scholarly journals Equality and Anti-Discrimination Legislation: An Uneasy Relationship

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 12-26
Author(s):  
Margaret Thornton

Despite the rhetoric of equality that infuses anti-discrimination legislation, a close analysis reveals that it is in-equality that is invariably privileged. With reference to the Australian example, this introductory article will show how the paradox is played out at multiple sites in terms of both form and substance, such as through the individualism and confidentiality of the complaint-based mechanism. A striking exclusion from the legislation is the attribute of class, the most significant manifestation of social inequality, which remains ineffable even when it significantly shapes other attributes. The prevailing political backdrop of neoliberalism plays a significant role in promoting inequality through competition policy and profit maximisation. Powerful corporations not only endeavour to resist transparency, but they also tend to oppose proactive measures in favour of substantive equality. The contradictions of anti-discrimination legislation thereby sustain in-equality while simultaneously espousing the rhetoric of equality.

2021 ◽  
pp. 000765032098508
Author(s):  
Sameer Azizi ◽  
Tanja Börzel ◽  
Hans Krause Hansen

In this introductory article we explore the relationship between statehood and governance, examining in more detail how non-state actors like MNCs, international NGOs, and indigenous authorities, often under conditions of extreme economic scarcity, ethnic diversity, social inequality and violence, take part in the making of rules and the provision of collective goods. Conceptually, we focus on the literature on Areas of Limited Statehood and discuss its usefulness in exploring how business-society relations are governed in the global South, and beyond. Building on insights from this literature, among others, the four articles included in this special issue provide rich illustrations and critical reflections on the multiple, complex and often ambiguous roles of state and non-state actors operating in contemporary Syria, Nigeria, India and Palestine, with implications for conventional understandings of CSR, stakeholders, and related conceptualizations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aline Sierp

This introductory article to the special section on “Europe’s Changing Lessons from the Past” argues for a close analysis of acts of public remembrance in Central and Eastern European countries in order to uncover the link between the issue of public memory and long-term processes of democratisation. In countries facing a period of transition after the experience of war and dictatorship, the debate over its memory is usually as much a debate about a divisive past as it is about the future. While it is part of a sensitive political scrutiny that is related to different ideas on how to ensure sustainable peace, it also provides the basis for the recreation of a common sense of belonging and identity. The often resulting coexistence of different memory traditions creates two clearly identifiable levels of conflict: one on the national level and one on the supranational one. In mapping change in Central and Eastern Europe, this special section aims at making the connections between the two visible by on the one hand questioning the sociological turn in Memory and EU Studies and on the other, pinpointing the necessity to concentrate on processes and not only on their results.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Amelina ◽  
Andreas Vasilache

This introductory article of the special issue is based on the criticism of the sedentarist lens used in migration studies on social inequalities. It is organised around two questions: In what ways have forms of inequality and patterns of migration in the enlarged Europe been changed, and how should the nexus between migration and social inequality be rethought after the ‘mobility turn’ in the social sciences? First, the article proposes that the mobility turn and transnational sociology be combined to approach varieties of geographic mobility in the current Europe and that inequality analysis be conceptualised from a ‘mobile perspective’, meaning that forms of mobility and patterns of inequality be considered as mutually reinforcing. Second, Europe is considered as a fragmented and multi-sited societal context, which is co-produced by current patterns of mobility. The article discusses recent societal shifts such as supranationalisation and the end of socialism in the Eastern part of Europe (among many others) and identifies the concept of assemblage as a useful heuristic tool both for migration studies and European studies. Third, the final part illustrates how the contributions collected in this special issue address the challenges of the sedentarist lens and provide conceptual solutions to the analytical problems in question.


2012 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 991-1005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Lane

The period under review (January 2010 – June 2012) has been a time of consolidation (or exhaustion) for the Union generally, as the Lisbon changes are allowed to bed in. The competition sphere is no exception. There has been limited initiative, certainly nothing ambitious to come out of the Commission over the period. At the same time a new Commission took up office—three months late, and by a little-remarked constitutional sleight of hand1—in 2010, and with it came a new Commissioner for Competition (Mr Almunia) and with him a new Director-General of DG Competition (Mr Italianer—Dutch notwithstanding the name), which event sometimes, but not always, marks a reorientation of Union competition policy. Both are economists which, again, may or may not influence the direction of policy. At the same time the Union has been buffeted by a financial crisis not wholly of its own making in which the competition rules must have a significant role to play.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Mazzone

AbstractThe importance of intention reading for communication has already been emphasized many years ago by Paul Grice. More recently, the rich debate on “theory of mind” has convinced many that intention reading may in fact play a key role also in current, cognitively oriented theories of pragmatics: Relevance Theory is a case in point. On a close analysis, however, it is far from clear that RT may really accommodate the idea that intention reading drives comprehension. Here I examine RT's difficulties with that idea, and propose a framework where intention reading is actually assigned a significant role. This framework is compatible with RT's account of a unified, automatic mechanism of interpretation in lexical pragmatics, to the extent that the account shares many features of associative and constraint-based explanations of other linguistic phenomena. In fact, my suggestion is that our sensitivity to others' intentions depends crucially on the availability of specific patterns of intentional behaviour grounded in social regularities. In other words, intention reading would be just a case, though a very special one, of pattern recognition.


Author(s):  
Andrzej Niewiadomski

The article is devoted to the relationship between Zygmunt Haupt’s prose and the romantic worldview, more precisely to the references to Juliusz Słowacki’s works clearly visible in Haupt’s prose. The issue, which has been previously pointed out by other researchers, required verification by means of close analysis of the specific kind of game that Haupt plays with Słowacki’s texts: Beniowski, Lilla Weneda, the poems Do pastereczki… (To a shepherdess…) and Patrz nad grotą… (Look, above the grotto…), and a fragment of Raptularz (Notebook). Seemingly simple references turn out to be part of a design of making a modern attempt at challenging the incommunicable by means of referring to both Słowacki’s text and his biography, together with an ambiguous, and suspended between repetition and ironic distance, attitude towards the romantic diagnoses of existence. Haupt’s prose, referring to many other traditions as well, presents a Mannerist creative design in which the romantic tradition plays a significant role, yet is not the only point of reference.


1995 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 424-425
Author(s):  
Laurence D. Smith
Keyword(s):  

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