Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame and the Law
- PDF / 79,651 Bytes
- 4 Pages / 442 x 663 pts Page_size
- 99 Downloads / 190 Views
226
three sections in the edited collection. The first section, Elections, Voting and Representation, examines the changing meanings of basic mechanisms of modern democracy. The second section, Democracy, Citizenship and Scale, is concerned with spaces where democracy is actualized at domestic/national levels and urban/regional/national levels, and with processes of international migration. A key part of this section is the concept of citizenship-formation, highlighting institutions, social relations and embodied practices, which creates and transforms citizenship in different contexts. The final section, Making Democratic Spaces, examines the what and the where of informal types of politics that are crucial to the further understanding of democracy and processes of democratization. The focus is on the public/private distinction and the interplays of the concept of public space, cultural practices and the role of social movements in a global context in developing a democratic public life. Overall, the collection seeks to broaden and deepen the scope of democracy to include the media, social movements, community mobilization, and interplays of associated culture. It also directs new questions to dominant theorizations of state-centred democratic polities to rethink elections and electoral systems, central–local state relations, and citizenship. The consideration of space, place and scale on existing conceptualizations of democracy generates exciting possibilities for normative questions about democracy, justice and legitimacy to be at the centre of critical human geography in its analysis of contemporary socio-economic metamorphoses. Mary Walsh Division of Business, Law & Information Sciences, University of Canberra, Australia.
Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame and the Law Martha Nussbaum Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004, 432pp. ISBN: 0 691 09526 4. Contemporary Political Theory (2006) 5, 226–229. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300226
Emotions, Nussbaum claims, are pervasive and it would be difficult to think of law without in some way including them. But they are also problematic. If they concern reasonable beliefs about goods which are important to have, don’t people have different ones, and how then can we enforce them via the criminal law in a liberal society? One way of dealing with that problem has been a form of utilitarianism where deterrence is the only variable, and the actual act, rather than internal Contemporary Political Theory 2006 5
Book Reviews
227
emotions, intentionality, etc., is the focus. But, asks Nussbaum, how can you have such a system without doing damage to the way we ordinarily think of the operation of systems like the criminal law? Nussbaum wants to look at what part the emotions of disgust and shame should play in the institutions, especially the law, of a liberal society. She asks what sort of political and legal culture will be appropriate for enhancing respect for persons in a liberal regime; a society, that is, where we all recognize our vulnerable humanity out of a
Data Loading...
