CentreLGS Conference: Theorising Intersectionality
Saturday 21 - Sunday 22 May 2005 @ Keele University
Abstracts:
To view participants abstracts, please click on the alphabetical
links below (abstracts are listed by surname), or download
the full list of abstracts in Microsoft Word format.
A - B
| C - D
| E - G
| H - J
| K | L
- P | Q
- R | S
| T - V
| W - Z
Kerry Taylor
York University, Canada
Paper Title: Circumcision, Female Genital "Mutilation"
and Legal Subjectivity
Abstract: Law’s treatment of genital
interventions retains and reinforces sex/gender/sexuality
barriers, and ensures that bodies remain distinct, "normal"
and regulated. Circumcision and female genital "mutilation"
invoke different understandings about the "essence"
of the body and the "nature" of subjectivity.
Comparisons show how law reflects and reifies tensions
between the real and the symbolic. Genitalia also manifest
our cultural interpretations of "who we are."
Law’s treatment of female genital "mutilation"
illustrates how our failure to be critical of the way
in which law imposes its language, its symbols onto our
realities, our bodies and our relationships, allows it
to abstract, objectify, homogenize and disempower women.
Similarly, those who seek to legally prohibit circumcision
want law to affix one particular meaning/identity to the
male body. The two practices show us how if we choose
to "express" ourselves in ways not (presently)
accepted by law - as contested, contingent and intersecting
- law responds based on its cultural and (arguably) psychoanalytic
biases. I will question whether (and for whom) law offers
the possibility of multiple interpretations of our bodies,
whether it can create and/or preserve spaces where meaning
is pregnant, fluid and diverse - where we can "know
ourselves," but are not unequivocally "known,"
classified and ordered based on our bodies and their locations
in time and space.
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Dania Thomas
University of Manchester, UK
Paper Title: Marginalisation, identity, consent:
Overcoming the limitations of ‘imagined community’
in contract law
Abstract: Classical contract law presumed
the existence of an ‘imagined community’ that
is essentialist, incontestable and unchanging, and this
in turn limits the excuses that a contractor can have
for non-performance. Thus individuals can be disadvantaged
at the intersection of ‘economic and social hierarchies’
by prima face legitimate means such as contract law. Marginalisation
refers to this kind of intersectional disadvantage.
It is proposed here that this limitation of contract
law can be overcome by supplementing the ‘imagined
community’ with a collective dimension. In addition
to the circumstance of identity (race or religion at birth)
individuals may choose to interact with other individuals
and generate collective goods, such as language, stories
and sustainable resource-use. This element of choice in
descriptions of identity is used to contest the ‘imagined
community’ in contract law. In certain contracting
situations, the absence of such contestation makes what
are otherwise viewed as enforceable contracts, non-consensual.
This gives contractors an excuse for non-performance in
situations where this was traditionally denied to them.
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Sarah van Walsum
University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Paper Title: "The dynamics of emancipation
and exclusion. Changing family norms and Dutch family
migration policies"
Abstract: Since Dutch nationality law
was first introduced in the early 19th century, family
norms have played a role in determining the parameters
of the Dutch nation, next to or in combination with principles
of territory and/or ethnic belonging. Both parental descent
and marriage have formed important ports of entry into
the Dutch nation, but how, for whom and to what extent
are questions that have been answered differently in different
historical contexts. In this paper I want to explore how
Dutch family migration law has changed over the past four
decades, a period that has witnessed revolutionary changes
within Dutch family norms, triggered by, among other things,
the "second wave" in women's emancipation and
the sexual revolution.
The question I wish to address is how changes in Dutch
family norms have been reflected in rules that facilitate
or hinder the establishment of transnational family units
within the Netherlands. With the term transnational family
units I mean: family units formed by Dutch nationals or
by legally resident immigrants with a foreign (marriage)
partner and/or (step)child.
While men and women have acquired at least formal equality
within Dutch family law, and national and international
courts have explicated a space of freedom from state involvement
within family relations, the developments within immigration
law have been less emancipatory. Although formal equality
has been reached between men and women, this has been
achieved through levelling down, reducing the security
of Dutch men with foreign family members rather than increasing
that of Dutch women or settled migrants. The former concern
for the integrity of a family headed by a Dutch male has
given way to a present concern for the ethnic integrity
of the Dutch nation.
Indirectly however, gendered family norms do continue
to play a role. Dutch ethnic identity is seen to be exemplified
by equality between the sexes and a high level of freedom
for men and women in determining how to fulfil their mutual
commitments and their responsibilities towards their children.
By contrast, non-western immigrants are assumed to still
adhere to traditional, religiously determined patriarchal
family norms, providing little space for individual responsibility.
As the Dutch government becomes more explicit in naming
the defence of national cultural identity as a goal for
immigration policy, it also raises more barriers against
establishing family units in the Netherlands with (marriage)partners
or children originating from non-western countries. Recent
international jurisprudence indicates however that these
barriers raise serious questions in the sphere of universal
human rights. Ironically, Dutch family migration policies
threaten to undermine the very freedoms and rights that
exemplify the identity they are supposed to defend.
