Explores 'crimes of passion' through Shakespeare texts. Interdisciplinary approach. Will appeal to feminist and socio-legal scholars, criminologists and those working in the fields of law and literature, legal theory and Shakespeare studies.

Focusing on femicide, this book provides a contemporary re-evaluation of Carol Smart's innovative approach to the law question as first outlined in her ground-breaking book, Feminism and the Power of Law (Routledge 1989). Smart advocated turning to the legal domain not so much for demanding law reforms as construing it as a site on which to contest gender and more particularly, gendered constructions of women's experiences. Over the last 30 to 40 years, feminist law scholars and activists have launched scathing trans-jurisdictional critiques of the operation of provocation defences in hundreds of femicide cases. The evidence unearthed by feminist scholars that these defences operate in profoundly sexed ways is unequivocal. Accordingly, femicide cases have become critically important sites for feminist engagement and intervention across numerous jurisdictions. Exploring an area of criminal law that was not one of Smart's own focal concerns, this book both honours and extends Smart's work by approaching femicide as a site of engagement and counter-discourse that calls into question hegemonic representations of gendered relationships. Femicide cases thus provide a way to continue the endlessly valuable discursive work Smart advocated and practised in other fields of law: both in articulating alternative accounts of gendered relationships and in challenging law's power to disqualify women's experiences of violence while privileging men's feelings and rights.

What happens when you sex violent crimes? More specifically, what happens when you make men's violence against women the subject of a conversation or the focus of scholarly attention? The short answer is: all hell breaks loose. Adrian Howe explores some of the ways in which this persistent and pervasive form of violence has been named and unnamed as a significant social problem in western countries over the past four decades. Addressing what she calls the 'Man' question-so named because it pays attention to the discursive place occupied, or more usually vacated, by men in accounts of their violence against women-she explores what happens when that violence is placed on the criminological and political agenda. Written in a theoretically-informed yet accessible style, Sex, Violence and Crime-Foucault and the 'Man' Question provides a novel and highly original approach to questions of sex and violence in contemporary western society. Directed at criminologists, students and, more widely, at anyone interested in these issues, it challenges readers to come to grips with postmodern feminist reconceptualisations of the fraught relationship between sex, violence and crime in order to better combat men's violence against women and children.

What happens when you sex violent crimes? More specifically, what happens when you make men's violence against women the subject of a conversation or the focus of scholarly attention? The short answer is: all hell breaks loose. Adrian Howe explores some of the ways in which this persistent and pervasive form of violence has been named and unnamed as a significant social problem in western countries over the past four decades. Addressing what she calls the 'Man' question-so named because it pays attention to the discursive place occupied, or more usually vacated, by men in accounts of their violence against women-she explores what happens when that violence is placed on the criminological and political agenda. Written in a theoretically-informed yet accessible style, Sex, Violence and Crime-Foucault and the 'Man' Question provides a novel and highly original approach to questions of sex and violence in contemporary western society. Directed at criminologists, students and, more widely, at anyone interested in these issues, it challenges readers to come to grips with postmodern feminist reconceptualisations of the fraught relationship between sex, violence and crime in order to better combat men's violence against women and children.

Focusing on femicide, this book provides a contemporary re-evaluation of Carol Smart's innovative approach to the law question as first outlined in her ground-breaking book, Feminism and the Power of Law (Routledge 1989). Smart advocated turning to the legal domain not so much for demanding law reforms as construing it as a site on which to contest gender and more particularly, gendered constructions of women's experiences. Over the last 30 to 40 years, feminist law scholars and activists have launched scathing trans-jurisdictional critiques of the operation of provocation defences in hundreds of femicide cases. The evidence unearthed by feminist scholars that these defences operate in profoundly sexed ways is unequivocal. Accordingly, femicide cases have become critically important sites for feminist engagement and intervention across numerous jurisdictions. Exploring an area of criminal law that was not one of Smart's own focal concerns, this book both honours and extends Smart's work by approaching femicide as a site of engagement and counter-discourse that calls into question hegemonic representations of gendered relationships. Femicide cases thus provide a way to continue the endlessly valuable discursive work Smart advocated and practised in other fields of law: both in articulating alternative accounts of gendered relationships and in challenging law's power to disqualify women's experiences of violence while privileging men's feelings and rights.

Over the past 25 years, a range of critical - that is, Marxist, poststructuralist and, less frequently, feminist - perspectives has been brought to bear on the subject of punishment and, in particular, on the question of imprisonment in western capitalist societies. Considered together, these critical views challenge traditional ways of conceptualizing punishment. Yet, for all the advances made, the new critical perspectives remain deeply flawed in a significant, but as yet barely acknowledged way - with very few exceptions they are profoundly masculinist. Punish and Critique begins the task of exploring what a theoretically-informed feminist analysis of penality might look like and, in the process, uncovers a series of disjunctions in the recent critical analyses - for example, disjunctions between social histories' of prison regimes imposed on men and feminist histories of the imprisonment of women.

Over the past 25 years, a range of critical - that is, Marxist, poststructuralist and, less frequently, feminist - perspectives has been brought to bear on the subject of punishment and, in particular, on the question of imprisonment in western capitalist societies. Considered together, these critical views challenge traditional ways of conceptualizing punishment. Yet, for all the advances made, the new critical perspectives remain deeply flawed in a significant, but as yet barely acknowledged way - with very few exceptions they are profoundly masculinist. Punish and Critique begins the task of exploring what a theoretically-informed feminist analysis of penality might look like and, in the process, uncovers a series of disjunctions in the recent critical analyses - for example, disjunctions between social histories' of prison regimes imposed on men and feminist histories of the imprisonment of women.

This book of eleven chapters and an Introduction is by and about women, the harms and crimes to which they are subjected as a result of global social processes and their efforts to take control of their own futures. The chapters explore the criminogenic and damaging consequences of the policies of the global financial institutions as well as the effects of growing economic polarisation both in pockets of the developed world and most markedly in the global south. Reflecting on this evidence, in the Introduction the editors necessarily challenge existing criminological theory by expanding and elaborating a conception of social harm that encompasses this range of problems, and exposes where new solutions derived from criminological theory are necessary. A second theme addresses human rights from the standpoint of indigenous women, minority women and those seeking refuge. Inadequate and individualised as the human rights instruments presently are, for most of these women a politics of human rights emerges as central to the achieving of legal and political equality and protection from individual violence. Women in the poorest countries, however, are sceptical as to the efficacy of rights claims in the face of the depredations of international and global capital, and the social dislocation produced thereby. Nonetheless this is a hopeful book, emphasising the contribution which academic work can make, provided the methodology is appropriately gendered and sufficiently sensitive in its guiding ideology and techniques to hear and learn from the all too often 'glocalised' other. But in the end there is no solution without politics, and in both the opening and the closing sections of this book there are chapters which address this. What continues to be special about women's political practice is the connection between the groundedness of small groups and the fluidity and flexibility of regional and international networks: the effective politics of the global age. This book, then, is a new criminology for and by women, a book which opens up a new criminological terrain for both women and men - and a book which cannot easily be read without an emotional response.

This book of eleven chapters and an Introduction is by and about women, the harms and crimes to which they are subjected as a result of global social processes and their efforts to take control of their own futures. The chapters explore the criminogenic and damaging consequences of the policies of the global financial institutions as well as the effects of growing economic polarisation both in pockets of the developed world and most markedly in the global south. Reflecting on this evidence, in the Introduction the editors necessarily challenge existing criminological theory by expanding and elaborating a conception of social harm that encompasses this range of problems, and exposes where new solutions derived from criminological theory are necessary. A second theme addresses human rights from the standpoint of indigenous women, minority women and those seeking refuge. Inadequate and individualised as the human rights instruments presently are, for most of these women a politics of human rights emerges as central to the achieving of legal and political equality and protection from individual violence. Women in the poorest countries, however, are sceptical as to the efficacy of rights claims in the face of the depredations of international and global capital, and the social dislocation produced thereby. Nonetheless this is a hopeful book, emphasising the contribution which academic work can make, provided the methodology is appropriately gendered and sufficiently sensitive in its guiding ideology and techniques to hear and learn from the all too often 'glocalised' other. But in the end there is no solution without politics, and in both the opening and the closing sections of this book there are chapters which address this. What continues to be special about women's political practice is the connection between the groundedness of small groups and the fluidity and flexibility of regional and international networks: the effective politics of the global age. This book, then, is a new criminology for and by women, a book which opens up a new criminological terrain for both women and men - and a book which cannot easily be read without an emotional response.