Events
Triple Book Launch
Triple Book Launch by Professor Gabrielle Lynch, Dr Renske Doorenspleet and Professor Shirin Rai
Dr Renske Doorenspleet, Professor Shirin Rai & Professor Gabrielle Lynch will all talk about their books, and we have a great group of panelists who will be supporting the discussions.
Panelists:
Professor Shaheen Ali (Law)
Professor Ann Stewart (Law)
Professor Michael Saward (PAIS)
Professor Richard Youngs (PAIS)
Chair: dr. Juanita Elias
Following unprecedented violence in 2007/8, Kenya introduced two classic transitional justice mechanisms: a truth commission and international criminal proceedings. Both are widely believed to have failed, but why? And what do their performances say about contemporary Kenya; the ways in which violent pasts persist; and the shortcomings of transitional justice? Using the lens of performance, this book analyses how transitional justice efforts are incapable of dealing with how unjust and violent pasts actually persist. Gabrielle Lynch reveals the story of an ongoing political struggle requiring substantive socio-economic and political change that transitional justice mechanisms can theoretically recommend, and which they can sometimes help to initiate and inform, but which they cannot implement or create, and can sometimes unintentionally help to reinforce.
Rethinking the Value of Democracy - A Comparative Perspective by Renske Doorenspleet
This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the instrumental value of democracy in a comparative perspective. Based on extensive analyses of quantitative studies from different disciplines, it explores both the expected beneficial and harmful impact of democracy. Democracy’s reputation as delivering peace and development while controlling corruption is an important source of its own legitimacy. Yet, as this book acutely demonstrates, the arguments tend to be normatively driven interventions in ideologically charged policy debates. The book argues that we need neither a utopian framing of democracy as delivering all ‘good things’ in politics nor a cynical one that emphasizes only the ‘dangerous underbelly’ of this form of government. The author also raises critical questions about the value of the study of democracy: the choice for particular concepts and measures, the unknown mechanisms, and the narrow focus on specific instrumental values. This volume will be necessary reading for anyone interested in debates on democracy in the contemporary global context.
Performing Representation by Shirin M Rai & Carole Spary
Breaking new ground in scholarship on gender and politics, Performing Representation is the first comprehensive analysis of womenin the Indian parliament. It explores the possibilities and limits of parliamentary democracy and the participation of women in its institutional performances.
Offering a new, multi-method analysis of the gendered nature of India's parliament through an examination of electoral data, media reports and life stories of women Members of Parliament it sheds light on the performance, aesthetics, and norms of parliamentary life. It explores how the gendered axis of power underpins the performance of parliament and its Members as well as the political economy in which they are embedded. The book makes a strong case for taking parliamentary politics seriously in these times of populism, without either a utopian framing of women MPs as challengers of masculinised institutional politics or seeing them simply as docile actors in a gendered institution. Performing Representation raises critical questions about the politics of difference, claim-making, representation and intersectionality. It addresses these questions as part of global feminist debates on the importance of the women's representation in political institutions.