Gary Wickham

George Pavlich

The product of a workshop held at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Onati, Spain, the nine chapters collected here re- examine the idea of governmentality--most often associated with the work of Michel Foucault--to measure its relevance to contemporary sociolegal issues. The book considers whether political involvement should be a necessary component of a governmentality approach, challenging governmentality theorists who have analyzed conceptual practices without demanding that they be applied to local political systems. The contributors ponder topics including liberal government and resistance to it, unemployment, and crime as well as issues of philosophy and methodology. Distributed by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Foucault's Bequest

Rethinking Law, Society and Governance

George Clifford Pavlich

This set of essays engages with Foucault's notion of governmentality, particularly at the junction where law/regulation meets 'the social'.

Charles Barbour

After Sovereignty addresses the vexed question of sovereignty in contemporary social, political, and legal theory. The emergence, and now apparent implosion, of international capital exceeding the borders of known political entities, the continued expansion of a potentially endless 'War on Terror', the often predicted, but still uncertain, establishment of either a new international American Empire or a new era of International Law, the proliferation of social and political struggles among stateless refugees, migrant workers, and partial citizens, the resurgence of religion as a dominant source of political identification among people all over the globe – these developments and others have thrown into crisis the modern concept of sovereignty, and the notions of statehood and citizenship that rest upon it. Drawing on classical sources and more contemporary speculations, and developing a range of arguments concerning the possibility of political beginnings in the current moment, the papers collected in After Sovereignty contribute to a renewed interest in the problem of sovereignty in theoretical and political debate. They also provide a multitude of resources for the urgent, if necessarily fractured and diffuse, effort to reconfigure sovereignty today. Whilst it has regularly been suggested that the sovereignty of the nation-state is in crisis, the exact reasons for, and exact implications of, this crisis have rarely been so intensively examined.

On the Question of Political Beginnings

After Sovereignty

Accusing someone of committing a crime arrests everyday social relations and unfurls processes that decide on who to admit to criminal justice networks. Accusation demarcates specific subjects as the criminally accused, who then face courtroom trials, and possible punishment. It inaugurates a crime’s historical journey into being with sanctioned accusers successfully making criminal allegations against accused persons in the presence of authorized juridical agents. Given this decisive role in the production of criminal identities, it is surprising that criminal accusation has received relatively short shrift in sociological, socio-legal and criminological discourses. In this book, George Pavlich redresses this oversight by framing a socio-legal field directed to political rationales and practices of criminal accusation. The focus of its interrogation is the truth-telling powers of an accusatory lore that creates subjects within the confines of socially authorized spaces. And, in this respect, the book has two overarching aims in mind. First, it names and analyses powers of criminal accusation – its history, rationales, rites and effects – as an enduring gateway to criminal justice. Second, the book evaluates the prospects for limiting and/or changing apparatuses of criminal accusation. By understanding their powers, might it be possible to decrease the number who enter criminal justice’s gates? This question opens debate on the subject of the book’s final section: the prospects for more inclusive accusative grammars that do not, as a reflex, turn to exclusionary visions of crime and vengeful, segregated, corrective or risk-orientated punishment. Highlighting how expansive criminal justice systems are populated by accusatorial powers, and how it might be possible to recalibrate the lore that feeds them, this ground-breaking analysis will be of considerable interest to scholars working in socio-legal research studies, critical criminology, social theory, postcolonial studies and critical legal theory.

Political Rationales and Socio-Legal Practices

Criminal Accusation

Matthew P. Unger

Much critical scholarship has detailed the punitive effects of accusations that lead to criminalization. Less well documented is the founding role that accusation plays in creating potential criminals. In an attempt at redress, this collection foregrounds how ideas and rituals of accusation initiate criminalization processes. It offers various perspectives on the mechanisms by which legal persons come to be identified as suitable subjects for criminal justice arenas. By analyzing how criminal accusation operates in theoretical, historical, socio-legal, criminological, political, cultural, and procedural realms, this book launches an important new field of inquiry.

George Pavlich

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