Administrative sociology and apartheid

Although sociological discourses are multiple and varied, with deeply critical versions challenging the auspices of apartheid, there is also a strand of what I call ‘administrativesociology’ that actively defined, supported and defended the vanguard of apartheid thinking and practice. It cloaked its biopolitical commitments beneath images of scientific neutrality, casting as necessary its assertions about apartheid society. The legacy of this strand of sociology remains subject to few explicit critiques, and its complicity in social atrocities is under-referenced (despite the decisive role of such professors of sociology as Hendrik Verwoerd, Jan De Wet Keyter and Geoffrey Cronjé). This article charts a brief genealogy of administrative sociology in context, focusing especially on the approach Cronjé adopted in his inaugural address, and indicating several dangers that attend to this sort of administrative sociology whose logic is still evident in strands of the discipline

Administrative sociology and apartheid

Although sociological discourses are multiple and varied, with deeply critical versions challenging the auspices of apartheid, there is also a strand of what I call ‘administrativesociology’ that actively defined, supported and defended the vanguard of apartheid thinking and practice. It cloaked its biopolitical commitments beneath images of scientific neutrality, casting as necessary its assertions about apartheid society. The legacy of this strand of sociology remains subject to few explicit critiques, and its complicity in social atrocities is under-referenced (despite the decisive role of suchprofessors of sociology as Hendrik Verwoerd, Jan De Wet Keyter and Geoffrey Cronjé). This article charts a brief genealogy of administrative sociology in context, focusing especially on the approach Cronjé adopted in his inaugural address, and indicating several dangers that attend to this sort of administrative sociology whose logic is still evident in strands of the discipline

The Politics of Responsible Sovereigns

How might one read a collection of transcriptions—such as The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1—that exemplifies how to read other texts deconstructively? In the spirit of Derrida’s text, a response to this question remains radically undecided; however, it certainly does not imply the absence of exegesis through the course of a particular reading. On the contrary, the event of a reading fixes itself out of specific interpretative horizons and traces of past understandings. In what follows, my exegesis is contoured by past readings that have engaged diverse phenomenological and existential perspectives declining commonsense invitations to relay fixed, singular meanings that align with the purportedly real meanings and/or intentions of the author. Following a partial suspension of that familiar angle, I propose an epoche of sorts. Provoked by Derrida’s text, I shall reorder words into new assemblies that appear on the following pages, and that surface from my situated readings of Derrida’s deconstructive renderings of other writings

Occupied Cape Judges and Colonial Knowledge of Crime, Criminals, and Punishment

This article returns to a colonial discourse on crime, criminals, and punishment that the court of justice enunciated and followed during an 8-year British occupation of the Cape of Good Hope in the latter part of 1795. Tapping unusually frank juridical discussions on criminality and punishment in the context of sovereignty politics, it examines three key matters. Commencing with a description of the Cape colony’s inquisitorial criminal procedures, the analysis—following Foucault (2000)—conceives of these as powers (political techniques) through which the British claimed an exclusive capacity to enunciate legal “truths” about specific criminal events. Second, it analyzes a unique correspondence between the British military commander and the court of justice members together with two illustrative criminal cases of the day. These provide a sense of the judge’s knowledge of crime and criminal punishment in a social context that imagined itself through social differentiation and hierarchy. Third, it reads these colonial power-knowledge formations as generating three congruent political logics that in hybrid combinations have nurtured segmented, racially orientated, and group-based criminal justice arenas. This discussion alludes to the pivotal role colonial discourses of criminal law have played in generating a politics that shaped the criminal justice arenas of subsequent social forms. New, and differently combined, political logics of sovereignty, discipline, and biopolitics have left a decided legacy to which post-colonial arenas continue to respond

Mediating community disputes : the regulatory logic of government through pastoral power

The protracted crises of authority that characterized the 1960s and 1970s left their imprints on a number of institutions in Canadian society. The dispute resolution arena, for one, was affected by the turmoil of this age as more informal, 'empowering' alternatives were sought to replace the disempowering procedures of courtroom adjudication. The present thesis focuses on one aspect of an ensuing 'alternative dispute resolution' movement in the Canadian province of British Columbia; namely, community mediation. In particular, it begins by looking at the rhetoric and practices through which community mediation has been deployed. Advocates tout this process as an 'empowering' method of resolving disputes because it encourages individuals to work conflict out in the 'community', thus - so their reasoning goes - limiting state intrusion into people's everyday lives. By contrast, critics of the movement argue that the deployment of informal justice actually expands state control, and contend that it does so rather insidiously under the guise of 'restricting' state activities. Close scrutiny of this debate, however, reveals significant weaknesses in both positions, mainly relating to their unnecessarily narrow definition of the 'problem'; i.e., whether informal justice expands or reduces state control. This is a highly questionable formulation, for it demands a simple response from what is a much more complex and ambiguous event. Taking its cue from more recent developments in the literature, the following analysis reconceptualizes the 'problem' by asking: what is the logic of control embodied by mediation practices in a given context? It responds to the question by developing certain Foucauldian precepts into a theory that explicates the model of power through which mediation regulates action. Its implicit objective is to understand the political rationale of mediation in order to pursue how this might be used to further social justice. Various genealogical procedures are employed to formulate such a theory by responding to four central questions. What are the wider lines of descent that have helped to produce the particular version of community mediation that now colours British Columbia's landscape? What precise model of power does the rhetoric and practice of mediation reflect? How does this informal model of power link up with the formal power of the law/state? What are the implications of this for engaging politically with community mediation, if one's aim is to achieve social justice? Responding to each of these in turn supplies the basic thesis of the following text. In brief, I argue that community mediation has developed in British Columbia in tandem with a shift from Fordist to Post-Fordist modes of regulation (politics) and production (economics) that characterized the 1970s. Influenced by legal reforms and experiments with 'alternatives' to courts, community mediation has assumed an identity which incorporates a 'pastoral' model of power. This model is articulated to the state's 'law-sovereign' model as a 'complementary,' but subordinate, alternative. The association between these results in an indirect form of governance - 'government at a distance' - that may expand the state's potential to control people, but which is also considerably less predictable. This offers both opportunities and barriers to political action in the informal justice arena. Consequently, while the current deployment of community mediation in British Columbia tends to support the professionalised justice of the existing legal system, it may yet be possible to transform its identity through an 'alternative' politics of law that strives for social justice.Arts, Faculty ofAnthropology, Department ofGraduat

Introduction

After Sovereignty addresses the vexed question of sovereignty in contemporary social, political, and legal theory. The emergence, and now apparent implosion, of international capital exceeding the borders of known political entities; the continued expansion of a potentially endless 'war on terror'; the often predicted, but still uncertain, establishment of either a new international American Empire or a new era of International Law; the proliferation of social and political struggles among stateless refugees, migrant workers, and partial citizens; the resurgence of religion as a dominant source of political identification among people all over the globe - these developments and others have thrown into crisis the modern concept of sovereignty, and the notions of statehood and citizenship that rest upon it