Search

This collection brings together leading international socio-legal and medico-legal scholars to explore the dilemma of how to support legal capacity in theory and practice. Traditionally, decisions for persons found to lack capacity are made by others, generally without reference to the person, and this applies especially to those with cognitive and psycho-social disabilities. This book examines the difficulties in establishing effective and deliverable supported decision-making, concluding that approaches to capacity need to be informed by a grounded understanding of how it operates in'real life'contexts. The book focuses on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which recognises the equal right to legal capacity of people with disabilities and requires States Parties to provide support for the exercise of this right. However, 10 years after the CRPD came into force, the shift to legal frameworks for supported decision-making remains at best only partial.With 16 chapters written by contributors from the UK, Canada, Finland, India, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey, the collection takes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach. Many of the contributors have been directly involved in law reform processes in their home jurisdictions, and thus can combine both academic expertise and practical, grounded awareness of the challenges of legal change.

The world of dementia care can be a difficult one for carers to navigate, posing new challenges at every stage from diagnosis to end of life. In her ground-breaking investigation, rooted in original empirical data, Rosie Harding explores the regulatory and legal dimensions of caring for a person with dementia. By exploring carers'experiences of dementia care, she critiques the limitations of current approaches to health and social care regulation. This socio-legal work is a new contribution to the study of feminist care ethics, relationality, and vulnerability theory. Duties to Care argues that by understanding the relational contexts that shape everyday experiences of regulatory structures, we will better understand where law is operating to support carers, and where it adds to the difficulties they experience. Ultimately, the challenges that dementia poses will be addressed only if we find solutions that take account of the relationality of life, dementia, and law.

Care is central to life, and yet is all too often undervalued, taken for granted, and hidden from view. This collection of fourteen substantive and highly innovative essays, along with its insightful introduction, seeks to explore the different dimensions of care that shape social, legal and political contexts. It addresses these dimensions in four key ways. First, the contributions expand contemporary theoretical understandings of the value of care, by reflecting upon established conceptual approaches (such as the ‘ethics of care') and developing new ways of using and understanding this concept. Second, the chapters draw on a wide range of methods, from doctrinal scholarship through ethnographic, empirical and biographical research methodologies. Third, the book enlarges the usual subjects of care research, by expanding its analysis beyond the more typical focus on familial interconnection to include professional care contexts, care by strangers and care for and about animals. Finally, the collection draws on contributions from academics working in Europe and Australia, across law, anthropology, gender studies, politics, psychology and sociology. By highlighting the points of connection and tension between these diverse international and disciplinary perspectives, this book outlines a new and nuanced approach to care, exploring contemporary understandings of care across law, the social sciences and humanities.

This book showcases developments in theory, research and practice regarding sexuality and ageing, considering the differences as well as similarities between and among ageing heterosexual and LGBT older people. Identifying the questions central to future social scientific research on ageing and sexuality, it focuses on the important, emerging dimensions of sexuality and ageing: embodiment, the diversification of the ageing context and the intersections of care and sexuality. With attention to the different forms of sexualities, particularly at their intersection with gender, this volume explores the importance of spatial and relational contexts, whether individual, residential or virtual, with authors offering studies of online dating, sexuality in the context of residential care and the relationship between sexuality, legal frameworks and social policy. Interdisciplinary in scope and offering the latest research from scholars in the UK, Australasia and Africa, Ageing and Sexualities constitutes an integrated approach to the conceptual and practical challenges of understanding the interplay of ageing and sexuality in contemporary society. As such, it will appeal to scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, including sociology, cultural studies, socio-legal studies, social gerontology, psychology, medicine and health care.

Regulating Sexuality: Legal Consciousness in Lesbian and Gay Lives explores the impact that recent seismic shifts in the legal landscape have had for lesbians and gay men. The last decade has been a time of extensive change in the legal regulation of lesbian and gay lives in Britain, Canada and the US. Almost every area where the law impacts on sexuality has been reformed or modified. These legal developments combine to create a new, uncharted terrain for lesbians and gay men. And, through an analysis of their attitudes, views and experiences, this book explores the effects of these developments. Drawing on, and developing, the concept of ‘legal consciousness', Regulating Sexuality focuses on four different ‘texts': qualitative responses to a large-scale online survey of lesbians'and gay men's views about the legal recognition of same sex relationships; published auto/biographical narratives about being and becoming a lesbian or gay parent; semi-structured, in-depth, interviews with lesbians and gay men about relationship recognition, parenting, discrimination and equality; and fictional utopian texts. In this study of the interaction between law and society in social justice movements, Rosie Harding interweaves insights from the new legal pluralism with legal consciousness studies to present a rich and nuanced exploration of the contemporary regulation of sexuality.