Author: Martha Albertson Fineman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000968103
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
This book considers how vulnerability theory provides the basis for a reconceptualization of the liberal ideas of autonomy, equality, and freedom. Vulnerability theory argues a “vulnerable legal subject” should displace the “liberal legal subject” that currently dominates law and policy. The theory is based on the fundamental empirical realities of the material body and offers an alternative to a social contract or rights-based notion of state responsibility, both of which tend to privilege abstractions such as rationality or dignity. A vulnerability analysis poses law and policy questions based on the “vulnerable legal subject” and requires new thinking about state or governmental responsibility. To achieve a truly comprehensive and inclusive notion of what constitutes social justice or a universal or common good, vulnerability theory mandates a reassessment of both equality and freedom as these concepts are currently conceived. Presenting the work of scholars from a wide range of doctrinal areas, it is this task that the book takes up. In particular, in recognizing that many social or institutional relationships entail uneven positions of dependence and reliance, it maintains that individualized notions of equality or freedom are inadequate and must be reformulated to include a sense of collective or social justice, incorporating asymmetric or unequal allocations of responsibility, and requiring appropriate limitations on the individual. This book’s reorientation of the subject, as well as the central objectives of law and policy, will appeal to scholars and students in law, vulnerability studies, gender studies, critical legal and political theory, politics, philosophy, and sociology.
Law, Vulnerability, and the Responsive State
Author: Martha Albertson Fineman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000968103
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
This book considers how vulnerability theory provides the basis for a reconceptualization of the liberal ideas of autonomy, equality, and freedom. Vulnerability theory argues a “vulnerable legal subject” should displace the “liberal legal subject” that currently dominates law and policy. The theory is based on the fundamental empirical realities of the material body and offers an alternative to a social contract or rights-based notion of state responsibility, both of which tend to privilege abstractions such as rationality or dignity. A vulnerability analysis poses law and policy questions based on the “vulnerable legal subject” and requires new thinking about state or governmental responsibility. To achieve a truly comprehensive and inclusive notion of what constitutes social justice or a universal or common good, vulnerability theory mandates a reassessment of both equality and freedom as these concepts are currently conceived. Presenting the work of scholars from a wide range of doctrinal areas, it is this task that the book takes up. In particular, in recognizing that many social or institutional relationships entail uneven positions of dependence and reliance, it maintains that individualized notions of equality or freedom are inadequate and must be reformulated to include a sense of collective or social justice, incorporating asymmetric or unequal allocations of responsibility, and requiring appropriate limitations on the individual. This book’s reorientation of the subject, as well as the central objectives of law and policy, will appeal to scholars and students in law, vulnerability studies, gender studies, critical legal and political theory, politics, philosophy, and sociology.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000968103
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
This book considers how vulnerability theory provides the basis for a reconceptualization of the liberal ideas of autonomy, equality, and freedom. Vulnerability theory argues a “vulnerable legal subject” should displace the “liberal legal subject” that currently dominates law and policy. The theory is based on the fundamental empirical realities of the material body and offers an alternative to a social contract or rights-based notion of state responsibility, both of which tend to privilege abstractions such as rationality or dignity. A vulnerability analysis poses law and policy questions based on the “vulnerable legal subject” and requires new thinking about state or governmental responsibility. To achieve a truly comprehensive and inclusive notion of what constitutes social justice or a universal or common good, vulnerability theory mandates a reassessment of both equality and freedom as these concepts are currently conceived. Presenting the work of scholars from a wide range of doctrinal areas, it is this task that the book takes up. In particular, in recognizing that many social or institutional relationships entail uneven positions of dependence and reliance, it maintains that individualized notions of equality or freedom are inadequate and must be reformulated to include a sense of collective or social justice, incorporating asymmetric or unequal allocations of responsibility, and requiring appropriate limitations on the individual. This book’s reorientation of the subject, as well as the central objectives of law and policy, will appeal to scholars and students in law, vulnerability studies, gender studies, critical legal and political theory, politics, philosophy, and sociology.
Law, Vulnerability, and the Responsive State
Author: Martha Albertson Fineman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032346632
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This book considers how vulnerability theory provides the basis for a reconceptualization of the liberal ideas of autonomy, equality, and freedom. Vulnerability theory argues a "vulnerable legal subject" should displace the "liberal legal subject" that currently dominates law and policy. The theory is based on the fundamental empirical realities of the material body and offers an alternative to a social contract or rights-based notion of state responsibility, both of which tend to privilege abstractions such as rationality or dignity. A vulnerability analysis poses law and policy questions based on the "vulnerable legal subject" and requires new thinking about state or governmental responsibility. To achieve a truly comprehensive and inclusive notion of what constitutes social justice or a universal or common good, vulnerability theory mandates a reassessment of both equality and freedom as these concepts are currently conceived. Presenting the work of scholars from a wide range of doctrinal areas, it is this task that the book takes up. In particular, in recognizing that many social or institutional relationships entail uneven positions of dependence and reliance, it maintains that individualized notions of equality or freedom are inadequate and must be reformulated to include a sense of collective or social justice, incorporating asymmetric or unequal allocations of responsibility, and requiring appropriate limitations on the individual. This book's reorientation of the subject, as well as the central objectives of law and policy, will appeal to scholars and students in law, vulnerability studies, gender studies, critical legal and political theory, politics, philosophy, and sociology.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032346632
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This book considers how vulnerability theory provides the basis for a reconceptualization of the liberal ideas of autonomy, equality, and freedom. Vulnerability theory argues a "vulnerable legal subject" should displace the "liberal legal subject" that currently dominates law and policy. The theory is based on the fundamental empirical realities of the material body and offers an alternative to a social contract or rights-based notion of state responsibility, both of which tend to privilege abstractions such as rationality or dignity. A vulnerability analysis poses law and policy questions based on the "vulnerable legal subject" and requires new thinking about state or governmental responsibility. To achieve a truly comprehensive and inclusive notion of what constitutes social justice or a universal or common good, vulnerability theory mandates a reassessment of both equality and freedom as these concepts are currently conceived. Presenting the work of scholars from a wide range of doctrinal areas, it is this task that the book takes up. In particular, in recognizing that many social or institutional relationships entail uneven positions of dependence and reliance, it maintains that individualized notions of equality or freedom are inadequate and must be reformulated to include a sense of collective or social justice, incorporating asymmetric or unequal allocations of responsibility, and requiring appropriate limitations on the individual. This book's reorientation of the subject, as well as the central objectives of law and policy, will appeal to scholars and students in law, vulnerability studies, gender studies, critical legal and political theory, politics, philosophy, and sociology.
Vulnerability and the Legal Organization of Work
Author: Martha Albertson Fineman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315518554
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
This book uses the concepts of vulnerability and resilience to analyze the situation of individuals and institutions in the context of the employment relationship. It is based on the premise that both employer and employee are vulnerable to various social, economic, and political forces, although differently so. It demonstrates how in responding to those complementary institutional relationships of employer and employee the state unequally and inequitably favors employers over employees. Several chapters included in this collection also consider how the state shapes, creates and maintains through law the social identities of employer and employee and how that legal regime operates as the allocation of power and privilege. This unique and fundamental role of the state in defining the employment relationship profoundly affects the respective abilities and degree of resiliency of actual employers and employees. Other chapters explore how attention to the respective vulnerability and resilience of those who do and those who direct work in assessing the employment relationship can raise fundamental questions of social justice and suggest new avenues for critical engagement with labor and employment law. Collectively, these pieces articulate a framework for imaging what would constitute an appropriately "Responsive State" in the employment context and how those interested in social justice might begin to use the concepts of vulnerability and resilience in their arguments.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315518554
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
This book uses the concepts of vulnerability and resilience to analyze the situation of individuals and institutions in the context of the employment relationship. It is based on the premise that both employer and employee are vulnerable to various social, economic, and political forces, although differently so. It demonstrates how in responding to those complementary institutional relationships of employer and employee the state unequally and inequitably favors employers over employees. Several chapters included in this collection also consider how the state shapes, creates and maintains through law the social identities of employer and employee and how that legal regime operates as the allocation of power and privilege. This unique and fundamental role of the state in defining the employment relationship profoundly affects the respective abilities and degree of resiliency of actual employers and employees. Other chapters explore how attention to the respective vulnerability and resilience of those who do and those who direct work in assessing the employment relationship can raise fundamental questions of social justice and suggest new avenues for critical engagement with labor and employment law. Collectively, these pieces articulate a framework for imaging what would constitute an appropriately "Responsive State" in the employment context and how those interested in social justice might begin to use the concepts of vulnerability and resilience in their arguments.
Vulnerability
Author: Martha Albertson Fineman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317000900
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Martha Albertson Fineman’s earlier work developed a theory of inevitable and derivative dependencies as a way of problematizing the core assumptions underlying the ’autonomous’ subject of liberal law and politics in the context of US equality discourse. Her ’vulnerability thesis’ represents the evolution of that earlier work and situates human vulnerability as a critical heuristic for exploring alternative legal and political foundations. This book draws together major British and American scholars who present different perspectives on the concept of vulnerability and Fineman's ’vulnerability thesis’. The contributors include scholars who have thought about vulnerability in different ways and contexts prior to encountering Fineman’s work, as well as those for whom Fineman’s work provided an introduction to thinking through a vulnerability lens. This collection demonstrates the broad and intellectually exciting potential of vulnerability as a theoretical foundation for legal and political engagements with a range of urgent contemporary challenges. Exploring ways in which vulnerability might provide a new ethical foundation for law and politics, the book will be of interest to the general reader, as well as academics and students in fields such as jurisprudence, philosophy, legal theory, political theory, feminist theory, and ethics.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317000900
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Martha Albertson Fineman’s earlier work developed a theory of inevitable and derivative dependencies as a way of problematizing the core assumptions underlying the ’autonomous’ subject of liberal law and politics in the context of US equality discourse. Her ’vulnerability thesis’ represents the evolution of that earlier work and situates human vulnerability as a critical heuristic for exploring alternative legal and political foundations. This book draws together major British and American scholars who present different perspectives on the concept of vulnerability and Fineman's ’vulnerability thesis’. The contributors include scholars who have thought about vulnerability in different ways and contexts prior to encountering Fineman’s work, as well as those for whom Fineman’s work provided an introduction to thinking through a vulnerability lens. This collection demonstrates the broad and intellectually exciting potential of vulnerability as a theoretical foundation for legal and political engagements with a range of urgent contemporary challenges. Exploring ways in which vulnerability might provide a new ethical foundation for law and politics, the book will be of interest to the general reader, as well as academics and students in fields such as jurisprudence, philosophy, legal theory, political theory, feminist theory, and ethics.
The Autonomy Myth
Author: Martha Albertson Fineman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781565849761
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 387
Book Description
An exposé of flaws in American policies regarding the self-reliance of families argues that policymakers have compromised the well-being of everyday individuals by limiting the definition of acceptable family units and placing unrealistic responsibilities on contemporary families, presenting a model for "caretaking relationships" that provides extra support for children and the elderly. Reprint.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781565849761
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 387
Book Description
An exposé of flaws in American policies regarding the self-reliance of families argues that policymakers have compromised the well-being of everyday individuals by limiting the definition of acceptable family units and placing unrealistic responsibilities on contemporary families, presenting a model for "caretaking relationships" that provides extra support for children and the elderly. Reprint.
Privatization, Vulnerability, and Social Responsibility
Author: Martha Albertson Fineman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315387522
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 516
Book Description
Taking a cross-cultural perspective, this book explores how privatization and globalization impact contemporary feminist and social justice approaches to public responsibility. Feminist legal theorists have long problematized divisions between the private and the political, an issue with growing importance in a time when the welfare state is under threat in many parts of the world and private markets and corporations transcend national boundaries. Because vulnerability analysis emphasizes our interdependency within social institutions and the need for public responsibility for our shared vulnerability, it can highlight how neoliberal policies commodify human necessities, channeling unprofitable social relationships, such as caretaking, away from public responsibility and into the individual private family. This book uses comparative analyses to examine how these dynamics manifest across different legal cultures. By highlighting similarities and differences in legal responses to vulnerability, this book provides important insights and arguments against the privatization of social need and for a more responsive state.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315387522
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 516
Book Description
Taking a cross-cultural perspective, this book explores how privatization and globalization impact contemporary feminist and social justice approaches to public responsibility. Feminist legal theorists have long problematized divisions between the private and the political, an issue with growing importance in a time when the welfare state is under threat in many parts of the world and private markets and corporations transcend national boundaries. Because vulnerability analysis emphasizes our interdependency within social institutions and the need for public responsibility for our shared vulnerability, it can highlight how neoliberal policies commodify human necessities, channeling unprofitable social relationships, such as caretaking, away from public responsibility and into the individual private family. This book uses comparative analyses to examine how these dynamics manifest across different legal cultures. By highlighting similarities and differences in legal responses to vulnerability, this book provides important insights and arguments against the privatization of social need and for a more responsive state.
Relational Vulnerability
Author: Ellen Gordon-Bouvier
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030613585
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203
Book Description
This book breaks new theoretical ground by constructing a framework of ‘relational vulnerability’ through which it analyses the disadvantaged position of those who undertake unpaid caregiving, or ‘dependency-work’, in the context of the private family. Expanding on existing socio-legal scholarship on vulnerability and resilience, it charts how the state seeks to conceal the embodied and temporal reality of vulnerability and dependency within the private family, while promoting an artificial concept of autonomous personhood that exposes dependency-workers work to a range of harms. The book argues that the legal framework governing the married and unmarried family reinforces principles of individualism and rationality, while labelling dependency-work as a private, gendered, and sentimental endeavor, lacking value beyond the family. It also considers how the state can respond to relational vulnerability and foster resilience. It seeks to provide a more comprehensive understanding of resilience, theorising its normative goals and applying these to different hypothetical state responses.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030613585
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203
Book Description
This book breaks new theoretical ground by constructing a framework of ‘relational vulnerability’ through which it analyses the disadvantaged position of those who undertake unpaid caregiving, or ‘dependency-work’, in the context of the private family. Expanding on existing socio-legal scholarship on vulnerability and resilience, it charts how the state seeks to conceal the embodied and temporal reality of vulnerability and dependency within the private family, while promoting an artificial concept of autonomous personhood that exposes dependency-workers work to a range of harms. The book argues that the legal framework governing the married and unmarried family reinforces principles of individualism and rationality, while labelling dependency-work as a private, gendered, and sentimental endeavor, lacking value beyond the family. It also considers how the state can respond to relational vulnerability and foster resilience. It seeks to provide a more comprehensive understanding of resilience, theorising its normative goals and applying these to different hypothetical state responses.
Transcending the Boundaries of Law
Author: Martha Albertson Fineman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113694902X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 548
Book Description
Transcending the Boundaries of Law is a ground-breaking collection that will be central to future developments in feminist and related critical theories about law. In its pages three generations of feminist legal theorists engage with what have become key feminist themes, including equality, embodiment, identity, intimacy, and law and politics. Almost two decades ago Routledge published the very first anthology in feminist legal theory, At the Boundaries of Law (M.A. Fineman and N. Thomadsen, eds. 1991), which marked an important conceptual move away from the study of "women in law" prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s. The scholars in At the Boundaries applied feminist methods and theories in examining law and legal institutions, thus expanding upon work in the Law and Society tradition. This new anthology brings together some of the original contributors to that volume with scholars from subsequent generations of critical gender theorists. It provides a "retrospective" on the past twenty-five years of scholarly engagement with issues relating to gender and law, as well as suggesting directions for future inquiry, including the tantalizing suggestion that feminist legal theory should move beyond gender as its primary focus to consider the theoretical, political, and social implications of the universally shared and constant vulnerability inherent in the human condition.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113694902X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 548
Book Description
Transcending the Boundaries of Law is a ground-breaking collection that will be central to future developments in feminist and related critical theories about law. In its pages three generations of feminist legal theorists engage with what have become key feminist themes, including equality, embodiment, identity, intimacy, and law and politics. Almost two decades ago Routledge published the very first anthology in feminist legal theory, At the Boundaries of Law (M.A. Fineman and N. Thomadsen, eds. 1991), which marked an important conceptual move away from the study of "women in law" prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s. The scholars in At the Boundaries applied feminist methods and theories in examining law and legal institutions, thus expanding upon work in the Law and Society tradition. This new anthology brings together some of the original contributors to that volume with scholars from subsequent generations of critical gender theorists. It provides a "retrospective" on the past twenty-five years of scholarly engagement with issues relating to gender and law, as well as suggesting directions for future inquiry, including the tantalizing suggestion that feminist legal theory should move beyond gender as its primary focus to consider the theoretical, political, and social implications of the universally shared and constant vulnerability inherent in the human condition.
Crisis Narratives in International Law
Author: Makane Moïse Mbengue
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004472363
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 208
Book Description
This volume offers a series of short and highly self-reflective essays by leading international lawyers on the relation between international law and crises. It particularly shows that international law shapes the crises that it addresses as much as it is shaped by them. It critically evaluates the modes of intervention of international law in the problems of the world. Together these essays provide a unique stocktaking about the role, limits, and potential of international law as well as the worlds that are imagined through international lawyers’ vocabularies.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004472363
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 208
Book Description
This volume offers a series of short and highly self-reflective essays by leading international lawyers on the relation between international law and crises. It particularly shows that international law shapes the crises that it addresses as much as it is shaped by them. It critically evaluates the modes of intervention of international law in the problems of the world. Together these essays provide a unique stocktaking about the role, limits, and potential of international law as well as the worlds that are imagined through international lawyers’ vocabularies.
The Illusion of Equality
Author: Martha Fineman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226249575
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
How do "no-fault," "gender-neutral" divorce reforms actually harm the lives of women and children they are designed to protect? Focusing on the language and symbols of reform, Martha Fineman argues that by advocating measures based on equality of treatment rather than of outcome, liberal feminists disregarded the socioeconomic factors that simultaneously place women at a disadvantage in the market and favor their taking on primary domestic responsibilities. She traces in persuasive detail the detrimental effects of equality rhetoric in shaping divorce law — such as the legal separation of parents' and children's interests; equality replacing need as the prime criterion for settlements; and the increase of state intervention into family life. More than a critique, this book is an incisive argument for adopting outcome-oriented measures and a valuable overview of the pitfalls of uncritically implementing any rhetoric as social policy.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226249575
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
How do "no-fault," "gender-neutral" divorce reforms actually harm the lives of women and children they are designed to protect? Focusing on the language and symbols of reform, Martha Fineman argues that by advocating measures based on equality of treatment rather than of outcome, liberal feminists disregarded the socioeconomic factors that simultaneously place women at a disadvantage in the market and favor their taking on primary domestic responsibilities. She traces in persuasive detail the detrimental effects of equality rhetoric in shaping divorce law — such as the legal separation of parents' and children's interests; equality replacing need as the prime criterion for settlements; and the increase of state intervention into family life. More than a critique, this book is an incisive argument for adopting outcome-oriented measures and a valuable overview of the pitfalls of uncritically implementing any rhetoric as social policy.