Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Law and Gender (3)
- Family, Life Course, and Society (2)
- Gender and Sexuality (2)
- Law and Society (2)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (2)
-
- Sociology (2)
- African Languages and Societies (1)
- Anthropology (1)
- Arts and Humanities (1)
- Law and Race (1)
- Politics and Social Change (1)
- Public Law and Legal Theory (1)
- Sexuality and the Law (1)
- Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance (1)
- Social and Cultural Anthropology (1)
- Sociology of Culture (1)
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Law
Very Long Engagements: The Persistent Authority Of Bridewealth In A Post-Apartheid South African Community, Michael W. Yarbrough
Very Long Engagements: The Persistent Authority Of Bridewealth In A Post-Apartheid South African Community, Michael W. Yarbrough
Publications and Research
This article examines the persistent authority of the customary practice for forming recognized marriages in many South African communities, centered on bridewealth and called “lobola.” Marriage rates have sharply fallen in South Africa, and many South Africans blame this on the difficulty of completing lobola amid intense economic strife. Using in-depth qualitative research from a village in KwaZulu-Natal, where lobola demands are the country’s highest and marriage rates its lowest, I argue that lobola’s authority survives because lay actors, and especially women, have innovated new repertoires of lobola behavior that allow them to pursue emerging needs and desires for marriage …
Sending A Dear John Letter: Public Information Campaigns And The Movement To “End Demand” For Prostitution In Atlanta, Ga, Samantha Majic
Sending A Dear John Letter: Public Information Campaigns And The Movement To “End Demand” For Prostitution In Atlanta, Ga, Samantha Majic
Publications and Research
This paper examines “Dear John”, a public information campaign that ran from 2006–2008 in Atlanta, GA, to ask what narrative it conveys about commercial sex and those who engage in it, in order to understand the gendered (and other) discursive constructions it produces, reflects, and complicates about these activities and subjects. Drawing from both policy and sex work/trafficking scholarship, this paper argues that Dear John used symbolic images and direct and consequential text to convey a “male demand” narrative, which holds that men’s demand for sexual services harms girls and young women and will not be tolerated. Yet, in so …
Toward A Political Sociology Of Conjugal-Recognition Regimes: Gendered Multiculturalism In South African Marriage Law, Michael W. Yarbrough
Toward A Political Sociology Of Conjugal-Recognition Regimes: Gendered Multiculturalism In South African Marriage Law, Michael W. Yarbrough
Publications and Research
While conjugal-recognition policies are often a subject of political debate, scholarly attempts to explain such policies are relatively rare and typically focused on discrete policies—same-sex marriage, no-fault divorce, etc.—with comparatively little investigation of potential connections among policies. This article begins to develop a more holistic approach focused on explaining and understanding what I call conjugal-recognition regimes. Adapting the concept from the existing literature on welfare regimes, I argue that conjugal-recognition regimes exist when an identifiable pattern or principle organizes an institution’s conjugal-recognition policy and thereby shapes social relations at multiple levels, from the individuals in conjugal relationships to the multiple …
Gender Neutrality And The “Violence Against Women” Frame, Julie Goldscheid
Gender Neutrality And The “Violence Against Women” Frame, Julie Goldscheid
Publications and Research
The challenge of sustaining a progressive framework that continues to resonate in the complex aftermath of a generation of reforms lies at the heart of many current debates about gender violence legal and policy reform. This Article addresses one longstanding issue: the way gender violence is framed in law, policy, and popular rhetoric. Many initiatives continue to use the gender-specific “violence against women” frame as a default description. That “woman-specific” frame, developed in service of feminist goals such as foregrounding and challenging gender bias and fostering more inclusive delivery of social and other services, now raises empirical, theoretical, political and …