Suchergebnisse

This paper provides an analysis of certain aspects of the regulation of warfare during the 19th century in order to cast light on the contradictory process of monopolising control of the means of violence in the modern world. Resort to privateering - private naval auxiliaries mobilised by the search for profit - was a major feature of maritime warfare until the middle of the 19th century, when it was abolished by The Declaration of Paris. Analysis suggests that shifting patterns of global military, economic and political hegemony were responsible for the emergence of this treaty, which increased both (a) the general level of discipline and control over naval violence that was exercised by states, and (b) the global naval domination of the core capitalist nations.

IN a recent paper, Berger et al argue that traditional concepts of honour and reputation have been eroded as a consequence of subjective adaptations to modern industrial society. However, historical analysis of English libel laws suggests that honour and reputation are ideological elements whose contents are broadly specified by distinct modes of production. Thus feudal honour was an aristocratic class ideology which was necessarily transformed by the rise of commodity relations. Moreover, subsequent commodification of honour in English law derives from and reflects the emergence of capitalist forces rather than more general forces of modernization. The corollary of this observation is that in modern socialist laws, honour and reputation differ substantially from the parallel concepts in English and United States law, strongly reflecting a specifically socialist ideology.

The article explores the ways in which discourses of pleasure are deployed strategically in official commentaries on drug and alcohol consumption. Pleasure as a warrantable motive for, or descriptor of, drug and alcohol consumption appears to be silenced the more that consumption appears problematic for liberal government. Tracing examples of this from the 18th century to the present, it is argued that discourses of 'pleasure' are linked to discourses of reason and freedom, so that problematic drug consumption appears both without reason (for example 'bestial') and unfree (for example 'compulsive'), and thus not as 'pleasant'. In turn, changes in this articulation of pleasure, drugs and freedom can be linked with shifts in the major forms taken by liberal governance in the past two centuries, as these constitute freedom differently.

Engagement in property crime by drug users is often regarded as driven by the need to support a habit and/or as merely an aside to involvement in the drug "industry." This paper examines a group of successful women drug dealers in Melbourne—most of whom are also illicit drug users—and maps their involvement in property crime. It concludes that property offenses are tightly integrated with the women's drug businesses. Success in property offending is a characteristic of successful drug dealers, and stolen property and money plays a key part in the trade—providing a lucrative source of income, gifts, payments, and rewards. Property crime provides excitement and other, valued, intangible satisfactions, including status and self-esteem.