The Culture Of Justice

Autonomy is fundamental to liberalism. But autonomous individuals often choose to do things that harm themselves or undermine their equality. In particular, women often choose to participate in practices of sexual inequality&—cosmetic surgery, gendered patterns of work and childcare, makeup, restrictive clothing, or the sexual subordination required by membership in certain religious groups. In this book, Clare Chambers argues that this predicament poses a fundamental challenge to many existing liberal and multicultural theories that dominate contemporary political philosophy. Chambers argues that a theory of justice cannot ignore the influence of culture and the role it plays in shaping choices. If cultures shape choices, it is problematic to use those choices as the measure of the justice of the culture. Drawing upon feminist critiques of gender inequality and poststructuralist theories of social construction, she argues that we should accept some of the multicultural claims about the importance of culture in shaping our actions and identities, but that we should reach the opposite normative conclusion to that of multiculturalists and many liberals. Rather than using the idea of social construction to justify cultural respect or protection, we should use it to ground a critical stance toward cultural norms. The book presents radical proposals for state action to promote sexual and cultural justice.

An analysis of the relationships between law, custom, gender, marriage and justice among northern Tanzania’s Maasai communities. When, where, why, and by whom is law used to force desired social change in the name of justice? Why has culture come to be seen as inherently oppressive to women? In this finely crafted book, Dorothy L. Hodgson examines the history of legal ideas and institutions in Tanzania—from customary law to human rights—as specific forms of justice that often reflect elite ideas about gender, culture, and social change. Drawing on evidence from Maasai communities, she explores how the legacies of colonial law-making continue to influence contemporary efforts to create laws, codify marriage, criminalize FGM, and contest land grabs by state officials. Despite the easy dismissal by elites of the priorities and perspectives of grassroots women, she shows how Maasai women have always had powerful ways to confront and challenge injustice, express their priorities, and reveal the limits of rights-based legal ideals. “This is a book that only Dorothy Hodgson could have written, with her decades of work in Tanzania, vast networks in Maasailand, and deep ethnographic knowledge, combined with her deftness in working through more theoretical work on gender and human rights. Closely argued, conceptually sharp, and engagingly written.” —Brett Shadle, author of Girl Cases: Marriage and Colonialism in Gusiiland, Kenya, 1890-1970 “Dorothy Hodgson asks a number of important and clearly articulated questions, and provides thoughtful answers to them using a hybrid of historical and anthropological methodologies that combine in-depth case studies with more empirically-informed macro-level reflection. A concise and useful resource in the undergraduate as well as the graduate classroom.” —Priya Lal, author of African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania: Between the Village and the World “Gender, Justice, and the Problem of Culture makes a significant contribution to the study of law in East Africa and elsewhere among colonized peoples, and it should be required reading not only for academics interested in such matters but for activists and policymakers.” —American Anthropologist “Hodgson’s book is both rich in detail and broad in its implications for understanding struggles for justice for marginalised groups. It deserves the attention of students and scholars of African studies, anthropology, history, political science and women’s and gender studies.” —Journal of Modern African Studies

Examines the relationship between social justice, Hip-Hop culture, and resistance

The following pages contain a theory of justice and a theory of law. Justice will be defined as the demand for a system of laws, and law as an established regulation which applies equally throughout a society and is backed by force. The demand for a system of laws is met by means of a legal system. The theory will have to include what the system and the laws are in tended to regulate. The reference is to all men and their possessions in a going concern. In the past all such theories have been discussed only in terms of society, justice as applicable to society and the laws promul gated within it. However, men and their societies are not the whole story: in recent centuries artifacts have played an increasingly important role. To leave them out of all consideration in the theory would be to leave the theory itself incomplete and even distorted. For the key conception ought to be one not of society but of culture. Society is an organization of men but culture is something more. I define culture (civilization has often been employed as a synonym) as an organization of men together with their material possessions. Such possessions consist in artifacts: material objects which have been altered through human agency in order to reduce human needs. The makers of the artifacts are altered by them. Men have their possessions together, and this objectifies and consolidates the culture.

What do Canadian films say about crime and justice in Canada? What purpose to Canadian crime films serve politically and culturally? Screening Justice is a scholarly exploration of films that focus on crime and justice in Canada. Crime films are pivotal for understanding and shaping Canadian sensibilities by setting out widely available templates for thinking about crime and justice in Canadian society. Spanning disciplines and examining films from across Canada, Screening Justice is the first comprehensive Canadian volume on crime films that takes up cultural criminology’s call for more critical scholarly analyses of the interplay between crime, culture and society.

Sexual Justice defends a robust a robust conception of lesbian and gay rights, emphasizing protection against discrimination and recognition of queer relationships and families. Synthesizing materials from law, philosophy, psychoanalysis and literature, Kaplan argues that sexual desire is central to the pursuit of happiness: equal citizenship requires individual freedom to shape oneself through a variety of intimate associations.

Museums are public resources that can offer rich extensions to classroom educational experiences from tours through botanical gardens to searching for family records in the archives of a local historical society. With clarity and a touch of humor, Quinn presents ideas and examples of ways that teachers can use museums to support student exploration while also teaching for social justice. Topics include disability and welcoming all bodies, celebrating queer people’s lives and histories, settler colonialism and decolonization, fair workplaces, Indigenous knowledge, and much more. This practical resource invites classroom teachers to rethink how and why they are bringing students to museums and suggests projects for creating rich museum-based learning opportunities across an array of subject areas. Book Features: Links museums, classroom teaching, and social movements for justice.Focuses on the cultural contributions of people of color, women, and other marginalized groups.Organized around probing questions connecting history and contemporary events, museum formats and content, and activities. Includes pull-out themes and resources for further reading. “It is with this brilliant new book by Therese Quinn that I have gained an entirely different framework for seeing and experiencing and valuing museums, particularly as vital resources for social-justice movement building.” —From the Foreword by Kevin Kumashiro, consultant and author of Bad Teacher! How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture

This book explores our understanding of school leaders’ actions as they work to enact a socially just school culture. Including unique case studies from around the globe, the editors and contributors examine whether this work is enhanced or diminished by the context in which the school is placed. While the onus of emphasising social justice is placed on the school leader, they must enact this within the micro/meso/macro context of the school setting. Rich in both the unique stories of these schools and their successes and challenges in the enactment of social justice, these global case studies act as a lens for social justice leadership in a variety of regions and at international levels. The global scale combined with detailed analysis of this book will appeal to scholars of education and social justice as well as school leaders and policy makers.