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CentreLGS at Kent Seminar and Events Programme

Past Events 2006/2007

Wednesday 27 September 2006 3pm

Kevät Nousiainen, University of Helsinki, Finland

'Equality policies - mixing politics and rights'

Abstract

My topic is the impact of Europanization and globalization in Finland, which is a small and traditionally relatively egalitarian nation state. Egalitarian societal politics held an important place in Finland between late 1960s to late 1980s. The egalitarian ethos of that period gave rise to gender equality politics which were less oriented to anti-discrimination than social policies. Services and funding needed in order to facilitate women’s presence in the labour market were in the forefront of equality policies, individual taxation and social security were considered important incentives for a more gender equal outcome from paid work. Law and courts had a minor role in gender equality, and anti-discrimination legislation was introduced half-heartedly. In many ways, the outcome in terms of gender equality was good. The situation has changed during the past decades. Due to EU membership and more attention to fundamental and human rights, there has been a rise of a Rights Discourse which is typical for the liberal tradition. The strong nation state tradition prevents issues of difference or discrimination from getting on the agenda, while the former self-evident acceptance of equality of results as a desirable societal aim grows weaker.

and

Rauda Morcos, coordinator of ASWAT, Israel & Palestinian occupied territories

Rauda and her co-founded organisation ASWAT (Voices) won the 2006 Felipa de Souza Award from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

'Activism & Palestinian Gay Women'

Abstract

 

The mission of Aswat's initiative aims to allow Palestinian gay women accessibility to self-expression. Through Aswat's programming, women are able to discuss our gender and sexuality, define and redefine multiple forms of feminism, and address conflicts between national and gender identities, as Palestinians living inside Israel and in the occupied territories. Aswat's group provides a safe space for Palestinian women who identify themselves as lesbians, bi-sexual, transsexual, transgender or inter-sexual. Through Aswat, women are able to break their individual silence, engage in on going dialogues, and discus issues that concern their daily reality. Moreover, in ASWAT, we are able to educate ourselves and each other about women's rights, lesbianism and gender identity issues. Raising our awareness of such issues will enable us to educate the community about the realities of lesbianism, thereby contributing to a greater understanding and tolerance in the Arab-Palestinian community. Finally, Aswat strives to initiate social change in order to meet the needs of one of the most silenced and oppressed communities in Israel by reaching out to Palestinian and Local communities in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. In addition, we network with other like minded institutes, groups and individuals in order to combat the multilayered discrimination Palestinian gay women face and to promote women's rights and improve the status of all women in the Palestinian society.

 

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Wednesday 4th October 2006 3:30pm

Anu Pylkkänen, University of Helsinki, Finland

‘Constructing Gendered Personhood in the Finnish Biolaw’

Abstract

The paper deals with the current Finnish debates on medically assisted procreation in the context of the national and European biolaw. Since the 1990s, the human rights approach has influenced the national law in a fundamental way by focusing increasingly on persons as rights owners. Self-determination and personal autonomy as well as protection of privacy are underlined more than previously. However, in the area of assisted reproduction, societal and moral considerations still seem to be prioritised over the protection of individual human rights. The paper will analyse the debates in relation to European biolaw (for example, the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine and other related texts)on the one hand, and the national cultural context on the other hand, in which the position of individuals have but recently been focused on over the broad societal goals (social welfare) and communal values and structures. Since there is no unitary European understanding of concepts such as 'family' or 'equitable access' to medically assisted procreation, it is necessary to look more closely at the national regulation of these issues. It will be argued that both in the European and in the national biolaw, the absence of gender and sexuality in the legal language seriously undermines their promise of protecting the human rights of each individual over any other interests. The way in which the 'person' has been construed as one giving the informed consent clearly connotes to unencumbered individuals.

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Monday 9th October 2006 (4 pm)

Chris Beasley, University of Adelaide, Australia

‘Envisaging a New Politics for an Ethical Future: Beyond trust, care and generosity towards an ethic of social flesh’

Abstract

In times like these, a new ethico-political ideal is required to contest the adequacy of dominant understandings of social interaction and to allow us to imagine social alternatives. This paper initially focuses upon various vocabularies of social interconnection intended to offer a challenge to the ethos of ‘atomistic individualism’ associated with neo-liberalism—in particular, languages of trust (and relatedly respect), care and a number of associated terminologies like ‘responsibility’, ‘vulnerability’, ‘the gift’ and ‘corporeal generosity’.

These vocabularies assert a shared concern that atomistic individualism undermines the social fabric required to hold us all together and advocate the development of social virtues, most often either trust or care, as ways past a perceived contemporary crisis around the maintenance of social connectedness. Despite significant differences between them, such languages and their associated political agendas reinstate aspects of social hierarchy that mimic neo-liberal premises about autonomous individuals. It is asserted that the limits of the approaches outlined are related to an inadequate conceptualisation of the relation between the socio-political and embodiment—an inadequacy that the paper wishes to redress.

Mapping and analysis of existing alternative stances leads to a second intention, the attempt to develop an ‘other’ ethico-political starting place for thinking critically about politics, interconnection and sociality. An account of an ethical ideal called ‘social flesh’ is presented to ground the possibility for a new, more egalitarian politics. By drawing attention to shared embodied reliance, to mutual reliance, it offers a decided challenge to neo-liberal conceptions of the self and social relations.

 

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Wednesday 18th October 2006 (4 pm)

Andrew Sharpe, Keele University, UK

‘Endless Sex: The Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Persistence of a Legal Category’

Abstract

This paper challenges a view of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 as involving an unequivocal shift from the concept of sex to the concept of gender in law’s understanding of the distinction between male and female. While the Act does move in the direction of gender, and ostensibly in an obvious way through abandoning surgical preconditions for legal recognition, it will be argued that the Act retains and deploys the concept of sex. Moreover, it will be argued that the concept of sex retained is not merely an anatomical understanding, but sex in a biological sense. In this respect the Gender Recognition Act can be viewed as embodying a tension between gender and sex. Further, it is contended that this tension is explicable in terms of irresolution of contrary legal desires to reproduce the gender order and to insulate marriage and heterosexuality from homosexuality in the moment of reform.

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Thurday 2 November 2006 (4pm)

Reg Graycar, University of Sydney, Australia

'Law Reform: What's in it for Women?'

Abstract

Have formal legal change processes been of value to women and other disadvantaged groups? In a published discussion, Jenny Morgan and I have suggested that the processes of law reform agencies might make them particularly unable to respond effectively to issues that affect women and others who have historically been legal ‘outsiders’. First, we look at the ways in which law reform questions are asked and answered, and at the generally narrow way in which ‘terms of reference’ are often framed or constructed. Next, we consider the overemphasis on formal outcomes at the expense of attention to process. Finally, we examine the rather problematic relationship that formal law reform agencies have had, at least at times, with research, empirical data and socio-legal methods. Broadly, we argue that insufficient attention is paid to the real lives of those who interact with, and are impacted upon by, the law and legal system. We conclude with a reminder that changes to laws can only ever constitute a small part of any profound social change. Yet for all its faults, we imagine that women will continue to turn to the law, as they have for some time now, as one (albeit limited) forum for addressing women’s disadvantage.

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Friday 3 November 2006 (6pm)

Film Screening: ‘Bend it like Beckham’ (Director: Gurinder Chadha)
http://www.popmatters.com/film/reviews/b/bend-it-like-beckham.shtml

A ‘warm up’ for Sara Ahmed’s talk on Wednesday 8th November

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Tuesday 7 November 2006 (4pm)

Julia Davidson, Westminster University, UK

‘Child victims of family abuse’

Abstract

This talk will describe ongoing research undertaken on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Child Abuse Investigation Command. The research is at an early stage and seeks to explore perceptions and experience of the investigative process amongst young (aged 8-17) victims of intra-familial sexual abuse and asks what can be done to improve access to justice for this group. Few researchers have sought the views of young victims given: access; methodological and ethical difficulties associated with the work.

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Wednesday 8 November 2006 (6pm)

University of Kent’s Occasional Distinguished Speaker Series:

Sara Ahmed, Prof. of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, UK

‘The Promise of Happiness’

More Information

(Place: Grimond Lecture Theatre 2)

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Wednesday 15 November 2006 (4pm)

Two Speakers:

Miriam Smith, Trent University, Ontario, Canada

'Subverting Cross-National Comparison: Queer Organizing in Canada and the U.S. from the 'National' to the Urban'

Abstract

In this presentation, I will present ideas from my current manuscript in progress, which compares LGBT human rights policies in the U.S. and Canada.
The research aims to explain the substantial divergence between Canada and the U.S. in the extent of human rights protections for LGBT people, looking beyond political-cultural explanations to focus on the political institutional factors that create obstacles and opportunities for LGBT social movements. However, the research also asks what difference law makes in the everyday world of LGBT organizing. I explore the impact of constitutional legal protection (or lack of it) on queer organizing at the urban level, comparing queer community organizing in Toronto and New York City and asking how legal changes have made a difference (or not) in grass roots political mobilization and community action. I suggest that traditional cross-national comparisons of policy differences and legal changes must be tempered with systematic attention to the impact of the rescaling of the spaces of politics in the global era.

&

Judy Fudge, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Canada

'Substantive Equality, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Limits to Redistribution'

Abstract

This paper seeks to discover why constitutionally guaranteed equality rights have had a limited redistributive impact in Canada. It begins by reviewing different conceptions of equality, identifying the conception that is dominant within the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, and illustrating how this conception is not conducive to redistribution. It then shifts to Newfoundland v NAPE, a 2004 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in which a unanimous Court upheld as a demonstrably justified limitation on equality rights legislation enacted by the Newfoundland government that overrode the pay equity agreement the government had negotiated with the unions representing women health-care workers. As this case proceeded through the courts, the national press reported a debate amongst Canadian elites about whether it was legitimate for the courts to issue decisions that interfered with the ability of elected governments to determine their spending priorities. The discussion of Newfoundland v NAPE emphasizes four themes in the decision that block or impede the redistributive potential of substantive equality – private debts versus public obligations, dignity versus distribution, fiscal crisis, and the separation of powers – which function as formidable hurdles for the transposition of a conception of substantive equality that is strongly redistributive into Canadian jurisprudence.

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Tuesday 21 November 2006 (6pm)

Film Screening & Discussion: ‘The End of Second Class’
© 2006 Intervention Video Inc., (90 min., DVD)

Producer / Director: Nancy Nicol (Visual Arts at York University in Toronto)

Audience Choice Award: Elle Flanders Documentary Award for Best Documentary
Inside Out Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival, Toronto, May 2006

CentreLGS visitor Miriam Smith contributed to this film as a research collaborator and she will be present at the screening and discussion.

‘The End of Second Class’ is a powerful documentary that traces the debate on same-sex marriage in Canada up to the passage of equal marriage legislation on July 20, 2005. The story is told from the perspective of three couples from B.C., Ontario and Quebec, and the lawyers and activists who sought to uphold the Charter Rights of lesbians and gay men. This in-depth documentary vividly paints the context in which gays and lesbians fought to overcome a history of discrimination and second class status and persuade both the courts and the government of Canada to affirm their right to marry. For more information on this and other films by the same director see here: http://www.yorku.ca/nnicol/documentary/index.html

Please let us know if you will attend and would like to share in the order of Indian take-away food we intend to order!

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Thursday 30 November 2006 (4pm)

Sari Kouvo, Rule of Law, Human Rights and Gender Adviser to the EU Special Representative for Afghanistan in Kabul (Afghanistan) / Göteborg University, Sweden.

'But We Expected Rejection! Some Remarks about Feminist Perspectives on International Law'

Abstract

The seminar will present ongoing research in the project Sexualisering av det offentliga rummet – Problematiseringar kring rätt, marknad och kropp (Eng. Sexualizing the Public Space – A Critical Analysis about Law, Market and the Body). In this project three researchers, focusing respectively on legal theory, criminal law and international law, attempt to analyze, first, the use and the limits of a gender perspective in ‘feminist’ legal research and, second, the interaction between different legal frameworks (international, European and Swedish) and the impact of that interaction on how certain gendered phenomena are construed. My responsibility in this project is, first, to analyze how ‘gender’ and ‘gender perspectives’ have been used in feminist scholarship on international human rights law and, second, to take a closer look at how feminist scholarship has contributed and related to the development of certain thematic issues (especially ‘trafficking’). The seminar will in particular focus on approaches to ‘gender’ within feminist international law scholarship and questions will be raised about how these approaches relate to the last five years’ changes in global politics.

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Tuesday 5 December 2006 (4pm)

Sue Wilkinson, Loughborough University & Celia Kitzinger, University of York

'Where Now For Marriage Equality?'

Abstract

We are a British same-sex couple, legally married in Canada in 2003. Earlier this year, with the support of Liberty, we brought a High Court case seeking a declaration of the validity of our marriage ? as a marriage, not as a civil partnership - in this country. Our lawyers argued that any failure to recognise the validity of our marriage would constitute a breach of our rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (Articles 8, 12 and 14). We lost our case. The judge agreed that we are treated differently from a heterosexual couple, and that this constitutes discrimination. But he said that this discrimination is justified - in order to protect the traditional definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, primarily to produce children. Drawing on English and European case law, he also ruled that a same-sex couple does not constitute 'a family'. We will discuss our case, including our experience of the law and the media, contextualising it in relation to debates about marriage and relationship recognition within (and beyond) the LGBT communities internationally. We will address the ways in which the goal of marriage equality is both assimilationist and transgressive, and will consider ways forward for achieving social and political change.

For more information and a link to the case see: http://www.equalmarriagerights.org/

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Wednesday 6th December 2006 (4 pm)

Mary Evans, University of Kent, UK

‘Academic Feminism in the Twenty First Century’

Abstract

Feminism 'entered' the academy in the 1970s and we can look back on over thirty years in which the content of a number of disciplines has been transformed by feminism's engagement with diverse subject matters. This talk therefore begins with a celebration of that work. But what I would like to do is to consider what seems to me to be a problematic future for academic feminism, given the direction of some theoretical work in feminism and the culture of universities themselves. Essentially, what I shall suggest is that the de-construction of the term 'woman' and the culture of collusion in universities are both such as to make it difficult for feminism to continue to be as radically innovative and genuinely enlightening as it was in the 1970s.
I hope that the talk will not be just a walk down memory lane but very much an opportunity for us to think about the present status of academic feminism.

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Thursday 11 January 2007  (4pm)

Yvonne Mokgoro, South African Constitutional Court Judge

Equality on the Basis of Sexual Orientation:  Approaches of the Constitutional Court of South Africa

Throughout her legal and academic career Yvonne Mokgoro’s focus has been human rights, customary law and the impact of law on society generally and on women and children specifically. She has served extensively as a resource person for non-governmental and community-based organisations and initiatives.

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Wednesday 31 January 2007  (3pm)

Maki Kimura, Open University

Pain, shame and melancholia - are subjects always wounded?

Abstract

‘Comfort Women’ refers to women who were sexually exploited by the Japanese Imperial Military during the Second World War. These women were originally from the former Japanese colonies and occupied areas such as Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, China, Indonesia, as well as Japan itself. Since their ordeal became widely known in the 1990s through their testimonies, one of the central foci of this issue has been the historical validity and authenticity of women’s narratives (testimonies). Many feminist have maintained that their narratives can uncover the ‘true’ historical past due to their position as ‘victim’ or as the marginalised. In the previous research I conducted, I challenged such a naïve reading of narratives and argued, following the work of Judith Butler and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak that their testimonies should rather be dealt with as the site of subject-formation where agency concurrently emerges. It was these women’s cry of pain which enabled them to become subjects, as many feminist identified with their pain. However, a question remains – is pain sharable?

Drawing on the example of ‘Comfort Women’ debate, this work-in-progress paper will explore the insharability of pain and the role of shame. I will argue that it is shame in being unable to share pain that brings about the subjuctivation of ‘Comfort Women’, as well as the subjuctivation of these feminists who are active in supporting these women. It will also examine the nationalist’s discourse to refute such wounded subjects and their attempt to create ‘happier’ subjects.

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Religion and Law Seminar Series: Islam and Its Feminisms

Wednesday 7 February 2007  Afternoon Workshop, (2–5 pm)

Samia Bano (Reading University): Islamic Arbitration and the Privatisation of Family Law: Justice under the 'shadow' of law?

Abstract

This paper draws upon doctrinal research to explore the rise of a new kind of faith–based, unofficial and, privatized forms of matrimonial dispute resolution process(es) emerging within Muslim communities in Britain. Framed as sites upon which family law matters are resolved according to the principles of Sharia and Muslim jurisprudence Shariah councils in Britain have developed frameworks that are characterized by specific cultural and religious norms and values. This mobilisation of communities challenges the hegemonic power of state law and unsettles the multicultural project in its attempt to reconfigure social and legal discourse in matters of family law. More specifically this paper draws upon the experiences of British Pakistani Muslim women using Shariah councils to resolve matrimonial disputes and questions whether this has led to forms of (in)justice under the shadow of law? In doing so it critiques liberal feminist notions of gender equality, autonomy and choice which constructs Muslim women's agencies in rather categorical terms - either as ‘free will’ or ‘force’ and. constructs the desire of Muslim women to use religious bodies to resolve matrimonial disputes as ‘social coercion’ and ‘false consciousness’.

Instead this paper argues that Muslim women’s capacities and possibilities for autonomy, agency and choice within the formations of social and religious legal pluralism cannot be understood within the dichotomous variables of insider/outsider, muslim/non muslim and state law/ religious law. Instead we must draw upon the narratives of the women themselves and embrace notions of complexity, difference and transformations to better understand their motivations and experiences of using religious bodies to resolve matrimonial disputes. This research demonstrates how identities are fluid, multiple and changing and therefore cultural, religious and legal diversity must be understood to be in flux, contested and open to change. More importantly it challenges the claim that all Muslim cultural and religious norms inherently render women powerless and draws upon interview data to illustrate how Muslim women themselves are negotiating the outcome of their disputes. And in transcending the ethnocentric construction of Muslim female identity as victims the women in this study were able to redefine what it means to be a Muslim woman and adjust their participation with these bodies according to the social contexts in which they were situated. Moreover this process is interactional, negotiated and shaped by the specificities of the complex realities of the women’s lives. Hence the real conflicts are not so much the theoretical debates on multiculturalism and feminism or state law versus sharia but between power and how the competing voices for power and representation (including liberal feminists) ignore the narratives of Muslim women and therefore fail to understand the internal voices of dissent and change. The task of exploring the multiple ways in which British Pakistani Muslim women engage with religious dispute resolution bodies means that it is necessary to engage with more fluid and contradictory understandings- complexity, difference and ambiguity open up the conceptual spaces for us to explore the entanglements of law, gender, community, diaspora and identity and, the contestation over cultural and religious meanings.

Qudzia Mirza (University of East London): Interrogating Islamic Equality

Abstract

Islamic feminism is predicated upon the belief that gender equality can be achieved within an explicitly religious discursive framework. As such there is a certain optimism associated with developments taking place in the contemporary field of Islamic feminism and the implications these developments have for law. In particular, theoretical developments in the area of Qur’anic exegesis have led to feminists heralding such developments as having the capacity to effect radical change in the reconfiguration of gendered rights in Islamic law. This paper will explore the notion of gender equality that is currently utilised in Islamic feminism, and the implications this has for the institution of gendered legal rights. The paper will also offer a critique of Islamic feminism and its reliance on the discourse of authenticity, a methodological prop that lies at the heart of current interpretations of Islamic norms.

Joint workshop with Kent Law School

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Thursday 1 March 2007 (4pm)

Sir Terence Etherton, Chair of the Law Commission

Law Reform, and the way in which Academic Centres such as CentreLGS can contribute

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Wednesday 7 March 2007  (4 pm)

Hilary Sommerlad, Leeds Law School

Becoming a Solicitor: changing modalities of exclusion and assimilation

Abstract

The processes of detraditionalisation which have transformed wider society have also affected the solicitors’ profession. They are visible in changes in solicitors’ public image, their dress, the rhetoric of diversity and above all the profession’s demographic profile. And the increasingly diverse nature of the law student body suggests that these processes will continue. Yet other evidence indicates that despite these changes the profession, and especially the corporate sector, continues to practise social closure both by direct exclusion, through its control over training contracts, and through the processes of professional socialization trainee solicitors undergo. This talk will report on ongoing research into the processes of exclusion and enforced assimilation to ‘bleached professionalism’, to discuss these issues.

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Wednesday 14 March 2007 (4pm)

Melanie Randall, University of Western Ontario, Canada

Feminist Legal Theory and The Missing Female Sexual Agent

Abstract

There is an inherent difficulty for feminism in constructing richer accounts of women’s agency. This challenge lies in how to notice and attend to expressions of agency while simultaneously holding firmly in view the contexts of inequality and their attendant constraints on agency.
To some extent this can be seen as the obverse of another and well recognized challenge which inheres in feminist accounts of women's lives. That challenge is found in the tension between describing the nature, full force, and effects of inequality and domination, without inadvertently pathologizing those who suffer it as entirely constituted by their victimization.
In this paper I hope to contribute to thinking about what a more fully developed feminist conception of women’s agency would entail, with a specific focus on the complications involved in developing a positive account of women’s sexual agency -- what Katherine Franke has described as the need to theorize “saying yes.”

 

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Tuesday 20 March 2007 (6 pm)
Eliot Lecture Theatre 2

Diane Otto, Director, International Human Rights Law Program, Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH), Faculty of Law, The University of Melbourne, Australia

Making Sense of the UN's ‘Zero Tolerance of Sex’in Peacekeeping Economies

Abstract

This talk examines the effects of the policy of zero-tolerance of sex between peacekeepers and local people, promulgated by the Secretary-General's Bulletin on October 9, 2003. In the name of protecting women and children, the UN Secretary-General has chosen rigid simplicity over nuanced recognition of the myriad ways that peacekeepers influence the economies of survival with which they interact. The talk focuses on one particular set of practices, described as 'survival' sex, that are included in the Bulletin's prohibitions. The paper argues that the UN's repressive sexual code sets back the projects of realizing women's and children's rights, and reinforces conservative hierarchies of gender and sexuality, and imperial hierarchies of status and wealth. Among its productive effects, the Bulletin's focus on sex diverts attention from the obligations of the international community to ensure that global inequalities in wealth and opportunity are addressed, and that humanitarian assistance leads to tangible improvements in the lives of its recipients.

Joint seminar with the KLS International Law Seminar Series

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Honour Crimes Workshop

Wednesday 21 March 2007  (2.30 pm)
Shirley Barlow room Eliot (near CentreLGS corridor)

Shirin Rai & Sheheen Ali (Warwick University): Legacies of Common Law: 'Crimes of Honour' in India and Pakistan

Abstract

Through a comparative analysis of crimes of ‘honour’ in India and Pakistan and an examination of appellate judgments from the two countries, we reflect upon how a rights-based discourse of modern nation states forms a complex terrain where citizenship of the state and membership of communities are negotiated and contested through the unfolding of complex legal rituals in both sites. We identify two axes to explore the complex nature of the interaction between modernity and tradition. The first is that of governance of polities (state statutory governance bodies) and the second axis is the governance of communities (caste panchayats and jirgahs). We conclude that the diverse legacies of common law in India and Pakistan frame an anxious relationship with the categories of tradition and modern, which inhabit spaces in between the governance of polities and the governance of communities, and constantly reconstitute the relationship between the local, national
and the global.

 

Lynn Welchman (SOAS, University of London): 'Honour': Crimes, paradigms and violence against women.

Abstract

This presentation will focus on the dynamics and the findings of the SOAS/INTERIGHTS' project on 'Strategies of response to crimes of 'honour'', which ran from 1999-2004 and resulted in a volume of papers by activists and academics in countries from South Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. The study was published in 2005 by Zed Press. The presentation will focus on issues explored by and among partners in the project, including issues of naming, strategies of resistance in different countries, the prospects for and building of alliances, and the complexities of working on the issue both in varied national contexts and in the global context, particularly as it developed post September 11th 2001.

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Thursday 3 May 2007 (2-5 pm)

Room EX9, Kent Law School

Workshop: ‘Sociable Sex’

Antu Sorainen, PhD, Christina Institute for Women’s Studies, University of
Helsinki

Queer Decency: Internet-pornography, paedophilia and child sex panic in Finland
In 2004, the Ministry of Education in Finland published a memorandum that focused on the means to protect children from the media violence. In November 2006, a new law was passed on blocking the internet from the distribution of child-pornography. In two years time, from 2004 to 2006, the Finnish politics and public discussion on children’s protection shifted almost exclusively from violence to child-pornography and to pedophilia in the internet. In autumn 2006, the Finnish society faced “a child sex panic”: an internet-petition against the Dutch PNVD- party raised more than 165,000 names, of a total population of 5,2 million Finnish citizens. At the same time, an internet petition against the prohibition of the assisted insemination for self-reliant women and lesbian couples raised only 11 452 names. Lee Edelman has argued that “reproductive futurism” only permits one side and imposes an ideological limit on political discourse as such. How does this edelmanian “reproductive futurism” work in Finnish legislation and public discussions on paedophilia?

John Binnie, Manchester University & David Bell, Leeds University     

Mundane Spaces of Social and Anti-social Sex

Our focus in this paper is exploratory, and works around the idea of the mundane in relation to sexuality, asking whether transgression has become mundane and lost its impact, and discussing queer in relation to sociality and the ordinary. Queer has often been seen as being associated with spectacle.—as in pride events, or camp -- but here we want to reclaim the understated banality of geographical (and other) work on queer. The paper will critically review the theorizing of sex in relation to the social, sociality and sociability, arguing that sex now seems invisible in queer theory -- and that the turn to the social risks marginalizing it even further. At the same time, however, new alliances and debates (eg around transgender, or polyamory versus promiscuity) provide new ways to think the sexual, the social and the anti-social. We will explore the ‘despectacularizing’ or ‘mundanizing’ of spaces such as gay villages or pride events, questioning their continuing role and impact, before moving on to consider constructions of ‘anti-social spaces of sex’ and ‘queer banalities’.

Sasha Roseneil, Leeds University

Sociability, Sexuality, Self: Personal Life in the Early 21st Century


In the West, at the start of the 21st century,more and more people are spending longer periods of their lives outside conventional family and heterosexual relations. The conjugal couple and the modern family formation are increasingly fragile, and the normative grip of the sexual and gender order which has underpinned these institutions is weakening. In this context, much that matters to people in their personal lives increasingly takes place beyond the boundaries of “the family”, within networks of friends, between partners who are not bound together “as family”, and in inner worlds of self-experience. This paper proposes a new way of understanding recent social change in personal life. Its focus is on three dimensions of personal life - sociability, sexuality and self - the relationship between them, and transformations in their social organization. Engaging with debates in contemporary European social theory, my argument is two-fold: ontological and socio-historical. Firstly, I suggest that an adequate understanding of intimacy and personal life must be psycho-social, not just psychological or sociological, as most work on the subject has been. Drawing on psychoanalysis and feminist philosophy, and contra recent sociological theorists of individualization, I propose a model of subjectivity as both fundamentally relational and individual. Secondly, on the basis of research carried out in the UK, I argue that a set of queer, or counter-heteronormative, relationship practices are emerging amongst those at the cutting edge of social change: the prioritization of friendship, the de-centring of sexual/ love relationships and the forming of non-conventional sexual partnerships.

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Wednesday 16 May 2007 (4pm)

Eliot Common Room

Clare McGlynn, Durham University

Pornography, Harm and Exploitation: starting a conversation about Destricted and ‘extreme’ pornography

It seems that we may be starting to talk about pornography again. The ‘porn wars’ of the 1980s did appear to dissipate when we moved through the 1990s. It was almost as if our perceived ability to do something about pornography, or enthusiasm for the debate (fight?), faded in the face of the increasing ubiquity and mainstreaming of porn. But the conversation is starting again and change is afoot, in the UK at least, as a result of two developments.

The first is the Government’s proposals to criminalize the possession of ‘extreme’ pornography; proposals which have been greeted with acclaim and derision in equal measure, but do at least demand engagement with pornography. The second development is the increasing liberalism of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) in awarding films and DVDs an ‘18’ certificate. What concerns us is that this latter development, particularly the arrival of the film Destricted, has taken place largely without reference to issues of harm and exploitation, especially to women, in contrast to the debates regarding ‘extreme’ pornography. To be more specific, in our view, one of the short films which make up the compilation that is Destricted, is harmful, exploitative, misogynistic and the award of an ‘18’ certificate to this film, with the attendant legitimization and acceptability this brings, renders the harm of that film harmless.

This paper, therefore, hopes to start a conversation on Destricted that includes the concepts of harm and exploitation. Such a conversation may shed valuable light on society’s views and approaches to the whole range of pornographic material, including the ‘extreme’ material which is the subject of the current legislative proposals and which will also be examined.

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Wednesday 30 May 2007 (3-5pm)

Room EX 8, Kent Law School

Workshop: Queer Agency, State Agency: Bodily Discipline, Laws and Beyond

Corie Hammers, Department of Criminal Justice, Social and Political Science & the Gender and Women’s Studies Program, Armstrong Atlantic State University, USA

Making Space for an Agentic Sexuality:  The Examination of Lesbian/Queer Bathhouses

This paper will briefly outline the history, philosophy and structure of two lesbian/queer bathhouses, both of which self-describe as feminist and queer projects. Using interview data, I examine bathhouse participants' experiences, focusing primarily on elements of spatial praxis, sexual agency and the ways in which the space works to hinder and "discipline" certain behaviors. Corporeal dimensions of agency and power are highlighted, in that many individuals discovered the necessary "tools" with which to navigate their own bodily boundaries, find bodily acceptance, navigate the bathhouse space and strive for sexual articulation, such that a more complicated depiction of  "sexual agency"

is provided. Finally, both feminist and queer theory will be utilized to make "sense of the space," and the ways in which such venues provide fertile grounds for illuminating the connections between feminism and queer pespectives when it comes to body issues and notions of empowerment.

Dean Spade, Social Science Research Council Sexuality and Policy Fellow at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, New York, USA

Consolidating the Gendered Citizen: Trans Survival, Bureaucratic Power, and the War on Terror

This paper examines the matrix of conflicting administrative policies that govern gender reclassification in the United States.Examining these policies in the context of the history of the use of identity documents for surveillance in the US and the increasing standardization of identity documentation practices stemming from the War on Terror,the paper highlights the significance of surveillance and identity documentation practices to trans survival.It argues that state administrative policies may be as significant a danger, although less discussed, as"hate crimes" against trans people, and suggests a broading of trans political agendas to more fully encompass concerns about various forms of state gender coercion.

Julie Greenberg, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego, USA

Sex Matters: Intersexuality, Transsexuality and the Law

Professor Greenberg's book, "Sex Matters," which will be published by NYU Press in 2008, examines the critical life-altering effects of legal sex determination rulings on intersex and transsex persons. During her talk, Professor Greenberg will discuss these legal precedents and explore how intersex activists can best frame their arguments to accomplish their goal of ending state-sanctioned discriminatory practices. The intersex activist movement has reached a critical crossroads in its development and is in the process of determining whether to align itself with feminist, gay and lesbian identity movements or instead frame its claims based upon a disability rights model. Professor Greenberg will discuss these two approaches and explore the advantages and disadvantages of each approach on intersex persons and other sex and gender nonconformists.

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Wednesday 13 June 2007 (4-6pm)

Room Ex9, Kent Law School

'Reading Cultural Pluralism'

Margaret Davies, Professor of Law, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia

Cultural Pluralism and the Criminal Law

This seminar will summarise and reflect on a paper written by myself and Reetvinder Randhawa concerning the so-called ‘cultural defence’ in the context of the law of provocation. We consider some recent Australian provocation cases where cultural difference has been raised as a form of ‘cultural defence’. The term ‘cultural defence’ refers to instances in which an accused of a culture or religion other than the mainstream in a western society uses aspects of that culture or religion as a basis for claiming differential treatment in establishing a defence under the criminal law. The objectives of our paper are first, to consider these issues in the context of intra-cultural pluralism or an anti-essentialist understanding of culture, especially as this relates to gender-differentiated readings of culture; second, to reflect on the role of law in constructing and mediating notions of cultural difference; and third, to raise some issues about the subject-law nexus.

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Davina Bhandar, Assistant Professor, Canadian Studies, Trent University, Canada

"My Son/Daughter the Fanatic: Regulating Familial Spaces and Sites of National Security"

In this paper I investigate the ways in which national security agendas and debates regarding multicultural tolerance are being resituated in and entrenched through the site of the family or through an extension of contemporary "domopolitics" (Walters 2004). I note the shift in familial relations by examining the domestic multicultural representations of masculinity and femininity in the recent past. I examine the public discourse of how feminine and masculine identities are being rearticulated, imagined and constituted in the shifting agenda of multiculturalism in Britain and Canada. In particular the international War on Terror, which has taken the project of rescuing women as its core mission, is refashioning this rescue mission within the domestic sphere.

This project is a comparative analysis of the use of multicultural discourse in the context of family law, the public act of veiling, and its regulation, between Canada and the United Kingdom.  I focus on the current context of the Task Force on Integration and Cohesion announced in 2004 in the United Kingdom.

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Tuesday 26 June 2007 (4-5.30pm)

Ruby Greene, Lecturer in Reproductive Health, Keele University

Queh Queh: The cascading of cultural norms related to gender power and Sexuality 

Queh Queh is an African Guyanese ceremony conducted shortly before a wedding.

Originating during slavery, it is mainly a ritual of jollification consisting of dancing with dimmed lights, the beating of drums and drinking of alcohol. It has the additional benefit of providing culturally approved information about gender roles, the erotic and gender identities, through folk songs in the local dialect. Although sex education is not the stated purpose of Queh Queh this researcher posits that it is an integral part of the ritual and reflects socio-sexual values of the particular culture.

This ceremony is examined in the context of the negative perceptions associated with African Caribbean sexuality in the era of HIV/AIDS. Available statistics suggest that men and women in the Caribbean are disproportionately affected by the disease. Accompanying accusations of loose morals by both people from other ethnic groups and cultures is a high level of stigmatization. Similar associations have been made regarding Queh Queh.

In examining this method of delivering sex education, this paper uses feminist theory, related to agency and empowerment, to explore cultural messages related to gender roles and gender identities and the erotic. It also explains the peculiar sexuality related power relations between African-Caribbean women and men.

The paper concludes that the cascading of intergenerational sexual scripts, which are internalized and reflected in culturally acceptable sexual behaviours, is effectively achieved through Queh Queh, and that lessons for the delivery of formal contemporary sex education can be learnt from this.

 

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