Digital Commons Network^™

Race, Religion And Law: The Tension Between Spirit And Its Institutionalization, George H. Taylor

Articles

My reflections flow from some recent writings by the critical race scholar Derrick Bell. Bell acknowledges that in prior work he has focused on the "the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of racism" but now suggests the possibility of a "deeper foundation" arising from the conjunction that "[m]ost racists are also Christians." This statement is Bell at his best: at once both extremely provocative and extremely unsettling. I want to explore and develop two aspects of Bell's argument.

First, if we want to examine and understand the many dimensions of racism, it is not enough to employ economic, political, or …

Whether It’S Coins, Fringe, Or Just Stuff That’S Sparkly': Aesthetics And Utility In A Tribal Fusion Belly Dance Troupe’S Costumes, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

As both a scholar and a belly dancer, I believe that belly dance is recognizable on aesthetic grounds. In addition to the movements that belly dancers typically perform—muscle isolations, undulations, graceful hand motions and turns, and lots of hip work—belly dancers wear costumes that are visually identifiable as belly dance costumes. While this description may seem tautological, there are recognizable standards both in the public sphere and among dancers for what constitutes the belly dance image—or images, as belly dance is a diverse phenomenon that encompasses teaching, learning, performing, watching, socializing, and costuming.

Gendering The City, Gendering The Nation: Contesting Urban Space In Fes, Morocco, Rachel Newcomb

Faculty Publications

An actor-centered approach to the gendering of urban spaces demonstrates how individuals respond to competing ideologies in determining the rules that surround women’s presence in urban, Muslim spaces. This article examines how women in the Ville Nouvelle of Fes, Morocco draw on local conceptualizations of hospitality, kinship, and shame as they debate the gendering of four urban areas: the street, the café, a cosmopolitan exercise club, and cyber space. Women’s tactics for occupying social space indicate the resilience of local culture in the face of ideologies that attempt to posit a specific vision of women in the Moroccan nation state.

Social Software, Groups, And Governance, Michael J. Madison

Articles

Formal groups play an important role in the law. Informal groups largely lie outside it. Should the law be more attentive to informal groups? The paper argues that this and related questions are appearing more frequently as a number of computer technologies, which I collect under the heading social software, increase the salience of groups. In turn, that salience raises important questions about both the significance and the benefits of informal groups. The paper suggests that there may be important social benefits associated with informal groups, and that the law should move towards a framework for encouraging and recognizing them. …

The Idea Of The Law Review: Scholarship, Prestige, And Open Access, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Essay was written as part of a Symposium on open access publishing for legal scholarship. It makes the claim that open access publishing models will succeed, or not, to the extent that they account for the existing economy of prestige that drives law reviews and legal scholarship. What may seem like a lot of uncharitable commentary is intended instead as an expression of guarded optimism: Imaginative reuse of some existing tools of scholarly publishing (even by some marginalized members of the prestige economy - or perhaps especially by them) may facilitate the emergence of a viable open access norm.

Metaphor, Objects, And Commodities, George H. Taylor, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Article is a contribution to a Symposium that focuses on the ideas of Margaret Jane Radin as a point of departure, and particularly on her analyses of propertization and commodification. While Radin focuses on the harms associated with commodification of the person, relying on Hegel's idea of alienation, we argue that objectification, and in particular objectification of various features of the digital environment, may have important system benefits. We present an extended critique of Radin's analysis, basing the critique in part on Gadamer's argument that meaning and application are interrelated and that meaning changes with application. Central to this …

In The Crucible Of The Frontier: The Emergence And Decline Of A Trading Site In Early Colonial Virginia, Patrick Brendan Burke

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Philosophical Justification And The Legal Accommodation Of Indigenous Ritual Objects; An Australian Study, Andrew G. Hunter

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Indigenous cultural possessions constitute a diverse global issue. This issue includes some culturally important, intangible tribal objects. This is evident in the Australian copyright cases viewed in this study, which provide examples of disputes over traditional Indigenous visual art. A proposal for the legal recognition of Indigenous cultural possessions in Australia is also reviewed, in terms of a new category of law. When such cultural objects are in an artistic form they constitute the tribe's self-presentation and its mechanism of cultural continuity. Philosophical arguments for the legal recognition of Indigenous intellectual `property' tend to assume that the value of Indigenous …

Palestinian Refugees: Dethroning The Nation At The Crowing Of The 'Statelet', Randa Farah

Randa R Farah Dr.

The Oslo agreements proposed a two-state solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza existing alongside Israel. However, the refugees’ right of return and claims to land and property expropriated by Israel during the 1948 were removed from the equation, although they represent the core issues in the conflict. Based on the territorial divisions that preceded the 1967 war, or the ‘green line’, the agreements implicitly rendered the 1948 war and its consequences for the majority of the Palestinian population a non-negotiable historical reality. In a manner of speaking, the crowning of the ‘state’ …

Hiv/Aids Community Home Based Care Baseline Livelihood Assessment For Mwenezi District, Zimbabwe. Care., John Mazzeo

John Mazzeo, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Zimbabwe Household Livelihood Assessment. Care., John Mazzeo

John Mazzeo, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

An Ethnographic Study Of The Social Context Of Migrant Health In The United States, Seth M. Holmes Phd, Md

Seth M. Holmes PhD, MD

Background

Migrant workers in the United States have extremely poor health. This paper aims to identify ways in which the social context of migrant farm workers affects their health and health care.

Methods and Findings

This qualitative study employs participant observation and interviews on farms and in clinics throughout 15 months of migration with a group of indigenous Triqui Mexicans in the western US and Mexico. Study participants include more than 130 farm workers and 30 clinicians. Data are analyzed utilizing grounded theory, accompanied by theories of structural violence, symbolic violence, and the clinical gaze. The study reveals that farm …

Social Exchange Practices Among Mexican-Origin Women In Nogales, Arizona: Prospects For Education Acquisition, Anna O. Oleary

Anna Ochoa OLeary

This paper summarizes quantitative and qualitative findings from a 1999 study of Mexican-origin households in Nogales, Arizona. It finds that women’s educational progress is facilitated by social support and, even more important, that a household’s investment in the education of its members is significantly raised with an increase in the education level of the female head of household. It argues that systematic efforts to build on existent cultural frameworks of social support will promote women’s educational progress and help improve educational opportunities for all people of Mexican origin.

Grey Suit Or Brown Carhartt: Narrative Transition, Relocation And Reorientation In The Lives Of Corporate Refugees, Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.