of liberal equality fails to deliver either liberty or equal treatment. In its place, they propose that the state should 'recognize' group identities, by granting groups exemptions from certain laws, publicly 'affirming' their value, and by providing them with special privileges or subsidies. In Culture and Equality, Barry offers an incisive critique of these arguments and suggests that theorists of multiculturism tend to misdiagnose the problems of minority groups. Often, these are not rooted in culture, and multiculturalist policies may actually stand in the way of universalistic measures that would be genuinely beneficial. (shrink)

Religious traditions in the United States have been characterized by an ongoing tension between assimilation to the broader culture, typically reflected by mainline Protestant churches, and defiant rejection of cultural incursions, as witnessed by more sectarian movements such as Mormonism and Hassidism. But legal theorist and theologian Cathleen Kaveny contends that religious traditions do not need to swim in either the Current of Openness or the Current of Identity. There is a third possibility, which she calls the Current of (...) Engagement, which accommodates and respects tradition but which recognizes the need to interact with culture to remain relevant and to offer a prophetic critique of social and political and legal and economic practice. In fifty-six brief articles Kaveny illustrates the implications of the Current of Engagement in American public life. The articles are organized into five chapters or sections: Law as Teacher; Religious Liberty and its Limits; Conversations about Culture; Conversations about Belief; and Cases and Controversies. Kaveny provides astonishing insights into a range of hot-button issues: abortion, assisted suicide, government-sponsored torture, contraception, the Ashley Treatment, capital punishment, and the role of religious faith in a pluralistic society. (shrink)

All major western countries today contain groups that differ in their religious beliefs, customary practices or ideas about the right way in which to live. How should public policy respond to this diversity? In this important new work, Brian Barry challenges the currently orthodox answer and develops a powerful restatement of an egalitarian liberalism for the twenty-first century. Until recently it was assumed without much question that cultural diversity could best be accommodated by leaving cultural minorities free to associate in (...) pursuit of their distinctive ends within the limits imposed by a common framework of laws. This solution is rejected by an influential school of political theorists, among whom some of the best known are William Galston, Will Kymlicka, Bhikhu Parekh, Charles Taylor and Iris Marion Young. According to them, this 'difference-blind' conception of liberal equality fails to deliver either liberty or equal treatment. In its place, they propose that the state should 'recognize' group identities, by granting groups exemptions from certain laws, publicly 'affirming' their value, and by providing them with special privileges or subsidies. In Culture and Equality, Barry offers an incisive critique of these arguments and suggests that theorists of multiculturism tend to misdiagnose the problems of minority groups. Often, these are not rooted in culture, and multiculturalist policies may actually stand in the way of universalistic measures that would be genuinely beneficial. (shrink)

How do we achieve social justice? How do we change society for the better? Some would argue that we must do it by changing the laws or state institutions. Others that we must do it by changing individual attitudes. I argue that although both of these factors are important and relevant, we must also change culture. What does this mean? Culture, I argue, is a set of social meanings that shapes and filters how we think and act. Problematic (...) networks of social meanings constitute an ideology. Entrenched ideologies are resilient and are barriers to social change, even in the face of legal interventions. I argue that an effective way to change culture is through social movements and contentious politics, and that philosophy has a role to play in promoting such change. (shrink)

All major western countries today contain groups that differ in their religious beliefs, customary practices or ideas about the right way in which to live. How should public policy respond to this diversity? In this important new work, Brian Barry challenges the currently orthodox answer and develops a powerful restatement of an egalitarian liberalism for the twenty-first century. Until recently it was assumed without much question that cultural diversity could best be accommodated by leaving cultural minorities free to associate in (...) pursuit of their distinctive ends within the limits imposed by a common framework of laws. This solution is rejected by an influential school of political theorists, among whom some of the best known are William Galston, Will Kymlicka, Bhikhu Parekh, Charles Taylor and Iris Marion Young. According to them, this 'difference-blind' conception of liberal equality fails to deliver either liberty or equal treatment. In its place, they propose that the state should 'recognize' group identities, by granting groups exemptions from certain laws, publicly 'affirming' their value, and by providing them with special privileges or subsidies. In Culture and Equality, Barry offers an incisive critique of these arguments and suggests that theorists of multiculturism tend to misdiagnose the problems of minority groups. Often, these are not rooted in culture, and multiculturalist policies may actually stand in the way of universalistic measures that would be genuinely beneficial. (shrink)

Much scholarly attention has recently been devoted to ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) might weaken formal political democracy, but little attention has been devoted to the effect of AI on “cultural democracy”—that is, democratic control over the forms of life, aesthetic values, and conceptions of the good that circulate in a society. This work is the first to consider in detail the dangers that AI-driven cultural recommendations pose to cultural democracy. This Article argues that AI threatens to weaken cultural (...) democracy by undermining individuals’ direct and spontaneous engagement with a diverse range of cultural materials. It further contends that United States law, in its present form, is ill equipped to address these challenges, and suggests several strategies for better regulating culture-mediating AI. Finally, it argues that while such regulations might run afoul of contemporary First Amendment doctrine, the most normatively attractive interpretation of the First Amendment not only allows but encourages such interventions. (shrink)

This book examines the importance of flat ontologies for law and sociolegal theory. Associated with the emergence of new materialism in the humanities and social sciences, the elaboration of flat ontologies challenges the binarism that has maintained the separation of culture from nature, and the human from the nonhuman. Although most work in legal theory and sociolegal studies continues to adopt a non-flat, anthropocentric and immaterial take on law, the critique of this perspective is becoming more and more influential. (...) Engaging the increasing legal interest in flat ontologies, this book offers an account of the main theoretical perspectives, and their importance for law. Covering the work of the five major theorists in the area - Gabriel Tarde, Bruno Latour, Manuel DeLanda, Karen Barad and Graham Harman - the book aims to encourage this interest, as well as to explicate the important problems of and differences between these perspectives. Flat ontologies, the book demonstrates, can offer a valuable new perspective for understanding and thinking about law. This book will appeal mainly to scholars and students in legal theory and sociolegal studies; as well as others with interests in the posthumanist turn in philosophy and social theory. (shrink)