The Violence of the Normative

Author(s):  
Amy L. Brandzel

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book argues that citizenship is not only the central structure for reifying the norms of whiteness, heterosexuality, consumerism, and settler colonialism within the United States, but that these norms are brutally enforced against nonnormative bodies, practices, behaviors, and forms of affiliation through oppositional, divide-and-conquer logics that set up nonnormative subjects to compete against each other in order to gain the privileged access to citizenship. The book examines the complex nature of the violence of normative citizenship by offering a comparative analysis of three case studies, namely same-sex marriage law, hate crime legislation, and Native Hawaiian sovereignty. The remainder of the chapter discusses the notion of citizenship as a form of disciplinary and biopolitical power, and the anti-intersectionality of citizenship discourses in the United States.

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-118
Author(s):  
Omar Altalib

The focus of this book is on "the gradual transformation of American Muslims'perceptions and self-identification, coaxed by the ways American civillaw has penetrated and come to dominate their daily lives" (p. vii). Hence, thebook attempts to show the link between law and society by using Muslims inthe United States as a case study. It is of interest to sociologists, legal historians,political scientists, and scholars of religion and touches on the themes ofcivil rights, freedom of religion, social change, the status of minorities, andassimilation.Moore shows how Muslims in the United States have been affected byAmerican immigration law (chapters 2 and 3), religious liberty laws affectingMuslims in prison (chapter 4), hate crime legislation affecting mosques (chapter5), and zoning laws that affect mosques (chapter 6). The sources Mooreuses are historical: court records, interviews, magazine articles, and newspaperstories. She points out that there has been a great transformation in theAmerican legal system's attitude toward Islam. In 1811, the New YorkSupreme Court ruled (in People vs. Ruggles) that the "religion of Mohammed"is an impostor religion, a superstition, and is equally false and unknown(p. x). ln 1962, on the other hand, the District of Columbia U.S. District Courtruled (in Fulwood vs. Clemmer) that Muslims believe in Allah as a supremebeing and as the one true god. It follows, therefore, that the Muslim faith is areligion {p. 82).Have American legal institutions been responsive to the Muslim community?Has the American legal setting transformed the Muslim community? Theanswer to the first question, according to Moore, is that in the 1800s, "No"; butgradually the courts have become more responsive and continue to be moreresponsive as time passes and as Muslims become more politically active. Theanswer to the second question is "Yes."How has the American legal setting transformed the Muslim community?It has limited the numbers of Muslims in the United States (through immigrationrestrictions). It has increasingly allowed Muslims in prison to pray jum'ah,wear kufis on their heads, eat nonpork foods, and obtain copies of the Qur'an.It has protected Muslim mosques from vandalism through stiffer penalties forpeople committing such a crime. It has also restricted the establishment of ...


Criminology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susann Wiedlitzka

Hate crime is a problem in many countries around the world. Scholars define hate crimes as unlawful conduct directed at different target groups, which can include violent acts, property damage, harassment, and trespassing (see Hate crime: An emergent research agenda. Annual Review of Sociology 27.1 [2001]: 479–504). Hate crime perpetrators target their victim’s race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, or disability, but also a variety of other characteristics. Several social movements (e.g., the civil rights movement, women’s movement, and LGBT movement) laid the foundation for anti-violence movements and placed the hate crime discourse on the political and legislative agenda. One way to better understand hate crime is to explore how governments in different parts of the world address the issue of crimes motivated by hate or prejudice. Targeted laws and policies transformed hate violence from ordinary to extraordinary crime (see Hate crime policy in western Europe: Responding to racist violence in Britain, Germany, and France. American Behavioral Scientist 51.2 [2007]: 149–165). Different countries implemented hate crime legislation in order to condemn crime committed due to prejudice or bias against an individual or group of people, introducing such legislation during different periods in time. The United States emerged as the leader of hate crime policy approaches, implementing legal responses to prejudice and bias in the early 20th century. The United States was also the first country to circulate the term “hate crime” during the 1980s (see Hate crime: An emergent research agenda. Annual Review of Sociology 27.1 [2001]: 479–504). Europe and the Asia-Pacific region followed suit in implementing their own responses to hate crime. The diversity of hate crime legislation in different countries makes it difficult to combine the legislative contexts under a common framework. A controversial debate exists around the need for a separate set of hate crime legislation. Scholars dispute the seriousness of the hate crime offense, the possibilities of proving motivational aspects of the hate crime, criminalizing hate, and introducing more severe punishments. They also debate the utilization of the civil versus the criminal code, the inclusion of different protected categories under hate crime legislation, the symbolic character of hate crime, and the social and political impact of hate crime legislation. This bibliography reviews key resources on hate crime legislation, including its historical context, its globalization, and the socio-criminological debate around hate crime legislation.


1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Jenness ◽  
Ryken Grattet

Violence born of hatred, bias, or prejudice has become the source of highly politicized public debate and subsequent mandates that “somebody do something.” Accordingly, many federal, state, county, and city officials have taken measures to curb hate-motivated violence through new legislation. This criminalization of hate is a fairly recent development in legal and criminal history, and it is not surprising that little scholarly attention has so far been paid to understanding the adoption of hate crime legislation throughout the United States. We describe the content and distribution of “hate crime” laws, also known as “bias crime” laws. Then, we rely upon a complete inventory of hate crime statutes in the United States and social indicator data to investigate the social forces shaping the adoption of one particular type of hate crime legislation, so-called “bias-motivated violence and intimidation” statutes. Logistic regression analyses are used to determine how various structural and political variables compare and interact in terms of their impact on the criminalization process. Our findings suggest that structural and political determinants of criminalization posited by contemporary theoretical arguments are insufficient to explain the recent criminalization of hate.


Criminology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen E. Mills ◽  
Joshua Freilich ◽  
Steven Chermak

This article focuses on political crimes, specifically terrorism and hate crime. Both terrorism and hate crime are criminal activities that are often committed to further a political objective, as opposed to typical or regular crimes that are usually committed for personal reasons such as greed, revenge, or other personal motivations. Political motivations encompass ideological, social, and religious objectives. Several works (e.g., Bruce Hoffman’s Inside Terrorism; see Hoffman 2006, cited under Defining Terrorism and Hate Crime) examine the evolution of terrorism from ancient to modern times. While bias-motivated violence and hate crimes are just as old as terrorism, the United States did not formally adopt hate crime legislation, through the passage of a variety of substantive penalty enhancement and data collection laws, until the late 20th century. Making Hate a Crime (Jenness and Grattet 2004, cited under Defining Terrorism and Hate Crime) explores the history of hate crime legislation, highlighting how various civil rights and victims’ rights movements played a role in the passage of hate crime legislation. In the classic text Hate Crimes Revisited, Jack Levin and Jack McDevitt outline the history of hate crimes, explain why some persons are motivated to commit these crimes, and discuss efforts to combat them (Levin and McDevitt 2002, cited under Defining Terrorism and Hate Crime).


Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamban Naidoo ◽  
Michelle Karels

This article, which is the second of a two-part submission, examines the South African legal position pertaining to sexual offences and murder as a continuation of the theme introduced in Part One. The authors then examine the concept of motive before providing a brief overview of hate crime legislation and/or policy in the United States of America and Germany. The core of the article examines three possible routes for South Africa to curb hate crime. Firstly, the creation of substantive hate crime law in the form of legislation, secondly, the amendment of current legislation to incorporate protection against this form of crime and thirdly, the retention of thecurrent status quo coupled with the roll-out of civil society initiatives to curb hate-motivated crime. The conclusion of the article provides recommendations from a civil society and criminal justice perspective.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Swiffen

This article addresses the implications of a new resistance to hate crime legislation that has yet to be addressed in the mainstream legal debate in Canada or the United States. It comes mainly from groups in the US that represent lgbtq communities who are poor and/or of color. These communities are particularly vulnerable to victimization by hate crime yet the groups have repeatedly opposed the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression in hate crime legislation. This article addresses the underlying rationale of the new resistance and its implications for the mainstream debate. It begins by undertaking a comparative analysis of hate crime legislation in Canada and the US. It then considers the mainstream legal debate in both countries as well as some statistical data on hate crime. The third section turns to the new resistance as well as emerging data on the connection between victimization and the criminal legal system itself. It then draws on the legal theory of Walter Benjamin to reveal limits in the way that the mainstream legal debate conceptualizes criminalization. The final section of the article considers the implications of Benjamin’s concept of law for both the mainstream debate and the new resistance.


1947 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 386-387

Established by a Memorandum of Agreement signed by Argentina, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States in April, 1942, the International Wheat Council was set up as an agency to deal with the allocation of wheat surpluses. During the war it has served as a central organ to administer and coordinate the work of implementing the commitments of member-states to a pool of wheat for the relief of war-stricken and other necessitous areas. It held two sessions in Washington during 1946.


2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Balthazar

This paper's objective is to bring forth some elements which confirm the following hypothesis : Canada is consigned to continentalism, namely to economic and cultural integration with the United States though this fact is shrouded in a Canadian nationalism of sorts. The continentalist mentality is rooted in the history of British North America, inhabited mostly by refugees from America who have remained inherently "Yankees" in spite of their anti-americanism. The Confederation itself is based on a sort of complicity with the United States. More recently there were talks of a "North American nationality", and continentalism both cultural and economic has come to be seen as a 'force of nature" which the governments, at the most, put into a chanelling process. Still, it is possible for Canadian nationalism to exist provided it does not go beyond the threshold whence it would run headlong into the continental mentality. Canada has defined itself through an international or non-national perspective far too long for today's nationalism not to remain weak and poorly established. But the Americans whose "manifest destiny" has succeeded in spreading over Canada without even their having tried to hoist their flag there find it to their advantage to maintain some form of Canadian sovereignty. Canada as a "friendly nation" can be of use to Washington. That is why there are almost as many advocates for Canada's independence in the United States as there are north of the border. Canadian nationalism can thus further the interests of some Canadian elites without seriously prejudicing continental integration which can very well afford not to be set up into formalized structures.


1944 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-288
Author(s):  
Robert E. Cushman

On February 15, 1943, Wiley B. Rutledge, Jr., a judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, took the seat on the Supreme Court vacated by the resignation in October, 1942, of Mr. Justice Byrnes. There were no other changes in the Court's personnel. Disagreement among the justices abated somewhat. In only a dozen cases of importance did either four or three justices dissent, as against some thirty cases in the last term. The Court overruled two earlier decisions, both recent; and the reversal in each case was made possible by the vote of Mr. Justice Rutledge.A. QUESTIONS OF NATIONAL POWER1. WAR POWER-CIVIL VERSUS MILITARY AUTHORITYWest Coast Curfew Applied to Japanese-American Citizens. In February, 1942, the President issued Executive Order No. 9066, which authorized the creation of military areas from which any or all persons might be excluded and with respect to which the right of persons to enter, remain in, or leave should be subject to such regulations as the military authorities might prescribe. On March 2, the entire West Coast to an average depth of forty miles was set up as Military Area No. 1 by the Commanding General in that area, and the intention was announced to evacuate from it persons of suspected loyalty, alien enemies, and all persons, aliens and citizens alike, of Japanese ancestry.


Significance She addressed two key issues during her trip: tensions in post-coup Myanmar and China’s growing regional footprint. Shortly after she left the region, the United States announced that it would donate unused COVID-19 vaccines abroad, including to South-east Asia. Impacts Washington will tighten its sanctions on the Myanmar military while supporting ASEAN’s five-point plan to ease the country’s crisis. The National Unity Government, a parallel administration to Myanmar’s junta set up by its opponents, will try to attract greater US backing. Manila and Washington may extend negotiations over renewing their Visiting Forces Agreement to prevent the pact expiring in August.


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