Synopses & Reviews
In
Must We Defend Nazis?, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic set out to liberate speech from its current straight-jacket.
Over the past hundred years, almost all of American law has matured from the mechanical jurisprudence approach--which held that cases could be solved on the basis of legal rules and logic alone--to that of legal realism--which maintains that legal reasoning must also take into account social policy, common sense, and experience. But in the area of free speech, the authors argue, such archaic formulas as the prohibition against content regulation, the maxim that the cure for bad speech is more speech, and the speech/act distinction continue to reign, creating a system which fails to take account of the harms speech can cause to disempowered, marginalized people.
Focusing on the issues of hate-speech and pornography, this volume examines the efforts of reformers to oblige society and law to take account of such harms. It contends that the values of free expression and equal dignity stand in reciprocal relation. Speech in any sort of meaningful sense requires equal dignity, equal access, and equal respect on the parts of all of the speakers in a dialogue; free speech, in other words, presupposes equality. The authors argue for a system of free speech which takes into account nuance, context-sensitivity, and competing values such as human dignity and equal protection of the law.
Review
“At Work in the Iron Cage brings a wholly new and more realistic vision of America's prisons, and the male and female correctional officers who staff them. This is an impressive book, one that provokes fascinating insights into the American prison system, for researchers and policymakers alike.”
-Patricia A. Roos,Rutgers University
Review
“At Work in the Iron Cage brings a wholly new and more realistic vision of America's prisons, and the male and female correctional officers who staff them. This is an impressive book, one that provokes fascinating insights into the American prison system, for researchers and policymakers alike.” - Patricia A. Roos, Rutgers University
Review
“An important and significant contribution. . . . A study of the social construction of gender and how culture and agency influence the meaning of work . . . vivid and compelling.”
-American Journal of Sociology,
Review
“In this cleverly conceived study, Britton shows that women encounter sexism on both sides of the prison bars. This book is the first truly comparative case study of a gendered organization that will surely change popular and scholarly views of life inside the iron cage.”
-Christine Williams,Professor of Sociology, University of Texas, Austin
Review
“In this cleverly conceived study, Britton shows that women encounter sexism on both sides of the prison bars. This book is the first truly comparative case study of a gendered organization that will surely change popular and scholarly views of life inside the iron cage.”
“This is a splendid piece of research about troubling and important issues. Dana Britton has written a clear, often vivid, account of the realities of prison work - far from the media images. She shows how gender stereotypes and gender divisions of labour shape this work and the lives of the people who do it. This is a most valuable book for all who are interested in gender questions, in organizational life, or in the consequences of the recent growth of the prison system.”
“At Work in the Iron Cage brings a wholly new and more realistic vision of America's prisons, and the male and female correctional officers who staff them. This is an impressive book, one that provokes fascinating insights into the American prison system, for researchers and policymakers alike.”
“An important and significant contribution. . . . A study of the social construction of gender and how culture and agency influence the meaning of work . . . vivid and compelling.”
Review
“This is a splendid piece of research about troubling and important issues. Dana Britton has written a clear, often vivid, account of the realities of prison work - far from the media images. She shows how gender stereotypes and gender divisions of labour shape this work and the lives of the people who do it. This is a most valuable book for all who are interested in gender questions, in organizational life, or in the consequences of the recent growth of the prison system.”
-R.W.Connell,author of Masculinities and Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics
Synopsis
In this first comparative analysis of men's and women's prisons, Dana Britton identifies the factors that influence the genderization of the American workplace, a process that often leaves women in lower-paying jobs with less prestige and responsibility.
Synopsis
When most people think of prisons, they imagine chaos, violence, and fundamentally, an atmosphere of overwhelming brute masculinity. But real prisons rarely fit the “Big House” stereotype of popular film and literature. One fifth of all correctional officers are women, and the rate at which women are imprisoned is growing faster than that of men. Yet, despite increasing numbers of women prisoners and officers, ideas about prison life and prison work are sill dominated by an exaggerated image of mens prisons where inmates supposedly struggle for physical dominance.
In a rare comparative analysis of mens and womens prisons, Dana Britton identifies the factors that influence the gendering of the American workplace, a process that often leaves women in lower-paying jobs with less prestige and responsibility.
In interviews with dozens of male and female officers in five prisons, Britton explains how gender shapes their day-to-day work experiences. Combining criminology, penology, and feminist theory, she offers a radical new argument for the persistence of gender inequality in prisons and other organizations. At Work in the Iron Cage demonstrates the importance of the prison as a site of gender relations as well as social control.
About the Author
Richard Delgado is University Professor at Seattle University Law School. Author of numerous articles and books on Latinos and civil rights, including
The Rodrigo Chronicles, he is also one of the founders of critical race theory.
Jean Stefancic, research professor of law at Seattle University, is the author of many articles and books on civil rights, law reform, social change, including No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America's Social Agenda.