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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Antigone Claimed, "I Am A Stranger": Democracy, Membership And Unauthorized Immigration, Andres Fabian Henao Castro Nov 2014

Antigone Claimed, "I Am A Stranger": Democracy, Membership And Unauthorized Immigration, Andres Fabian Henao Castro

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation offers a new framework through which to theorize contemporary democratic practices by attending to the political agency of unauthorized immigrants. I argue that unauthorized immigrants themselves, by claiming their own ambiguous legal condition as a legitimate basis for public speech, are able to open up the boundaries of political membership and to render the foundations of democracy contingent, that is to say, they are able to reopen the question about who counts as a member of the demos. I develop this argument by way of a close reading of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone[1], which allows me to …


How Secular Should Democracy Be? A Cross-Disciplinary Study Of Catholicism And Islam In Promoting Public Reason, David Ingram, David Ingram Oct 2014

How Secular Should Democracy Be? A Cross-Disciplinary Study Of Catholicism And Islam In Promoting Public Reason, David Ingram, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

I argue that the same factors (strategic and principled) that motivated Catholicism to champion liberal democracy are the same that motivate 21st Century Islam to do the same. I defend this claim by linking political liberalism to democratic secularism. Distinguishing institutional, political, and epistemic dimensions of democratic secularism, I show that moderate forms of political and epistemic secularism are most conducive to fostering the kind of public reasoning essential to democratic legitimacy. This demonstration draws upon the ambivalent impact of Indonesia’s Islamic parties in advancing universal social justice aims as against more sectarian policies.


Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent Aug 2014

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …


Democracy, Prison, And Public Safety Realignment: Renewing Our Imagination, Kimberly Turner May 2014

Democracy, Prison, And Public Safety Realignment: Renewing Our Imagination, Kimberly Turner

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

The American carceral condition has waged a 200-year-old struggle where the lives of the guilty, the innocent, and the victimized have taken center stage in a debate centered on rehabilitation, reformation, and revenge. The drama has undergone a number of revisions from great scholarly authors, multidisciplinary intellectuals, and literary muses. Despite a number of new renderings, the central themes of the American prison have remained constant, and just as there have been builders of prisons, there have been forces intent on their destruction. The current state of the American carceral condition has burgeoned since the neoliberal political and economic shift …


Promoting Justice, Peace, And Understanding Through Partnerships And Dialogue, Center For Peace, Democracy, And Development, University Of Massachusetts Boston Apr 2014

Promoting Justice, Peace, And Understanding Through Partnerships And Dialogue, Center For Peace, Democracy, And Development, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

The Center for Peace, Democracy and Development (CPDD) promotes conflict resolution, democracy, economic development, education building, media development, and legal and judicial reform through partnerships and training programs across the globe. We offer academic and practical expertise across the spectrum of conflict management and democratic governance. Moreover, we mentor the next generation of peace and democracy builders from the UMass Boston student body who actively participate in many of our initiatives. The Restorative Justice Mediation Project (RJUMP) is a university-based program that aims to provide restorative justice services, education and training to the Suffolk County law enforcement community, department of …


Legitimation, Mark C. Modak-Truran Jan 2014

Legitimation, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Mark C Modak-Truran

This article identifies three different conceptions of legitimation - pre-modern, modern, and post-secular - that compete both within and across national boundaries for the coveted prize of informing the social imaginary regarding how the government and the law should be legitimated in constitutional democracies. Pre-modern conceptions of legitimation consider governments and rulers legitimate if they are ordained by God or if the political system is ordered in accordance with the normative cosmic order. Contemporary proponents of the pre-modern conception range from those in the United States who maintain that the government has been legitimated by the “Judeo-Christian tradition” to those …


Prosecutorial Discretion In Three Systems: Balancing Conflicting Goals And Providing Mechanisms For Control, Sara Sun Beale Jan 2014

Prosecutorial Discretion In Three Systems: Balancing Conflicting Goals And Providing Mechanisms For Control, Sara Sun Beale

Faculty Scholarship

In regulating the authority and discretion exercised by contemporary prosecutors,national systems balance a variety of goals, many of which are in tension or direct conflict. Forexample, making prosecutors politically or democratically accountable may conflict with theprinciple of prosecutorial neutrality, and the goal of efficiency may conflict with accuracy. National systems generally seek to foster equal treatment of defendants and respect for theirrights while also controlling or reducing crime and protecting the rights of victims. Systems thatrecognize prosecutorial discretion also seek to establish and implement policy decisions aboutthe best ways to address various social problems, priorities, and the allocation of resources. …