Law and Community in Three American Towns

Law and Community in Three American Towns PDF

Author: Carol J. Greenhouse

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-07-05

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1501725017

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Many commentators on the contemporary United States believe that current rates of litigation are a sign of decay in the nation’s social fabric. Law and Community in Three American Towns explores how ordinary people in three towns—located in New England, the Midwest, and the South—view the law, courts, litigants, and social order. Carol J. Greenhouse, Barbara Yngvesson, and David M. Engel analyze attitudes toward law and law users as a way of commentating on major American myths and ongoing changes in American society. They show that residents of "Riverside," "Sander County," and "Hopewell" interpret litigation as a sign of social decline, but they also value law as a symbol of their local way of life. The book focuses on this ambivalence and relates it to the deeply-felt tensions express between "community" and "rights" as rival bases of society. The authors, two anthropologists and a lawyer, each with an understanding of a particular region, were surprised to discover that such different locales produced parallel findings. They undertook a comparative project to find out why ambivalence toward the law and law use should be such a common refrain. The answer, they believe, turns out to be less a matter of local traditions than of the ways that people perceive the patterns of their lives as being vulnerable to external forces of change.

The Big House in a Small Town

The Big House in a Small Town PDF

Author: Eric J. Williams

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-03-03

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0313383669

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This work is an in-depth, on-the-ground examination of how prisons impact rural communities, including a revealing study of two rural communities that have chosen prisons as an economic development strategy. A recent study by the Urban Institute estimates that one-third of all counties in the United States house a prison, and that our prison and jail population is now over 2.1 million. Another report indicates that more than 97 percent of all U.S. prisoners are eventually released, and communities are absorbing nearly 650,000 formerly incarcerated individuals each year. These figures are particularly alarming considering the fact that rural communities are using prisons as economic development vehicles without fully understanding the effects of these jails on the area. This book is the result of author Eric J. Williams' ground-level research about the effects of prisons upon two rural American communities that lobbied to host maximum security prisons. Through hundreds of interviews conducted while living in Florence, Colorado, and Beeville, Texas, Williams offers the perspective of local residents on all sides of the issue, as well as a social history told mainly from the standpoint of those who lobbied for the prisons.

Law and the Modern Mind

Law and the Modern Mind PDF

Author: Susanna L. Blumenthal

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-02-22

Total Pages: 589

ISBN-13: 0674495535

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In postrevolutionary America, the autonomous individual was both the linchpin of a young nation and a threat to the founders’ vision of ordered liberty. Conceiving of self-government as a psychological as well as a political project, jurists built a republic of laws upon the Enlightenment science of the mind with the aim of producing a responsible citizenry. Susanna Blumenthal probes the assumptions and consequences of this undertaking, revealing how ideas about consciousness, agency, and accountability have shaped American jurisprudence. Focusing on everyday adjudication, Blumenthal shows that mental soundness was routinely disputed in civil as well as criminal cases. Litigants presented conflicting religious, philosophical, and medical understandings of the self, intensifying fears of a populace maddened by too much liberty. Judges struggled to reconcile common sense notions of rationality with novel scientific concepts that suggested deviant behavior might result from disease rather than conscious choice. Determining the threshold of competence was especially vexing in litigation among family members that raised profound questions about the interconnections between love and consent. This body of law coalesced into a jurisprudence of insanity, which also illuminates the position of those to whom the insane were compared, particularly children, married women, and slaves. Over time, the liberties of the eccentric expanded as jurists came to recognize the diversity of beliefs held by otherwise reasonable persons. In calling attention to the problematic relationship between consciousness and liability, Law and the Modern Mind casts new light on the meanings of freedom in the formative era of American law.

Bisexuality and Same-Sex Marriage

Bisexuality and Same-Sex Marriage PDF

Author: M. Paz Galupo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1317999266

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In our society, the argument for or against same-sex marriage becomes even more heated when the debate turns to bisexual women and men. Bisexuality and Same-Sex Marriage thoughtfully explores this debate from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives, presenting respected scholars from fields as diverse as American Studies, Communication, Criminology, Human and Organizational Systems, Law and Social Policy, LGBT Studies, Organizational Behavior, Psychology, Sociology, Women’s Studies, and Queer Studies. This clear-viewed volume is organized into three perspectives—theoretical, research, and personal—that frame the debate from a macro to micro level of analysis. This book goes beyond the intense acrimony and divisiveness to rationally examine the issue from various viewpoints and through the latest research. This informative text presents and analyzes in depth the current findings and the diverse LGBT and straight perspectives on the issue. This insightful resource discusses in detail personal views, the latest theories, and is extensively referenced. Bisexuality and Same-Sex Marriage is an essential volume for LGBT studies professionals, psychologists, counselors, educators, students, and interested general public. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Bisexuality.

Hindu Divorce

Hindu Divorce PDF

Author: Livia Holden

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1317121899

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This comparative study investigates the place of Hindu divorce in the Indian legal system and considers whether it offers a way out of a matrimonial crisis situation for women. Using the narratives of the social actors involved, it poses questions about the relationship between traditional jurisdictions located in rural areas and the larger legal culture of towns and cities in India, and also in the UK and USA. The multidisciplinary approach draws on research from the social sciences, feminist and legal studies and will be of interest to students and scholars of law, anthropology and sociology.

Psychosocial Aspects of Disability

Psychosocial Aspects of Disability PDF

Author: George Henderson

Publisher: Charles C Thomas Publisher

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 0398086125

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This new edition of Psychosocial Aspects of Disability strikes a balance of past, present, and future views of individual, family, societal, and governmental interaction and reaction to persons with disabilities. The past is presented in Part 1, Psychosocial Aspects of Disabilities, in which a view of the evolution of societal reactions to disabilities and persons with disability is presented. This perspective is important because it explains how some of the beliefs and attitudes toward disabilities and those who have a disability have developed. Additionally, Part 1 makes us aware from a historical perspective why persons with disabilities have been subject to certain types of treatment from family, friends, and society. Parts 2 and 3 provide discussion of present situations for persons with disabilities as they move toward better inclusion in society. Chapter 5 discusses the need for empowerment of persons with disabilities and how they can empower themselves. Chapter 6 discusses the need for better employment opportunities for persons with disabilities because this is a significant way of empowering persons with disabilities. Chapter 7 discusses federal legislation that has been developed to facilitate the empowerment of persons with disabilities. Part 4, Psychosocial Issues, to a large extent, represents the future for persons with disabilities. The chapters in this section discuss some disability issues that some persons with disabilities will encounter and/or by which they will be affected during the twenty-first century. Additionally, there is discussion of the need for persons with disabilities to attain the full human rights to which they are entitled.

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes