Search

The article discusses the British women in the Red River colony during 1850's. It further examines the ways in which British and Countryborn women used complexity, resistance and adaptation to establish their individual and ethnic identities.

Scholarship on Canada's Metis women has been informed largely by their central economic and reproductive roles in the British fur trade in North America. This article moves beyond these representations and focuses on Victorian discourses of race, class, gender and sexuality in a re-conceptualization of women's lives and experiences in territory. The article's primary aim is to evaluate the concept of female agency in Canada's Red River Colony (now Winnipeg, Manitoba) in 1850 and 1863. I use case studies of two unrelated lawsuits, Foss v. Pelly and The Queen v. Corbett, involving two differently situated Metis women. My central argument is that British attempts to translate English law over colonized space provided the 'Other' with a space of resistance and created hybrid socio-legal and cultural forms. My approach questions Western assumptions about discrete colonizer/colonized identities and power relations in those identities, maps the impact of law on social and cultural change in the fur trade and asks whether the Red River Colony was a hybrid place. Les identites hybrides au sein de la colonie de la riviere Rouge au Canada Les retomes metisses ont fait I'objet d'etudes academiques qui ont porte largement sur leurs roles economique et reproductif indispensables dans le commerce de la fourrure en Amerique du Nord sous le regime angluis. Cet article va au-dela de ces representations et se focalise sur les discours victoriens sur les questions relatives a la face, la classe, le sexe et la sexualite en vue de reconceptualiser les vies et les experiences particulieres des retomes de la Terre de Rupert. Le bur premier de I'article est d'evaluer le concept de I'action feminine dans la colonie de la riviere Rouge au Canada en 1850 et 1863 (aujourd'hui connue sous le nora de Winnipeg, Manitoba). L'etude se base sur deux poursuites judiciaires independantes, Foss c. Pelly et La Reine c. Corbett, concernent deux femmes metisses qui se trouvaient dans des situations differentes. La these que je soutiens est que les tentatives des Britanniques d'imposer le droit anglais a une colonie ont concede a l''Autre' un espace de resistance qui a donne lieu a des formes socio-legales et culturelles hydrides. Ma demarche met en cause certains prejuges de l'occident sur les identites distinctes colonisateur/colonise et sur les relations de pouvoir qui sont associees a ces identites. Elle permet aussi de cartographier l'effet du droit sur les changements social et culturel qui se sont imposes dans le commerce de la fourrure, et de demander dans quelle mesure la colonie de la riviere Rouge fut un lieu hybride., Introduction The excitement occasioned by the trial of the case of Foss v. Pelly seems to have been very great, but as all the inhabitants thought it proper to expose [...]

In this article, I analyse the methodological issues that arise when I accept a judge's invitation to observe her hear women testify in criminal proceedings against their traffickers at the district courthouse in X, Germany. I develop a theoretical framework using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of embodied power and his methods of epistemic reflexivity and participant objectivation, and feminist engagements with affect theory. I use my fieldwork experience with a judicial gatekeeper and in conducting ethnographic observational research ‘behind the scenes of formal law’ to interrogate how bodies, emotions and affects inform power in the spaces of criminal law. Specifically, I approach bodies, emotions and affects as conceptual tools with which to interrogate how power transmits when I ‘enter’ and ‘read’ the field, and make claims to ‘know’ the subject under study. Core to my analysis is a critical process of self-reflection, through which I challenge the assumptions that underpin my assessment of my research participants’ ability to consent to participate in my study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis in this article provides an alternative interpretation of trafficked women's self-presentation before the courts. I use complete observations of German judges deposing women in camera who are witnesses in criminal proceedings against their traffickers. My objective is to develop and inform a different account of the women's self-presentation by prioritising the narrative accounts of their 'lived' experiences of trafficking. Invoking Judith Butler's analysis of the complex transactions between subjectification and subversive agency and emerging debates in the health arena in psychosocial theory on resilience, I ask: How is trafficked women's self-presentation in criminal proceedings an expression of their agency and resilience? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates the discursive framing of recent law and policy debates on criminalizing sex purchase in Ireland and the implications this has for sex workers' political voice. Drawing on Nancy Fraser's work on the political dimensions of justice, we look at how Irish neo-abolitionists, through their Turn Off the Red Light (TORL) campaign, map and delimit access to political space and consequently misframe, misrecognize and misrepresent the 'problem' of sex work and sex-working women. We employ the methodological framework suggested by Carol Bacchi's What's the Problem Represented to Be (WPR) approach to explore how TORL campaigners exercise and manage frame-setting in law and policy contexts to deny all 'other' voices parity of participation in political space. We argue these misframing strategies reflect meta-political injustices of misrepresentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to uncover the discursive practices that have framed recent debates on prostitution in the Republic of Ireland. As Ireland prepares to introduce Swedish-style laws, which criminalize the purchase of sexual services, we are particularly interested in interrogating the dominant construction of prostitution in recent policy debates and consultations. Taking these spaces as sites for the reproduction of discursive and material practices, we employ methods of critical discourse analysis through Carole Bacchi’s (1999) ‘What’s the problem represented to be’ approach to question: How is prostitution problematized in Irish law and policy? We argue the representation of prostitution in neo-abolitionist discourse in Ireland operates through gendered and racialized assumptions about sex workers and migrant women. The material consequences of this have implications not only for current prostitution law and policy proposals but also for wider feminist spaces in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human trafficking inspires strong responses from feminists and other interested parties. This article takes the UK anti-trafficking measures as a case study to explore the interaction between discourses of trafficked women's vulnerability to sexual harm, and national vulnerability to external threats such as organized crime. Drawing on feminist engagements with human trafficking and commercial sex, my aim is to contribute to these debates. I explore how the government's moralistic response to trafficking reflects a particular form of regulation that animates new systems of governmentality and biopower. Against this backdrop I attempt to advance feminist perspectives on trafficking by demonstrating the relationality between UK anti-trafficking measures, and its plans to reorganize its regulatory capacity overseas. I suggest an interpretation of UK overseas anti-trafficking measures that foregrounds respatialized border and immigration controls. I show how this kind of regulation works on and through the bodies and behaviours of government actors. I conclude that while aspects of these overseas interventions do go some way to protect trafficked women, they do not operate in isolation of other geopolitical agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]