Australia is second only to Israel in being the world’s most culturally diverse nation, based largely on high levels of immigration in the second part of the 20th century. From the 1970s onwards, Australia formally recognized the massive social changes brought about by postwar immigration, and provided legislation to incorporate cultural diversity into everyday lives. One such ‘legislative’ enactment saw the establishment of multicultural broadcasting in Australia, as arguably a world-first, both in its comprehensiveness and diversity. Today, Australia has a (...) public sector corporation, the Special Broadcasting Service, administering five radio services in 68 languages. Also, the Community Radio sector produces multicultural programming in 100 languages through a number of its 330 broadcast and 207 narrowcast stations. This article examines the relationship between radio and its communities. It argues that despite the ‘profile’ of SBS television, radio is much closer to its constituent communities, and therefore plays a greater role in enabling those communities to speak their own histories, beyond the confines of a consensual Anglophile paradigm. (shrink)

Efficiency principles are increasingly called upon to study features of human language and communication. Zipf's law of abbreviation is widely seen as a classic instance of a linguistic pattern brought about by language users’ search for efficient communication. The “law”—a recurrent correlation between the frequency of words and their brevity—is a near-universal principle of communication, having been found in all of the hundreds of human languages where it has been tested, and a few nonhuman communication systems as well. The standard (...) explanation for the law of abbreviation derives from pressures for efficiency: speakers minimize their cumulative effort by using shorter words for frequent occurrences. This explanation, we argue here, fails to explain why long words exist at all. It also fails to explain why the law of abbreviation, despite being robust, is systematically weakened by many short and rare words. We propose an alternative account of the law of abbreviation, based on a simple cultural evolutionary model. Our model does not require any pressure for efficiency. Instead, it derives the law of abbreviation from a general pressure for brevity applying to all words regardless of their frequency. This model makes two accurate predictions that the standard model misses: the correlation between frequency and brevity is consistently weak, and it is characterized by heteroskedasticity, with many short and rare words. We argue on this basis that efficiency considerations are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the law. (shrink)

In this book, one of America's leading philosophers offers a sweeping reconsideration of the philosophy of culture in the twentieth century. Morton White argues that the discipline is much more important than is often recognized, and that his version of holistic pragmatism can accommodate its breadth. Going beyond Quine's dictum that philosophy of science is philosophy enough, White suggests that it should contain the word "culture" in place of "science." He defends the holistic view that scientific belief is (...) tested by experience but that such testing is rightly applied to systems or conjunctions of beliefs, not isolated beliefs. He adds, however, that we test ethical systems by appealing to feelings of moral obligation as well as to sensory experiences. In the course of his lucidly written analysis, White treats central issues in the philosophy of science, of religion, of art, of history, of law, of politics, and of morality. While doing so he examines the views of Quine, Tarski, Goodman, and Rawls, and shows how they are related to the approaches of Peirce, James, Duhem, Russell, Dewey, Carnap, and the later Wittgenstein. He also discusses the ideas of the legal philosophers Holmes and Hart from a holistic standpoint. White demonstrates how his version of pragmatism bridges the traditional gulf between analytic and synthetic truth as well as that between moral and scientific belief. Indeed, the high point of the book is a brilliant presentation of his view of ethics, based on the idea that our scientific theories face the tribunal of observation whereas our ethical views face the joint tribunal of observation and moral feeling. Scholars and students of the history of ideas and of philosophy will welcome A Philosophy of Culture as the highly finished product of more than sixty years of philosophical reflection by an important thinker. (shrink)

The Soul of a Nation is a series of essays on American society’s culture, morality, law, education, and faith: subjects that confront our society and will be of interest to citizens and scholars who have studied its political drift in recent years.

Two points are made on the basis of (mainly) the cross-cultural psychological record. The first is that cross-cultural data indicate at least weak, nontrivial constraints on colour classification. The second is that exceptions to cross-cultural regularities as described by Saunders & van Brakel are compatible with the view that constraints on colour categories are probabilistic rather than deterministic.

This article examines the role culture plays in contract law. It demonstrates that even in contract law, the branch of law most committed to the ideal of individual autonomy, law’s reliance on culture makes compulsion by the law an unavoidable outcome. The concept of culture is applied to contract law in two principal ways. First, it attempts to explain the rise of objectivism in late nineteenth-century contract law as a manifestation of some central experiences prevalent in modern (...) culture. Second, it analyzes the role played by culture within the context of some of the central doctrines of contract law, namely, the doctrines on the formation and interpretation of contracts. (shrink)

Despite the fact that corporate law firms attract some of the most intelligent and productive minds in business today, they have failed to cultivate a workplace that facilitates healthy and balanced lives for their practitioners. Workplace stress in the sector is manifest in a culture which continues to sanction 'rite of passage' work practices which bolster earnings for those at the apex but are proving sickening to many. This culture inhibits basic ethical human interaction based on decency and (...) respect and cultivates oppression through fear of failure. Not surprisingly then, bullying is tolerated and lawyer attrition is rife, particularly for junior women lawyers. This article considers the impact of bullying in Australian corporate law firms. Foucauldian thought is utilised in order to better understand first, how the organisational culture in major law firms continues to authorise practices which prove injurious to practitioners' health and secondly, the resulting lawyer attrition. It is argued that the 'disciplinary technologies' being adopted by management function to assure an economy of power relations which not only facilitates conformity with the values and imperatives of the firm but also, the quelling of subversion and resistance to its effects. Standpoint theory is adopted to examine the workplace harms being borne by junior lawyers through a narrative 'Snapshot' of the experience of a female, mature-aged, junior lawyer working as a solicitor at a top tier Australian corporate law firm. Her detailed account illuminates recent quantitative empirical research into the experiences of Australian women lawyers and lays bare the culture of fear and workings of power, violence and marginalisation within the firm. (shrink)

The relationship of law and culture has long been a concern of legal anthropology and sociology of law. But it is recognised today as a central issue in many different kinds of juristic inquiries. All these recent invocations of the concept of culture indicate or imply problems at the boundaries of established thought about either the nature of law or the values that law is thought to express or reflect. The consequence is that legal theory must, it seems, (...) now systematically take account of the notion of culture. The present paper asks how this might best be done. I argue that a concept of culture, as such, is of limited utility for legal theory because the term “culture” embraces a too indefinite and disparate range of phenomena. But legal theory needs conceptual resources to consider at a general level the relations of law and culture. This paper suggests that these resources should include, above all, a rigorous distinguishing of different abstract types of community. Legal theory requires a sociologically‐informed concept of community. What is encompassed by the vague idea of culture is actually the content of different types of social relations of community and the networks (combinations) in which they exist. (shrink)

Despite pervasive variation in the content of laws, legal theorists and anthropologists have argued that laws share certain abstract features and even speculated that law may be a human universal. In the present report, we evaluate this thesis through an experiment administered in 11 different countries. Are there cross‐cultural principles of law? In a between‐subjects design, participants (N = 3,054) were asked whether there could be laws that violate certain procedural principles (e.g., laws applied retrospectively or unintelligible laws), and also (...) whether there are any such laws. Confirming our preregistered prediction, people reported that such laws cannot exist, but also (paradoxically) that there are such laws. These results document cross‐culturally and –linguistically robust beliefs about the concept of law which defy people's grasp of how legal systems function in practice. (shrink)

As a natural result of globalization and migration from village to city, peace, ease, and happiness of people who have to coexist in cities are extremely important. Beliefs, systems, ideologies, and institutions aim to achieve this. This situation forces individuals and groups who live together, whether they want to or not, to get to know and communicate with each other within a trust environment. The most important factor that makes recognizing segments of society with different characteristics and communicate with them (...) in a healthy way is to develop a culture of coexistence among the community members. Coexistence means that people with different identities and affiliations are united around the citizenship denominator and contributing to the continuation of social life in unity and solidarity. This understanding must be transformed into a cultural consciousness in the community members. Because, polarization, marginalization, discrimination, and violence become common among individuals who live in societies where the culture of living together and the awareness of citizenship are not developed. It is not possible to ensure coexistence only by law. In societies where a culture of cohabitation develops, differences are not seen as a cause of separation, but as a richness that diversifies society and gives dynamism to social life. In societies dealing with political, social, economic, and moral problems, religion, language, race, ethnic identity, and regional sense of belonging might be more likely used as terrorization tools. The self-confidence that accurrate religious knowledge gives to individuals might weaken such a possibility. Islam anticipates a social system that facilitates a pecaful and easeful life for the people. Giving importance to principles such as love, respect, tolerance, justice, consultation, assistance, and solidarity in the Qur'an is an indication of the need for this system. The Prophet Mohammad had the opportunity to apply an example of this system in Madinah anticipatedin the Qur'an in Madinah. After the migration, some principles related to the basic rules of coexistence were included in the Madinah agreement, which the Prophet signed with representatives of different segments living in Madinah. It is very important that these principles are able to shed light on the issues happenin in the recent world. The experience of living together in the time of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) should be introduced to the next generations with correct information. Because, The Medina Agreement, which has an important place in the history of Muslims, is an important example of the ability to live together in peace and ease by maintaining differences in society. The Medina Agreement is the first written document that allows different groups of people residing in Medina to live together. The main purpose of this agreement, which the Prophet made with the Jewish, Christian, and polytheistic tribes in Medina after the migration, is to protect the fundamental rights stemming from the citizenship of people who live in the same city by having different faiths and cultural values. If so, the Madinah Agreement might be an example for many societies that recently experience discord and unrest due to their characteristics such as religion, language, race, political thought, and etc. In this regard, this article focuses on the importance of the culture of coexistence in the context of the Madinah Agreement and the process of formation of this culture and offers some suggestionsthat will facilitate peace and ease for different groups living in the same society. Some of these suggestions are as follows: Differences such as language, religion, race, culture, and political thought among the realities of social life should not be seen as an element of discrimination, everyone should contribute to the peace and well-being of society by combining in the common denominator of citizenship. In educational institutions, it should be taken into account values such as human love, respect for the other, tolerance, freedom of thought, empathy, and peace. In addition to educational institutions, all segments operating in the field of law, politics, economics, religion, and media should unite, and thus, should develop a consciousness of citizenship in society, where differences in race, religion, language, culture and political views are seen as richness. (shrink)

The concept of cultural heritage employs specific discourses, codes, values, and images that contain assumptions about a particular community and its members. Among the constitutive elements of a common heritage firmly stand language, history and territory. The contents of the cultural heritage are frequently socially, politically, culturally, and historically contested, which reveals competition among past, present, and future narratives that shape the existing national identities or lead to the creation of new ones. The paper examines the role of law in (...) “defining” cultural heritage and “attributing” it to a particular community. In this respect the case of North Macedonia represents a unique case study on how international law embedded in the bilateral agreements with Bulgaria and Greece have shaped the past, present and future identity of that nation. It explores how the legal norms can shape the “attribution” of the cultural heritage by issuing legally binding interpretations of the historical events and personalities, usage of names and designations, and even the features of a language. (shrink)

This brief book is a manifesto for a new kind of legal theory: cultural study of law and the rule of law in American experience. Heavily post-modern in orientation, style, and sources, Kahn draws from philosophical, traditionally legal, historical, and anthropological sources to illustrate the prospective benefits of this kind of cultural study. This work is a kind of prolegomenon to future work, substantially short of the comprehensive cultural study of American legal experience it proposes. At this level it is (...) perhaps a success—and at the same time this book is deeply frustrating, because Kahn rarely draws out the implications of the fascinating suggestions he offers. (shrink)

La problématique de la culture est au coeur des enjeux contemporains et détermine la nature des rapports internationaux dominants dans le monde ainsi que le devenir de l'Humanité. Il y a longtemps, on considérait la culture comme un simple axiome social attribuant à chaque nation, à chaque peuple ou à des catégories entières une identité, une référence civilisationnelle et une singularité toute particulière qui la différenciaient des autres. Aujoud'hui, les cultures, au- delà de leurs singularités et de leurs (...) particularités, s'entrecroisent, se différencient, s'enchevêtrent ou rivalisent. C'est une première difficulté à laquelle se trouvent confrontés aujourd'hui les chercheurs, les historiens, les philosophes, les politiques et les acteurs sociaux pour analyser et comprendre toute la richesse de la diversité culturelle. Mais cette culture, ou plus exactement cette diversité culturelle, pose deux autres questions. La première: comment accepter et vivre avec l'Autre? La deuxième: comment valider et accepter la diversité culturelle comme composante essentielle des droits humains? Le constat que l'on peut faire aujourd'hui, c'est qu'il n'y a pas d'équivalence entre les cultures, et les rapports interculturels sont teintés de conflits et de rivalités. La culture des puissants méconnaît et méprise la culture des pauvres ; celle des majorités sous-estime celle des minorités. Partout, les conflits culturels révèlent des tensions dans les rapports sociaux. Les exemples ne manquent pas, mais l'on assiste de plus en plus à un éveil des consciences pour amortir les chocs et considérer toutes les cultures comme une richesse, une complémentarité, un patrimoine. C'est à ces questions et à d'autres que les auteurs de ce livre, aux appartenances scientifiques variées et transversales, ont essayé d'apporter des éléments de réponse en vue de faire de la culture un potentiel d'investissement considérable et un facteur de promotion des droits humains et de notre civilisation humaine. (shrink)

Journal Name: The Law & Ethics of Human Rights Issue: Ahead of print.

It is widely thought that stealing, trading and destroying cultural artifacts in time of war are inherently immoral actions, and that it is right that they be treated as war crimes, which, indeed, they currently are. But oppressive cultures have their heritage and cultural artifacts too, in the form of monuments, sites of worship, and so on; and for the oppressed, these things may be awful reminders of their subordination, and may even perpetuate it. This chapter suggests that, since cultural (...) objects can be both tools and symbols of unjust oppression, their theft and destruction ought to be seen as appropriate when this would be a means of overcoming oppression. Whatever current law may say, in these instances, it would be morally inappropriate to count such acts as war crimes. Furthermore, it is bizarre that theft and destruction of cultural property are counted as war crimes when soldiers killing each other is not (due to combatant immunity). Surely killing is worse than property destruction and theft. It is therefore argued that, where possible, it would be better for conflicts to be fought using the latter methods. Finally, the chapter responds to many objections to using theft and destruction of cultural property as a method of warfare. E.g. to the objection that such property has timeless, trans-cultural, aesthetic, historical and scientific value, it is replied that justice is a more important value; and to the objection that these practices amount to cultural genocide it is replied that unjust cultures have no right to exist unmodified. (This chapter was formerly entitled: "Culture Weaponized: A Contrarian Theory of the Sometime Appropriateness of the Destruction, Theft and Trade of Art and Cultural Artifacts in Armed Conflict." The PhilPapers archived version is a pre-penultimate version of the published version.). (shrink)

The main purpose of this study is to understand how the ‘laws’ of the cross-cultural model apply to cross-religions/interreligious communications with populations from different cultures amid migration. The aim is to identify the steps in which the cross-culture model generally works and if they apply the same way to the religious realm or not. Being able to navigate through different cultural nuances is a key-skill for us all nowadays, amid globalization, migration, and across borders exchange, while religious/spiritual aids can (...) be a beneficial factor in such a ‘new’ environment. (shrink)

Cancel culture is a form of societal self-defense that becomes prominent particularly during periods of substantial moral upheaval. It can lead to the polarization of incompatible viewpoints if it is indiscriminately demonized. In this brief editorial letter, I consider framing cancel culture as an essentially contested concept (ECC), according to the theory of Walter B. Gallie, with the aim of establishing a groundwork for a more productive discourse on it. In particular, I propose that intermediate agreements and principles (...) of reasonableness can help refocus the debate on cancel culture towards democratic discourse, without blanket justification for every instance. In this context, asserting that cancel culture is an ECC does not dismiss the potential of achieving consensus on its shared core meaning or societal role. Like other similar ECCs, such as democracy or rule of law, it highlights the importance of contestations in shaping our collective understanding of the concept. (shrink)

Sometimes, technological solutions to practical problems are devised that conspicuously take into account the constraints to which a given culture is subjecting the particular task or the manner in which it is carried out. The culture may be a professional culture (e.g., the practice of law), or an ethnic-cum-professional culture (e.g., dance in given ethnic cultures from South-East Asia), or, again, a denominational culture prescribing an orthopraxy impinging on everyday life through, for example, prescribed abstinence (...) from given categories of workday activities, or dietary laws. (shrink)

The inability thesis holds that one’s culture determines behavior and can make one unable to comply with the law and therefore less deserving of punishment. Opponents of the thesis reject the view that humans are made physically unable to act certain ways by their cultural upbringing. The article seeks to help evaluate the inability thesis by pointing to a literature in cultural psychology and anthropology presenting empirical evidence of the influence of culture on behavior, and offering conceptual analysis (...) of the concept of determinism and its connection to moral culpability. Without conceding that culture never determines behavior, I argue that opponents of the inability thesis err in drawing a moral implication from this premise. What matters in formulating moral judgments about punishment are not the possibility but the reasonability of complying with the law. Cultural influences may make an action reasonable that without similar cultural influences would be unreasonable. (shrink)

In the research on the Early Modern Period distributed among various disciplines – history, religion, philosophy, law, literature –, there is no doubt that Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694) was one of the outstanding representatives of modern, secular natural law, whose work had an impact over a century that can hardly be overestimated. When did the research development associated with Pufendorf’s name begin? The article examines this question from the perspective of history of science using the example of the jurisprudence dissertation of (...) Hans Welzel (1904–1977), which appeared in a partial print in the DVjs in 1931. (shrink)

In the rapidly evolving healthcare environment, perhaps no role is in greater flux and redefinition than that of the clinical bioethicist. The discussion of ethics consultation in the bioethics literature has moved from an ambiguous concern regarding its proper place in the clinical milieu to the more provocative question of which methods and theories should best characterize the intellectual and practical work it claims to do. The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities addressed these concerns in its 1998 report, CoreCompetenciesforHealthCareEthicsConsultation. (...) The report tries to answer the question as to what disciplinary training, background experience, and levels of knowledge in ethics the clinical ethics consultant should have, and what specific skills and character traits the clinical ethics consultant should cultivate. In addition to acquiring knowledge of common bioethical issues, theoretical concepts in ethical theory and moral reasoning, and health-related law and policy, the report also recommends that ethics consultants demonstrate knowledge of the health beliefs and perspectives of patients and healthcare providers. In our opinion, this recommendation underscores a crucial aspect of the practice of ethics consultation in the increasingly multicultural settings of healthcare institutions. Clearly, the dynamic of American life and culture is permeated with diversity and variety as new groups suffuse their own beliefs and faith perspectives into the health sector. New immigrant groups force society to question traditional healthcare practices and to accommodate changing medical needs. (shrink)

Despite the intention for precision and accuracy, legal discourse is oftentimes complex, archaic and ambiguous - which gives rise to contentious interpretation. Moreover, little or no attention is paid to the cultural dimension of legal discourse, which plays a critical role in the translation and interpretation of legal texts, as well as in the application of law. This paper endeavours to illustrate the impact the culture, or, more precisely, legal culture has on the way legal texts are construed (...) or translated and to present problems which arise in the interpretation, translation and application of law as a result of cultural diversities. (shrink)

As political instruments, human rights can be challenged in two important ways: first, by undermining the claim to universality by appealing to a kind of cultural relativism, and second, by accusing human rights of unjustifiably imposing values that are not genuinely universal (which I dub the problem of parochialism). The human right to health is no exception. If a human right to health is to be a useful instrument in mobilizing action for global health justice, then we need to take (...) seriously the ways that health intersects with culture. Universal applicability is essential to both the legitimacy and efficacy of human rights. But without cultural sensitivity, additional injustices and imperialistic harms may be perpetuated. There are two goals within this paper—(1) to show that cultural imperialism is a moral and practical hazard, both in general and for the human right to health in particular and (2) to articulate a way of thinking about the human right to health that can minimize these hazards and arm it with moral credibility and political weight. (shrink)

By exploring the cultural discrepancies in Chinese legal texts and their English versions and to what extent legal and cultural discrepancies influence and constrain legal translation, the study argues that it is useful to consider cultural discrepancies within a semiotic framework. Language is a phenomenon and factor that links different cultures; the use of language is crucial to any legal system. Law, as a cultural product, is attended by cultural discrepancies when switched into other languages for the purpose of achieving (...) equivalence. After a brief overview of cultural differences in translation, legal translation in particular, the study is set to examine the role of translation in crossing through different legal cultures and backgrounds and investigate barriers in the process of translation. Investigating cultural discrepancies in legal translation within a semiotic framework allows us to focus on certain interpretations by acknowledging that legal texts are composed with systems of systems and interacting with other cultural aspects in a wider context. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Harm by Theft Possible Owners of Artworks Cultures and Inheritance Lost and Abandoned Property Cultural Property and Traditional Law Collective Knowledge and Collective Property Ownership of Land and Ownership of Art Property and Value to a Culture Cultures and Intellectual Property Some Conclusions About Ownership and Appropriation The Rescue Argument.

The normative figure in Western feminism remains the liberal autonomous individual of modernity. ‹Other’ women are those who have their freedom to choose restricted. Typically, ‹other’ women are those burdened by culture and hindered by their communities from entering modernity. If we remain in the terrain of thinking about women as vulnerable or imperilled, and some women as particularly imperilled, as we generally do of Muslim women, we remain squarely within the framework of patriarchy understood as abstracted from all (...) other systems. A modernity/premodernity distinction will continue to invade any projects intending to help Muslim women. This paper shows the persistence of the modernity/premodernity distinction in contemporary debates around applying Sharia law to the settlement of family law disputes under the Arbitration Act in Ontario, Canada. I argue below that in their concern to curtail conservative and patriarchal forces within the Muslim community, Canadian feminists (both Muslim and Non-Muslim) utilized frameworks that installed a secular/religious divide that functions as a colour line, marking the difference between the modern, enlightened West, and tribal, religious Muslims. I suggest that feminist responses might have helped to sustain a new form of governmentality, one in which the productive power of the imperilled Muslim woman functions to keep in line Muslim communities at the same time that it defuses more radical feminist and anti-racist critique of conservative religious forces. I end by exploring how this effect could have been restricted. (shrink)

_Purpose._ This article is aimed at identifying the cultural-anthropological limits of the applicability of strong constructivism in social cognition. _Theoretical basis._ The study of epistemic cultures, carried out by the modern German philosopher of science Karin Knorr Cetina, gave reasons to rethink the role of cultural anthropology as a methodological basis of strong constructivism not only for scientific cognition, but also for educational practices, and perhaps also for some other social practices. An important role in identifying less successful versions of (...) strong constructivism was played by the concept of fictionalism of the German philosopher Hans Veihinger, the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturán and Francisco Varela, and the German sociologist and philosopher Niklas Luhmann. _Originality._ Strong constructivism has broad prospects for use within cultural anthropology as an identification of the cultural foundations of human nature. Local research and educational practices are defined as a model for the formation of those social characteristics of their participants, which they themselves change through self-improvement. Strong constructivists involve the individual empirical experience of researchers, and also correct the inherited rules of scientific research as elements of research procedures and practices, thanks to which they achieve the creation of a common epistemic culture and the elimination of myths about the isolation of scientific cognition from the world. _Conclusions._ False ways of interpreting strong constructivism as fictionalism and as realism have been revealed. Fictionalism, as a methodology focused on the study of the contents of consciousness, loses the empirical experience of the world. Philosophical realism as positivism in the philosophy of science reduces the significance of scientific discoveries to confirmation of the laws of nature. Karin Knorr Cetina’s proposal to consider constructivism "on its own terms" appears not as a moderate compromise between these extremes, but as the only possible way to adequately reconcile the work of nature and the conscious activity of man. Such coordination takes place primarily in the creation of local epistemic cultures as a collective activity of researchers. (shrink)

Žižek is not a legal theorist, nonetheless, he has written about the law throughout his work. This essay builds on Jodie Dean’s work in ‘Žižek and Law’ which sets out a theory of law, preferable to most critical legal theories because it retains the belief that law can serve emancipatory aims. My aim in is to apply this Žižekian theory of law to copyright, in the hopes of presenting an alternative framework that retains the initial promise of copyright: that cultural (...) material may be dis-alienated public property. This is necessary in a music-focused issue, because copyright law dictates the forms in which music, and cultural products, are created and consumed. The argument is presented in three parts: the founding of copyright, its obscene supplement, and its paradoxical future from within. I argue that future copyright legislative proposals should not focus on extending or limiting any overall term, or what marginal increase in revenues a creator should be entitled to; rather, creators should be given a renewal right. In this way, an author has the ability to constantly renegotiate the terms on which their work is commoditized. (shrink)

Law can be characterised as a highly specialized tool with strong social impact requiring social legitimization and acceptance. Law is also specific, abstract world. World that needs words to exist. To understand law and to share its content it is important to focus on narratives related to it. The article deals with the importance of narration in law as the consequence of discursive peculiarity of law and its dependence on the acceptance of societies. Law is culturally conditioned, and by means (...) of narrative can combine the expectations of society concerning legitimation with legal rationality. The law cannot function exclusively as an abstract and formal structure nor an administrative apparatus, with own ways of legitimization or justification. Through social acceptance law gains its real form, but at the same time it is subordinated to cultural patterns. Changes in narratives change the law and then the real world. The article shows possible ways of analysis of narratives, narrative strategies and forms that are present in law. (shrink)

In what ways and to what extent should cultural background be taken into consideration in response to legal problems? The first book-length study of the topic, The Cultural Defense provides a comprehensive overview of the debate surrounding the admissibility of cultural evidence in the courtroom. Documenting an extraordinary range of cases in which individuals have attempted to invoke a cultural defense, this book provides an in-depth look at the complexities of invoking cultural agreements in the diverse bodies of law under (...) which the cases fall. Cases considered include homicide and rape prosecutions, child abuse cases, drug use cases, the treatment of animals, and custody battles. Disputing current practices, Renteln contends that the cultural defense should, in both criminal and civil matters, be given formal recognition. (shrink)

Tax law is a technical area of law which does not seem to be culturally specific. It is thus seen as easily transferable between different societies and cultures. However, tax law is also based on definitions and notions which are not universal. So, is tax law universal or particular? Is it indeed easily transferable between different societies? And in what ways does tax law reflect ethnic or cultural rather than economic differences? This Article seeks to answer these questions by analyzing (...) one specific example — the history of income tax legislation in Mandatory Palestine. This history reveals the dual nature of income taxation. On the one hand, the Income Tax Ordinance which was enacted by the British in Palestine in 1941 was based on a one-size-fits-all colonial model, and the lawyers involved in its enactment, in Palestine and in the Colonial Office in London, made relatively little effort to adapt it to local conditions. On the other hand, other actors — the officials, politicians and businessmen involved in the initial debate about the imposition of income taxation in Palestine in the 1930s, and the administrators involved in the application of the specific rules of the Ordinance after it was enacted in the 1940s — were aware of the need to adapt the law to the specific conditions of Palestine. Thus, while on a formal level the Ordinance seems to represent a process in which the tax law of Palestine converged with that of other British colonies, once we expand our framework and examine not just law in the books, but also law in action, and actors such as politicians and administrators, we discover that particular local conditions were an important factor in the enactment and application of the Palestine Income Tax Ordinance. The study of the process of transplantation, the Article concludes, should therefore focus not only on the formal norms being transplanted, but also on the role of the different non-legal actors involved in the process. (shrink)

Neo-Darwinian theories of cultural evolution are apt to be criticized on the grounds that they merely borrow from the theory of natural selection concepts that are then metaphorically applied to conventional historical narratives to which they add no more, if anything, than an implicit presupposition of progress from one predetermined stage to the next. Such criticisms, of which a particularly forceful example is a recent article in this journal by Fracchia and Lewontin, can however be shown to be seriously misconceived. (...) The fundamental process of heritable variation and competitive selection of information affecting phenotype underlies both biological and cultural evolution despite the obvious differences between the mechanisms of information transfer by genetic inheritance and by exosomatic imitation and learning. Information transfer is in neither case a metaphor standing for any other thing, and in neither case does change over time proceed in accordance with developmental laws from which the future evolution of either species or cultures could be predicted in advance. For all the unresolved questions that remain, neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory has demonstrated the mutual compatibility of idiographic and nomothetic explanation in the study of species and of cultures alike. (shrink)

The goal of the text is to reconstruct the concept of cultural normativity found in the phenomenological philosophy of law. The starting point of the text is the distinction between cultural normativity and normativity in culture. This distinction is based on reference to an extra-cultural, but not non-human instance – transcendent to the creations of humanity and its world, but in relations with the human equipment, with the characteristics of a specific human being and its existence. The specific relations (...) between cultural and legal normativity can be found in phenomenological concepts of law, which draw on the Husserlian transcendentalism and essentialism. The phenomenology of law attempts to answer the question of the sources, and the ontological and epistemological status of normativity as such. Normativity as a written and unwritten set of norms is characterized by phenomenologists with reference to value and axiology. The values are assumed by them as certain fixed reference points (“horizon of values” given to be recognized), because norms make it possible to establish rules for various individual and collective practices within a particular community and culture on the basis of values. (shrink)

Because of immigration in the West, increased cultural diversity poses a variety of problems for the criminal justice system. This paper examines whether a so‐called “cultural defense” ought to be allowed as a freestanding defense to a criminal charge. Such a defense would “negate or mitigate criminal responsibility where acts are committed under a reasonable good‐faith belief in their propriety, based on the actor's cultural heritage or tradition.” The cultural defense, as a formal defense, and the use of cultural evidence (...) in order to buttress one of the traditional defenses, are distinguished. Three cases are discussed to illustrate the issues. The possible similarity of the cultural defense to an ignorance or mistake of law defense is then considered. The latter is accepted by such theorists as Gunther Arzt and George P. Fletcher and also apparently in German law, but it is rejected by Jerome Hall on the ground that it undermines the objectivity of the criminal law. The similarity, however, is shown not to hold. It is concluded that a freestanding cultural defense should not be allowed. (shrink)

This article develops a liberal theory of cultural rights that must be guaranteed by just legal and political institutions. People form their own individual conceptions of the good in the cultural space constructed by the political societies they inhabit. This article argues that only rarely do individuals develop views of what is valuable that diverge more than slightly from the conceptions of the good widely circulating in their societies. In order for everyone to have an equal opportunity to autonomously form (...) their own independent conception of the good, rather than merely following others, culture must be democratically controlled. Equal respect for members of a liberal democracy requires that all citizens have roughly equal opportunities to do things like make movies, publish novels, and exhibit paintings. This article contends that the contemporary American legal order fails to guarantee that all cititizens have roughly equal opportunities to shape and influence their shared culture. Guaranteeing the liberty to do so would require reforms to many areas of law, including applying anti-discrimination law more broadly to the conduct of cultural organizations, expanding fair use protections in copyright law, limiting the ability of businesses to arbitrarily refuse service to customers, and restricting private control of capital in order to democratize the means of cultural production. (shrink)

Throughout the ancient society of China, we can find that from Qin and Han Dynasties to Ming and Qing Dynasties, the social nature, political structure and legal system of China did not change endlessly due to the change of dynasties. On the contrary, it was always in a stable state. This has to be attributed to the all-round and deep-seated influence of Confucianism on China society. Confucian culture had an important influence on the development of China's law in the (...) two thousand years after Qin and Han Dynasties. This influence gradually deepened, and eventually became the soul of China's ancient law, which dominated its development value orientation. Under the influence of Confucianism, China's legal culture has its own distinctive spiritual character and institutional characteristics. The theory of "goodness of nature" makes China's legal culture have the characteristics of "morality dominates punishment" and "courtesy for the country"; The thought of "people-oriented" makes China's legal culture have strong humanistic characteristics because of "leniency and caution" and "cherishing people's lives"; The idea of "cheap business" makes China's legal culture show obvious characteristics of public law culture in the field of private law. (shrink)

Cultural pluralism is both a fact and a norm. It is a fact that our world, and indeed our society, are marked by a large diversity of cultures delineated in terms of race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, ideology, and other partly interpenetrating variables. This fact raises the normative question of whether, or to what extent, such diversities should be recognized or even encouraged in policies concerning government, law, education, employment, the family, immigration, and other important areas of social concern.

In an example of Enlightenment ‘engaged research' and public intellectual practice, Euler established the basis of topology and graph theory through his solution to the puzzle of whether a stroll around the seven bridges of 18th-century Königsberg was possible without having to cross any given bridge twice. This ‘Manifesto' argues that, born in a form of cultural studies, topology offers 21st-century researchers a model for mapping the dynamics of time as well as space, allowing the rigorous description of events, situations, (...) changing cultural formations and social spatializations. Law and Mol's network spaces, Serre's folded time, Massey’s ‘power geometries’, Lefebvre's ‘production of space’ and ‘rhythmanalysis’ can be developed through a cultural topological sensitivity that allows time to be understood as not only progressive but cyclical, relationships and the ‘reach’ of power can be understood through ‘knots', and a topology of experience to model the ‘plushness of the Real' via extra- and over-dimensioned time-spaces that capture nuance while drawing on systematic conceptual resources. (shrink)

This book presents essays by contemporary thinker and social scientist S. N. Balagangadhara which develop an alternative theoretical framework for a comparative study of Western and Asian cultures. It explores cultural difference in psychology, political theory, ethics, religion, sociology, translation, law, Indology, and philosophy.

In their 1969 so-called White Paper on Indian Policy,Pierre Trudeau's government argued that it was time to abolish the group-specific rights differentiating Aboriginal people from other Canadians, including, in some Aboriginal societies, the group-specific right to restrict voting, residency, public office, and other social goods, to their Aboriginal members. Given the negative impact the loss of such so-called collective or group rights would have on the security of their cultures, Aboriginal people were incensed, and, consequently, the federal liberals backed down. (...) More recently, Gordon Campbell maintained as a 1996 election promise that, were his provincial liberal party to be elected in British Columbia, he would oppose group-specific rights for Aboriginal people in British Columbia. Both Trudeau and Campbell argued that it is wrong for Aboriginal people to have group-specific rights by appeal to the idea that such collective rights are discriminatory because they assign opportunities to individuals on the basis of culture or race. Political elites are not alone in thinking that collective rights override individual rights. In fact, it has become a national motif that Section 15 of the Canadian Charter, which makes it illegal to discriminate on the grounds that citizens are to be guaranteed equal protection of the law, is incompatible with group-specific rights for Aboriginal people. (shrink)

It is known that Ivan Ogienko in his numerous scientific and theological works paid much attention to the problems of cultural development, to clarify its significance in the life of society. However, he did not leave the deep theoretical developments devoted to culturological issues. This does not mean at all that he was not interested in the theory of culture as a branch of knowledge, engaged in the scientific and philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of culture. However, there (...) is no reason to say that he tried to reach the level of comprehension of universal laws of development of world culture, as was done by his contemporaries and predecessors - M. Ya. Danilevsky, K. Leontiev, M. Berdyayev, A. Spengler, A. Toynbee and others. There is also no reason to prove that I.Ogienko directly addressed the works of these and other prominent philosophers, historians and sociologists of culture, although it is likely that his acquaintance with their ideas is indirect. But despite this, it seems advisable to translate I. Ogienko's argument about culture into a cultural-conceptual analysis plane. (shrink)

There is currently unprecedented attention in Australia on the misidentification of women victim-survivors as family violence ‘predominant aggressors’—this focus has largely been oriented towards the role of the police. Less research has considered court responses to misidentification and specifically, the role that legal practitioners play in recognising and responding to clients who have been misidentified. This article addresses this key gap in the literature through an exploration of 18 legal practitioners’ experiences of representing misidentified clients in the civil protection order (...) system in the Australian state of Victoria. The findings suggest that legal practitioners face a number of challenges when representing clients who have been misidentified and that the magistrates’ courts are ill-equipped to respond to misidentification. As a consequence, a culture of respondents consenting to orders that should never have been made against them is maintained. This article calls for a greater focus on the role that the courts can play in providing a ‘safety net’ for victim-survivors who have been misidentified. (shrink)