Articles
L'apport
potentiel des émotions à l'enseignement du droit ou
Du cerveau pris isolément à la personne intégrée
et intègre
Michelle Boivin
Starting
from the observation that law schools generally consider their "clientele"
to be made up of disembodied brains-the word "brain" being
used here in its usual restrictive meaning of a cerebral function
entirely focused on the intellect alone-the author argues that it
is time to react against such a practice, since modern neurology and
psychology as well as feminist analyses and a revisiting of educational
objectives force us to reconsider this position. The author suggests
that teaching be directed to the integral and integrated student,
thereby fostering integrity. The article concludes that society would
be better served by lawyers whose education has not actively encouraged
a distrust if not a mistrust of their own senses, feelings, and emotions.
Performing
the Native Informant: Doing Ethnography from the Margins
Shahnaz Khan
It
has been argued that the text and its reading produce knowledge in
which the producer and knower are thoroughly implicated. Using this
framework, I draw upon Gayatri Spivak's notion of the native informant
and explore how the politics of location helps shape the debate on
the zina laws both in Canada and in Pakistan. I identify a productive
tension between writing and reading through which I explore, while
located in Canada, the social, political, and material issues shaping
the context in Pakistan where women are incarcerated under zina laws.
My examination disrupts the binary of here and there and examines
politicized culture as an integral component of capitalist patriarchy.
In so doing, I move beyond a cultural relativism rooted in binary
thinking and endorse a transnational feminist praxis.
Les
revendications du statut de réfugié fondées sur
le sexe: constats et orientations nouvelles
Nicole LaViolette
In
1993, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada adopted guidelines
entitled Women Refugee Claimants Fearing Gender-Related Persecution.
The guidelines represent a cutting edge approach and help to guarantee
a process of determination of refugee status for women refugees that
is more sensitive to gender-specific claims of asylum. However, the
author demonstrates that the concept of gender-related persecution,
as it is presently defined, makes it very difficult for members of
the commission to evaluate, in a systematic manner, all of the grounds
and methods of gender-related persecution to which certain women and
certain men are subjected. The author examines claims of asylum based
on sexual identity or orientation as well as those based on persecution
specifically inflicted upon men, in order to evaluate the relevance
of the gender-specific analytical framework adopted by the Immigration
and Refugee Board, in light of recently published case law. The author
concludes that a major change in direction is imperative in order
to make more visible the relationship between gender discrimination
and other grounds of persecution, such as sexual orientation, and
to better understand the way the rights of certain men can be violated
based on sex-specific factors.
Semiotics, Stereotypes, and Women's Health: Signifying Inequality
in Drug Advertising
Patricia Peppin et Elaine Carty
Drug
advertisements draw upon social perceptions to construct knowledge
about pharmaceutical products. The legal system provides a framework
within which the companies operate in creating ads directed to prescribing
physicians. Semiotic theory provides the methodology for an analysis
of the ways in which pharmaceutical companies structure their ads
to draw in physicians and to persuade them to prescribe their product.
The companies select imagery that they expect to have resonance for
their audience, drawing on values and views they are expected to hold
and that are expected to motivate them. Advertisements for the hormone
replacement Premarin™, which have appeared in professional journals
over the past fifteen years, are analyzed using this methodology.
We conclude that the ads use stereotypical views of women, menopause,
and the doctor-patient relationship as underlying values in their
structure. The use of inequality in the ads undermines women's position
as autonomous decision-makers and has implications for women's health.
The power of this imagery needs to be understood and counteracted
by doctors, patients, and policy-makers.
Book
Reviews
Every Breath You Take: Stalking
Narratives and the Law. By Orit Kamir.
Katrina Pacey
More
than ten years have passed since the nation-wide adoption of anti-stalking
laws in the United States. These laws remain constantly questioned
and evaluated for their ability to adequately address this social
phenomenon. Dr. Orit Kamir, in her book Every Breath You Take: Stalking
Narratives and the Law, provides a timely and important analysis of
the cultural construction of the "stalker" and the way in
which this construction has translated into contemporary American
law. Kamir argues that the current anti-stalking laws reflect the
development of "archetypal stalkers," which she traces throughout
ancient mythology, medieval folklore, nineteenth-century literature,
and contemporary film. Exposure to these fictional characters has
contributed to a "moral panic" surrounding the social phenomenon
of stalking. Since these archetypal stalkers are not reflective of
the social reality of stalking, the formation of US legislation, which
took place amidst this moral panic, is reflective of the mythological
images and stereotypes and not the reality. The author reviews the
current data on stalking, which gives a more accurate picture, and
offers recommendations for legal reform. In her analysis, Kamir employs
a range of disciplines, including law, sociology, film theory, and
literature, thus providing an interesting study for readers from many
fields. Further, she effectively combines her theoretical inquiry
with practical recommendations for legal reform that is pertinent
to not only US scholars, government, and legal professionals interested
in anti-stalking laws but also to international readers who can utilize
her analysis to reflect on their own country's legal treatment of
stalking. Her critical feminist analysis provides an innovative and
constructive argument for making reforms to existing US stalking legislation
and is a unique contribution to the literature on this topic.
Driven Apart: Women's Employment Equality and Child Care in Canadian
Public Policy. By Annis May Timpson.
Judy Fudge
Driven
Apart makes a unique contribution to feminist policy analysis by examining
why employment equality for women and child care were treated separately
in federal public policy in the face of the repeated attempts by women's
organizations to link them. This review of Annis May Timpson's important
book identifies its considerable achievements, which include a detailed
analysis of two crucial federal royal commissions that recommended
measures to promote women's equality in employment and a publicly
funded universal child care system. The review concludes that Driven
Apart makes a significant contribution to feminist political science
and legal analysis by probing how, despite the emergence of a more
sophisticated paradigm of women's equality, the federal government
has failed to develop policies that reconcile the dual, and contradictory
demands, on women's labour.
Who
Owns Domestic Abuse? The Local Politics of a Social Problem. By Ruth
M. Mann.
Lori Lothian
Ruth
Mann's Who Owns Domestic Abuse? The Local Politics of a Social Problem
examines feminist efforts to establish a battered women's shelter
in a rural township north of Toronto. Bringing social problems sociology
to bear on this project, Mann grapples with the problem of unintended
outcomes to social problems interventions. The problem of unintended
outcomes is highly relevant to feminist activism and Mann's account
and analysis of the shelter project provide insights into why they
occur and how better outcomes can be achieved. Along the way, Mann
raises important challenges to the "violence against women"
and "family violence" constructions of domestic abuse, arguing
that neither of these constructions sufficiently captures the complexity
and fluidity of domestic abuse and, moreover, that an "either/or"
approach to "domestic abuse" fuelled many of the unintended
outcomes in the shelter project.
Le sexe et le droit. Sur le féminisme juridique de Catharine
MacKinnon. By Jean-François Gaudreault-DesBiens.
Samantha Besson
This
review essay attempts an assessment of the critical reading made by
Jean-François Gaudreault-DesBiens of Catherine MacKinnon's
radical legal feminism. As a " mise en abîme ", it
follows the structure of his book, which itself respects the sequence
of MacKinnon's theses. In its first section, it comments upon the
author's description of the Canadian, American, and feminist contexts
of MacKinnon's ideas. It then discusses, in a second section, the
book's presentation of MacKinnon's views on sexuality and pornography.
Finally, it addresses, in a third section, the three major critiques
made against MacKinnon in the book. Although she is aware of the simplifications
caused by MacKinnon's metaphorical discourse, the author of this review
starts by defending MacKinnon from accusations of reductionism and
essentialism. Epistemological considerations constitute the strongest
feature of MacKinnon's legal theory and allow for a better understanding
of the relationship between the objective and common reality and the
reality constructed by men for women as well as the possibility of
change through the revision of the liberal paradigms of the concepts
shared by men and women. In regard to the second main critique made
against MacKinnon's paradoxical relationship to the law, the author
of this review replies by revealing the neglected actuality and complexity
of MacKinnon's vision of a political and epistemological reconstruction
that reconciles, in advance of her time, pluralism and political stability.
Finally, when considering the third critique that alleges the egalitarian
manicheism of MacKinnon's legal understanding of the ban on pornography,
the author emphasizes the attractiveness of the egalitarian dialectic
proposed by MacKinnon when no other satisfactory solution to the conflict
between freedom of expression and equality of treatment has yet been
offered.
