Maureen Cain - Böcker

Are lawyers, by their very nature, agents of the state, of capital, of institutions of power? Or are there ways in which they can work constructively or transformatively for the disempowered, the working class, the underprivileged? Lawyers in a Postmodern World explores how lawyers actively create the forms of power which they and others deploy. Through engaging case studies, the book examines how lawyers work within and for powerful institutions and provides suggestions--both general and practical--for ways in which the practice of law can be made to work with and for the powerless. Individuals chapters address such subjects as the contradictions of radical law practice; legal work in South Africa; the economics and politics of negotiating justice; feminist legal scholarship and women's gendered lives; the overlapping worlds of law, business, and politics; theories of legal practice; and how lawyers are constitutive of gender relations.Contributing to the book are Maureen Cain (University of West Indies), Yves Dezalay (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France), Martha Fineman (Columbia University), Sue Lees (University of North London), Doreen McBarnet (Wolfson College, Oxford), Frank Munger (SUNY, Buffalo), Wilfried Scharf (University of Cape Town), Stuart Scheingold (University of Washington), David Sugarman (Lancaster University), and Sally Wheeler (University of Nottingham).

This book of eleven chapters and an Introduction is by and about women, the harms and crimes to which they are subjected as a result of global social processes and their efforts to take control of their own futures. The chapters explore the criminogenic and damaging consequences of the policies of the global financial institutions as well as the effects of growing economic polarisation both in pockets of the developed world and most markedly in the global south. Reflecting on this evidence, in the Introduction the editors necessarily challenge existing criminological theory by expanding and elaborating a conception of social harm that encompasses this range of problems, and exposes where new solutions derived from criminological theory are necessary. A second theme addresses human rights from the standpoint of indigenous women, minority women and those seeking refuge. Inadequate and individualised as the human rights instruments presently are, for most of these women a politics of human rights emerges as central to the achieving of legal and political equality and protection from individual violence.Women in the poorest countries, however, are sceptical as to the efficacy of rights claims in the face of the depredations of international and global capital, and the social dislocation produced thereby. Nonetheless this is a hopeful book, emphasising the contribution which academic work can make, provided the methodology is appropriately gendered and sufficiently sensitive in its guiding ideology and techniques to hear and learn from the all too often 'glocalised' other. But in the end there is no solution without politics, and in both the opening and the closing sections of this book there are chapters which address this. What continues to be special about women's political practice is the connection between the groundedness of small groups and the fluidity and flexibility of regional and international networks: the effective politics of the global age. This book, then, is a new criminology for and by women, a book which opens up a new criminological terrain for both women and men - and a book which cannot easily be read without an emotional response.

This book of eleven chapters and an Introduction is by and about women, the harms and crimes to which they are subjected as a result of global social processes and their efforts to take control of their own futures. The chapters explore the criminogenic and damaging consequences of the policies of the global financial institutions as well as the effects of growing economic polarisation both in pockets of the developed world and most markedly in the global south. Reflecting on this evidence, in the Introduction the editors necessarily challenge existing criminological theory by expanding and elaborating a conception of social harm that encompasses this range of problems, and exposes where new solutions derived from criminological theory are necessary. A second theme addresses human rights from the standpoint of indigenous women, minority women and those seeking refuge. Inadequate and individualised as the human rights instruments presently are, for most of these women a politics of human rights emerges as central to the achieving of legal and political equality and protection from individual violence.Women in the poorest countries, however, are sceptical as to the efficacy of rights claims in the face of the depredations of international and global capital, and the social dislocation produced thereby. Nonetheless this is a hopeful book, emphasising the contribution which academic work can make, provided the methodology is appropriately gendered and sufficiently sensitive in its guiding ideology and techniques to hear and learn from the all too often 'glocalised' other. But in the end there is no solution without politics, and in both the opening and the closing sections of this book there are chapters which address this. What continues to be special about women's political practice is the connection between the groundedness of small groups and the fluidity and flexibility of regional and international networks: the effective politics of the global age. This book, then, is a new criminology for and by women, a book which opens up a new criminological terrain for both women and men - and a book which cannot easily be read without an emotional response.

The relationship between ageing and crime has been a much neglected issue, the focus rather being on youth. This books aims to redress this imbalance, bringing together a group of leading authorities to address key issues on the subject of crime and ageing, considering older people as both victims and perpetrators of crime, and looking too at conditions faced by older prisoners. The book draws upon both criminology and gerontology, as well as sociology and social policy, to help understand the complex relationship between ageing and the criminal justice system, and argues that the needs of elders must be far more firmly on the penal policy agenda than is the case currently. Ageing, Crime and Society will be concerned with 'unsilencing' a group who because of their age and status have been muted by the criminal justice system.