Boundaries Of Autonomy Research Articles

Ins and Outs of Autonomy

Drawing from processes of autonomous community organization in Mexico, this paper will interrogate and rethink the borders and boundaries of autonomy. Rather than articulating autonomy as some fully separated space with clearly delineated borders, this paper will show how struggles for autonomy in Mexico are constantly navigating their insides and outsides, organizing and inhabiting the border or boundary space. With this, we can begin to re-conceptualize autonomy without state-like borders as something in constant movement. In the same way, we can begin to take seriously the complexities and intricacies of autonomous struggles as they play out in practice.

"I Kind of Want to Want": Women Who Are Undecided About Becoming Mothers.

This study focuses on women who define themselves as being undecided about becoming mothers. It addresses the question of how these women navigate their lives between two main conflicting cultural directives and perceptions: pronatalism and familism entwined in perception of linear time on one hand; and individualism and its counterpart, the notion of flexible liquid society, on the other. The research is based on group meetings designated for these women, which were facilitated by the first author. Ten women participated in the study—of whom, most were heterosexual, half were single, and half were partnered. Data were collected using (1) questionnaires completed during individual interviews that preceded the group encounter; (2) transcripts of the discussions held during the ten group sessions; and (3) questions regarding the status of the women’s doubts about motherhood asked 4 years after participating in the group. Our findings expand the existing typology of women’s reproductive decision-making, and demonstrate how categories that are commonly perceived as binary intersect when one challenges the rigid classifications of “active decisions” and “passive decisions”; “motherhood” and “non-motherhood,” and “want to be a mother” and “do not want to be a mother.” The findings also suggest that after becoming mothers, women can change their maternal status from “non-mother” to “mother,” yet still continue to view themselves as indecisive regarding motherhood. Based on our findings, we will argue that while indecisiveness about motherhood derives from individualized neoliberal rhetoric, it simultaneously undermines that same rhetoric and contradicts the injunction to “know, to decide, to strive.” It opposes the expectation in post-feminist discourse, that women will make choices about their bodies and exert them, while also opposing the pronatalist rhetoric, and the temporal linear discourse positing that women should “move forward” toward motherhood along with the ticking of the “biological clock.” Whereas some women sought to resolve their indecisiveness, other women found that the indecisiveness leaves all options open in a manner that expands their boundaries of autonomy in a society that seeks to limit it.

Exploring the boundaries of autonomy and the ‘right’ to access innovative stem cell therapies

Demands for improved access to innovative therapies have prompted a discourse that claims patients have rights to access treatments that may be of benefit, even if evidence that demonstrates safety and efficacy is lacking. This rights-based discourse is grounded in accounts of autonomy and assertions claiming that the state ought to not interfere with the free choices of patients and clinical decision-making. In this essay, we scrutinise these arguments to defend the ethical and legal permissibility of interference in contexts where the uncertainty of benefit and potential for harm creates vulnerabilities that undermine patient capacity for self-determination. In support of this argument, we draw on two theoretical approaches to explore the limits of autonomy in innovative contexts and analyse the legal bases of the rights-based discourse. We then apply this analysis to the case example of stem cell transplantation as an innovative treatment for multiple sclerosis.

Rural women redefining land rights in the context of living customary law

Women’s rights and customary law are often understood as being in opposition to one another. This article challenges the usefulness of the prevailing custom/rights dichotomy, arguing that it obscures the way in which struggles to claim resources such as land combine ‘human rights’ equality claims with claims to customary entitlements. The article focuses on contestation over who has the power to define custom, rights and customary entitlements. It discusses the democratic potential inherent in Constitutional Court judgments that define customary law as ‘living law’ reflecting changing practice, and the dangers posed by national legislation that reinforces the power of traditional leaders to unilaterally define custom. It argues for legal strategies that engage with, and support, the struggles for change taking place at the interface between custom and rights in the former reserves. We draw on insights about the nature of rights and rights struggles in the work of Nedelsky, Nyamu Musembi and Merry to argue for an approach to rights that focuses on the relationships and power relations that rights mediate, rather than solely on rights as ‘boundaries of autonomy’. Moreover, engaging with processes of women claiming, redefining and ‘vernacularising’ rights within their communities relates directly to the project of engendering socio-economic rights, given the primacy of claims of need, and of access to material resources, within indigenous constructs of relative rights.

Institutional Autonomy Revisited: Autonomy Justified and Accounted

Australian universities have enjoyed large-scale autonomy. In a society that increasingly regards university education from an instrumentalist point of view, universities' anxious safeguarding of their autonomy is widely seen as an attempt to evade accountability. Yet there has been an acceptance that a corollary to autonomy is accountability. Over the past 20 years, the boundaries of autonomy have changed and accountability requirements multiplied. This paper explores the developments in Australia within a wider international context. In particular, it notes changes in seven areas of institutional autonomy, staff, students, curriculum and teaching, academic standards, research and publications, governance, and administration and finance. It concludes that Australian universities have been responsive to societal expectations within the boundaries of changing institutional autonomy.