Law’s spatial turn: geography, justice and a certain fear of space

This is a critical reading of the current literature on law and geography. The article argues that the literature is characterized by an undertheorization of the concept of space. The focus is either on the specific geography of law in the form of jurisdiction, or as a simple terminological innovation. Instead, the article suggests that law’s spatial turn ought to consider space as a singular parameter to the hitherto legal preoccupation with time, history and waiting. This forces law into dealing with a new, peculiarly spatial kind of uncertainty in terms of simultaneity, disorientation, materiality and exclusionary corporeal emplacement. The main area in which this undertheorization forcefully manifests itself is that of spatial justice. Despite its critical potential, the concept has been reduced by the majority of the relevant literature into another version of social, distributive or regional justice. On the contrary, if the peculiar characteristics of space are to be taken into account, a concept of justice will have to be rethought on a much more fundamental level than that.

Places and preferences: a longitudinal analysis of self-selection and contextual effects

Contextual theories of political behaviour assert that the contexts in which people live influence their political beliefs and vote choices. Most studies of political assimilation, however, rely on cross-sectional data and fail to distinguish contextual influence from self-selection of individuals into areas. This paper advances understanding of this longstanding controversy by tracking thousands of individuals over an 18-year period in England. We observe individual-level left-right position and party identification before and after residential moves across areas with different political orientations. We find evidence of both non-random selection into areas and assimilation of new entrants to the majority political orientation. However, these effects are contingent on the type of area an individual moves to and, moreover, contextual effects are weak and dominated by the larger effect of self-selection into areas.

The 'emotionalization of the 'war on terror'': counter-terrorism, fear, risk, insecurity and helplessness

The ‘war on terror’ has marked the existence of exceptional measures involving military action abroad and the introduction of counter-terrorism legislation in the United Kingdom. Within this context fear, risk and insecurity have been intrinsic in legitimizing the measures created as being necessary to maintain national security. This article presents the findings from a study investigating the impact of the ‘war on terror’ on British Muslims’ emotions. The study revealed how facets of the ‘war on terror’, including ‘human rights and policing’, ‘What if? and pre-emption’, ‘geopolitics and reflexive fear and risk’ and ‘fear from inside the binary’ impacted participants’ emotions. Through exploring how thepolicy measures implemented in the ‘war on terror’ have influenced British Muslims’ emotions, the article takes a small step in addressing the analytical gap in criminological research on emotions in the ‘war on terror’.

Image quality optimization, via application of contextual contrast sensitivity and discrimination functions

What is the best luminance contrast weighting-function for image quality optimization? Traditionally measured contrast sensitivity functions (CSFs), have been often used as weighting-functions in image quality and difference metrics. Such weightings have been shown to result in increased sharpness and perceived quality of test images. We suggest contextual CSFs (cCSFs) and contextual discrimination functions (cVPFs) should provide bases for further improvement, since these are directly measured from pictorial scenes, modeling threshold and suprathreshold sensitivities within the context of complex masking information. Image quality assessment is understood to require detection and discrimination of masked signals, making contextual sensitivity and discrimination functions directly relevant. In this investigation, test images are weighted with a traditional CSF, cCSF, cVPF and a constant function. Controlled mutations of these functions are also applied as weighting-functions, seeking the optimal spatial frequency band weighting for quality optimization. Image quality, sharpness and naturalness are then assessed in two-alternative forced-choice psychophysical tests. We show that maximal quality for our test images, results from cCSFs and cVPFs, mutated to boost contrast in the higher visible frequencies.

Struggles for Citizenship in South Africa

South Africa’s first democratic constitution of 1996, which defines the content and scope of citizenship, emerged out of what the country’s Constitutional Court accurately described as ‘a deeply divided society characterized by strife, conflict, untold suffering and injustice which generated gross violations of human rights, the transgression of humanitarian principles in violent conflicts and a legacy of hatred, fear, guilt and revenge’ (cited in Jagwanth, 2003: 7). The constitution was internationally noteworthy for its expressed protection of women’s and sexual minority rights and its extension of rights of citizenship to socio-economic rights, such as rights of adequate healthcare, housing and education (SAGI, 1996). During South Africa’s first two decades of democracy, the Constitutional Court has proven its independence by advancing citizenship rights on a number of occasions (O’Regan, 2012). The struggle for citizenship was at the heart of the liberation struggle against the apartheid regime and within the complex dynamics of the anti-apartheid movement, increasingly sophisticated and intersectional demands for citizenship were made. South Africa’s constitutional rights for citizenship are not always matched in practice. The country’s high rates of sexual violence, ongoing poverty and inequality and public attitudes towards the rights of sexual minorities and immigrants lag well behind the spirit and letter of the constitution. Nevertheless, the achievement of formal citizenship rights in South Africa was the result of a prolonged and complex liberation struggle and analysis of South Africa demonstrates Werbner’s claim that ‘struggles over citizenship are thus struggles over the very meaning of politics and membership in a community’ (1999: 221). This chapter will begin with a contextual and historical overview before moving onto analyzing the development of non-racialism as a basis for citizenship, non-sexism and gendered citizenship, contestations of white, militarized citizenship and the achievement of sexual citizenship by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights movement. As shall be made clear, all these citizenship demands emerged during the decades of the country’s liberation struggle.

Rise, fragmentation, infringement and fear: emerging urban issues in Chinese clustering in Italy

China is today facing rapid economic development and the long-term implications of China’s rise for European economy, society and culture, are constantly debated but still almost unknown. Moreover, only recently a new volume edited by Kunzmann has clearly pointed out a particular field of research like the EU spatial impact of China’s convergence in the global market. The aim of the present paper is to deal with the spatial issues related to the growing Chinese communities, especially in Italy, that are part of a more general and considerable transformation process of the traditional Chinese enclaves in EU cities: from recognizable “Chinatowns” to new hybrid urban formations where housing, retail, wholesale and even commodity production often tend to match. Key-Concepts like rise, fragmentation, infringement and fear are useful in analysing some of the more controversial socio-economic dynamics of Chinese clusters especially in a traditionally manufactured-based country like Italy, where it’s recognizable a unique paradox of a “double competition” from outside and from inside. This statement poses a serious threat to local economic systems in terms of sustainability and social cohesion, making it necessary to rethink the role and the nature of public action in facing new forms of marginality at urban and regional level.