The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to deal with the human rights violations of apartheid. However, the TRC's restorative justice approach did not always serve the needs of communities at a local level. Based on extended anthropological fieldwork, this book illustrates the impact of the TRC in urban African communities in Johannesburg. It argues that the TRC had little effect on popular ideas of justice as retribution. This provocative study deepens our understanding of post-apartheid South Africa and the use of human rights discourse.

Comparing welfare policies in the U.S. and Western Europe aimed at the "workless" population, this study notes that the European labor policies of welfare services offer the best method of bringing the socially excluded back into mainstream society. Despite differences in ideology and practice, Joel Handler argues that there are also significant similarities between the U.S. and the Europeans, especially in field-level practices that serve to exclude the most vulnerable. The author examines strategies for reform and concludes with an argument for a basic income guarantee.

This provocative volume explores immigration law in Spain and Italy, and exposes the tension between the temporary legal status of most immigrants, and the government emphasis on integration. It demonstrates the connections among immigrants' role as cheap labor--carefully inscribed in law--and their social exclusion and racialization. At the broadest level, the book engages questions of citizenship and belonging in this global era. It uniquely combines analysis of immigration laws and immigrants' daily experiences.

There is an ongoing perception that public accountability in modern-day governance is in 'crisis', caused by globalization and the increasing power of private economic interests. This book responds to that idea, providing the most comprehensive survey to date of how different organizations hold persons acting in the public interest to account, and the various problems they face. The book shows how key issues, such as public-mindedness, democracy and responsibility, and structures, such as bureaucracy, markets and transparency, adopt radically different and sometimes contradictory...

This book follows the invention and transformation of unemployment, understood as a historically specific site of regulation. Taking key aspects of the history of unemployment in Britain as its focus, it argues that the ways in which authorities have defined and sought to manage the jobless have been remarkably varied. The book examines such institutionalized practices as the labor bureau, unemployment insurance, and the present "New Deal" as "technologies" of power. The result is a challenge to our thinking about welfare states.

This broad-ranging and innovative investigation explores the ways in which both authorities and individual consumers have defined and managed the pleasures and dangers of alcoholic beverages. It explores the question of free will versus determinism and how it has been challenged by ideas about addiction, morality and psychology during the past 150 years. This book is based on years of original research and draws on sources from the United States, UK, Canada and elsewhere and will appeal to readers in legal studies, addiction studies, criminology, sociology and psychology.

The Ritual of Rights in Japan rejects the traditional view that Japan is a nation where overt conflict and the assertion of rights are unacceptable. It examines both mistorical events and contemporary policy, particularly recent battles over AIDS policy and the definition of death--in concluding that rights-based conflict is an important part of Japanese legal, political, and social practice. This book describes a nation where rights have become weapons in battles over politics and policy, asserted by those seeking both individual remedies and social change.

The Ritual of Rights in Japan rejects the traditional view that Japan is a nation where overt conflict and the assertion of rights are unacceptable. It examines both mistorical events and contemporary policy, particularly recent battles over AIDS policy and the definition of death--in concluding that rights-based conflict is an important part of Japanese legal, political, and social practice. This book describes a nation where rights have become weapons in battles over politics and policy, asserted by those seeking both individual remedies and social change.

Approaches to the relation of law and society have for a long time seen law as either autonomous or self-grounded in society. This book is a radically new approach that sees law as both derived from and constitutive of its surrounding social and cultural context. Drawing on the work of major theorists, this book examines the nature of law as it has descended from the Enlightenment, through to colonialism and now globalization. It is a significant contribution to legal philosophy, jurisprudence and socio-legal studies.

Exploring the relationship between conceptions of nature and (largely American) legal thought and practice, this study focuses on the politics and pragmatics of "nature talk"--as expressed in extra-legal disputes as well as different forms of legal discourse. Topics include the forces of nature, endangered species, animal experiments and bestiality. David Delaney demonstrates throughout that nearly any analysis of "nature" entails an interpretation of the essence of "humanity."