Marginal Voices Research Articles

Law, Society, and the State in Early Modern France

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview ArticleLaw, Society, and the State in Early Modern France*Michael P. BreenMichael P. BreenReed College Search for more articles by this author Reed CollegePDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 83, Number 2June 2011 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/659209 Views: 288Total views on this site Citations: 11Citations are reported from Crossref © 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Lewis Wade Underwriting Empire: Marine Insurance and Female Agency in the French Atlantic World, Enterprise & Society 34 (Oct 2022): 1–29.https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.33Felix Petersen Montesquieu and the Concept of the Non-Arbitrary State, The European Legacy 83 (Aug 2022): 1–19.https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2022.2106638Ozan TOK, Kamil YILDIRIM Tarihsel Süreç İçerisinde Fransız Temyiz Mahkemesinin Gelişimi, Marmara Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Hukuk Araştırmaları Dergisi 27, no.22 (Dec 2021): 26–50.https://doi.org/10.33433/maruhad.941108Matthew Vester On the edge of the Italian Renaissance, (Apr 2020).https://doi.org/10.5117/9789463726726_ch01Matthew Vester Kinship and noble life, (Apr 2020).https://doi.org/10.5117/9789463726726_ch05Jefferey M. Sellers, Anders Lidström, Yooil Bae Multilevel Democracy, 19 (Feb 2020).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108672337Alexandra Shepard Worthless Witnesses? Marginal Voices and Women's Legal Agency in Early Modern England, Journal of British Studies 58, no.44 (Oct 2019): 717–734.https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2019.85Philip Loft A Tapestry of Laws: Legal Pluralism in Eighteenth-Century Britain, The Journal of Modern History 91, no.22 (May 2019): 276–310.https://doi.org/10.1086/703162CHRISTOPHER J. LANE Vocational Freedom, Parental Authority and Pastoral Persuasion in Seventeenth-Century France, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 69, no.44 (Mar 2018): 768–784.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046917002743Michael P. Breen “An Uncertain, Useless, and Disgraceful Means of Proof”: Marriage, Law, and Authority in the Épreuve du Congrès, The Journal of Modern History 87, no.44 (Dec 2015): 771–808.https://doi.org/10.1086/683598Erik Goldner Corruption on Trial : Money, Power, and Punishment in France’s Chambre de Justice of 1716, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés 17, no.11 (May 2013): 5–28.https://doi.org/10.4000/chs.1407

Cultural Resources for Health Participation: Examining Biomedicine, Acupuncture, and Massage Therapy for HIV-Related Peripheral Neuropathy

In this article we use a culture-centered approach to understand people's experiences of treatment options for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-related peripheral neuropathy. We present from often unheard and marginalized voices the stories of how people live with this chronic illness and negotiate treatment options. Based on individual and group interviews, participants reported that biomedical pills were an important context for understanding decision making regarding neuropathy treatment. While most people spoke of the necessity of these drugs for their survival, they also expressed deep resentment and frustration with biomedically prescribed pills. Complaints about the pills worked to frame the holistic alternatives of acupuncture and massage therapy as better options for neuropathy and to establish a foundation for understanding how participants made particular health treatment decisions. Through strategically refusing certain drugs and choosing holistic treatments instead, participants asserted agency and control over their health decision making. By choosing holistic therapies, these clients were able to make choices about their neuropathy treatment in light of the many issues surrounding drug toxicity and treatment efficacy.

Genuine Community Engagement in Remote Dryland Regions: Natural Resource Management in Lake Eyre Basin

Remote dryland regions are characterised by sparse populations and socially marginalised voices which pose particular challenges to natural resource management. This paper considers the issue of how to achieve community engagement in regions with these characteristics. In doing so, the paper contributes to an expanding international research agenda focusing on the distinct characteristics of arid and semi-arid regions under the heading of 'dryland syndrome'. The paper draws on government liaison officer and local community perspectives of successful engagement in the case-study region of Lake Eyre Basin, Australia. The results demonstrate that widely recognised characteristics of successful engagement are required but insufficient for genuine engagement in remote dryland regions. In addition to building trust through community ownership, being inclusive, effective communication, and adequate resources, genuine community engagement in drylands also requires respecting the extreme conditions and extraordinary variability of these areas. Residents of dryland regions seek genuine engagement yet engage opportunistically when seasons are conducive and when tangible outcomes are visible. © 2011 The Authors. Geographical Research © 2011 Institute of Australian Geographers.

The Glorified Woman: Abstraction and Domination in Le Livre du voir dit

Pour que je puisse dire: cette femme, il faut que d'une maniere ou d'une autre je lui retire sa realite d'os et de chair, la rende absente et l'aneantisse. Le mot me donne l'etre, mais il me donne prive d'etre. --Maurice Blanchot, La Part du feu On the surface, Guillaume de Machaut's Le Livre du voir dit (1362-65) is the transcription and description of an actual love affair supposedly occurring between Machaut anda beautiful young noblewoman whom he calls Toute Belle. Machaut's self-stated goal as author is to be as inclusive as possible in order to render a truthful account of what happened between the lovers, providing the reader with, as Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet puts it: tout: le noir et blanc, l'amour et desamour (Introduction 21). To this end, Le Livre du voir dit is a sprawling, polyphonic collection of reproduced letters and verse supposedly written between Machaut and the noblewoman in real life and then transcribed in the Voir dit, where a narrative supplied by Machaut accompanies the transcriptions. The reader follows along as the purely epistolary relationship becomes a physical one. After some tensions caused by the rarity of actual visits and by rumors of infidelity, the lovers are ultimately portrayed as having achieved an ideal courtly union. Ostensibly, then, the Voir dit (True Poem) is merely the faithful transcription of what happened between two real-life lovers. However, as Blanchot reminds us, reality cannot be transcribed into language without violence. In the case of the Voir dit, this violence is exacerbated (and highlighted) because the discourse of the text--that of medieval courtly verse--is innately infused with ah ideology (that of fin'amors) according to which Guillaume must be cast as the valiant, unwavering lover and Toute Belle--as indicated by the name--must incarnate pure beauty (along with other traits of purity). Numerous studies have demonstrated to what extent the medieval cleric, as writer, could betray a desire to create for himself, among his secular peers, an impressive persona through literature, this has been shown to be the case for Richard de Fournival, (1) Abelard, (2) and, as Kevin Brownlee and Deborah McGrady suggest, for Guillaume de Machaut himself. (3) So we should not be surprised if Guillaume's (4) lofty verse and exahed descriptions of the love affair tend to paint a rather glorious and even allegorical portrait of Machaut in the guise of giving a truthful account. However, when we consider the consequences of this glorification for the called Toute Belle, who must also have an allegorical other imposed upon her, we start to glimpse an economy of domination that underlies Guillaume's retelling of the love affair. Tapping into that economy and describing it will allow us to move beyond limitations of previous scholarship concerning the Voir dit, limitations that--while discerning ulterior motives in Machaut's depiction of the love affair (i.e., building his own image)--have ignored the violence done to the the text must sacrifice to realize those motives. In Controlling Readers, McGrady has pointed to the largely ignored role (46) of Guillaume's inscribed audience in the Voir dit--invasive in terms of its capacity to disrupt and alter the course of Guillaume's literary project. She includes Toute Belle in this audience. However, such an invasive presence is more accurately described as coming from the marginal voice of the behind the construct of Toute Belle; we must distinguish between the two, because Toute Belle is perfectly congruent and necessary to Guillaume's literary project and therefore incapable of being invasive. Guillaume would write the perfect at the expense of the authentic, imperfect we glimpse in the margins of the Voir dit. It should be emphasized here that by authentic woman I do not refer to someone having existed outside of the text (this paper does not participate in that debate). …

Néstor Perlongher: The Poetic Search for an Argentine Marginal Voice ‐ by Bollig, Ben

Bulletin of Latin American ResearchVolume 30, Issue 1 p. 129-131 Néstor Perlongher: The Poetic Search for an Argentine Marginal Voice - by Bollig, Ben Asuncion Horno-Delgado, Asuncion Horno-Delgado University of Colorado at BoulderSearch for more papers by this author Asuncion Horno-Delgado, Asuncion Horno-Delgado University of Colorado at BoulderSearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 December 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1470-9856.2010.00478.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume30, Issue1January 2011Pages 129-131 RelatedInformation

Digital Storytelling – Special issue

Digital Storytelling – Special issue

Understanding digital storytelling: individual ‘voice’ and community-building in youth media programs

Digital storytelling (DST) has been widely used as a means of empowerment for marginalised voices across community-based projects worldwide. This paper discusses uses but also limitations of the practice in the context of a Melbourne-based youth media program for ‘youth at risk’ called YouthWorx. Based on our ongoing, long-term ethnographic research, we explore the cultural production of digital stories as a co-creative process that exposes a range of controversies to do with the politics of ‘voice’, genre’s communicative potential and ethical considerations. Concrete examples from YouthWorx’s pedagogical work serve to illustrate the values of self-expression (‘voice’), critical reflection and collaboration that form part of broader social transformations generated by these creative practices. The critique of DST practice offered here connects with existing studies concerned with the socially contextualised processes of media education, and the theoretical shift beyond ‘the right to speak’ towards ‘the right to be understood’ (Husband, 2009). The paper recommends more analytical attention be paid to a dynamic social process of learning (of media, interpersonal competencies) and community-building, extending beyond the immediate DST situation, rather than narrowing the focus on end-result atomised media products.

'I Integrate, Therefore I Am': Contesting the Normalizing Discourse of Integrationism through Conversations with Refugee Women

The discourse of integration has been ascendant in migration policy internationally, particularly after western concerns linking terrorism with cultural separatism. Retreats from multiculturalism signal a view that conformance by outsiders with a normative, universal, and static national citizen subject will facilitate social cohesion. The discourse of integrationism, perpetuated through the practice of UnSpeak (Poole 2006), represents resettled refugees as innately problematic against dominant, normative values (Marston 2004). I explore these representations in Australian settlement education policy and suggest an appeal to marginal voices (Foucault 1980; Spivak 1988) as a means for contesting them. Rejecting an engagement driven by policy categories (Bakewell 2008), I interview nine, long settled Melbourne refugee women about education’s purposes. I make sense of the women’s feedback through Foucault’s (1990) Care of the Self, which provides an account of agency in the subject. The interviewees emphasize education’s role in facilitating self actualization, informed by a ‘knowledge of the self’. In contrast to their dominant representation as the problematic subjects of a policy encouraging conformity, refugees should be regarded as agents with potential.

About Global Leadership and Global Ethics, and a Possible Moral Compass: an Introduction to the Special Issue

This paper reviews a number of huge challenges to ethical leadership in the twenty-first century and concludes that the need for global ethical leadership is not merely a desirable option, but rather – and quite literally – a matter of survival. The crises of the recent past reveal huge, and in some cases criminal, failures of both ethics and leadership in finance, business and government. We posit that mainstream economic theory’s construct of ‘homo economicus’ and its faith in the ‘invisible hand’ of the market constitute deeply flawed foundations upon which alone policy may be built and, farthermore, that these problematic foundations exert substantial shaping power over the institutional and discursive landscapes in which international business is transacted. Analogously, we argue that dominant approaches to business ethics and corporate social responsibility are, if not incorrect, at least in need of revisiting in terms of questioning their basic assumptions. Instead of the smugness of Western (especially Anglo-American) attitudes towards other ways of thinking, valuing and organising, it appears clear that openness, cooperation and co-creation between the developed and developing worlds is a basic prerequisite for dealing with the global challenges facing not just leaders, but humanity as a whole. This objective of stimulating discussion between dominant and marginal voices has guided our selection of papers for this Special Issue. We have thus included not only representatives of research from within the parameters of mainstream business ethics, IB or leadership scholarship, but also innovative contributions from fields such as military history, information technology, regulation, spirituality and sociology.

‘Free to Deal as He May Choose’: The Displacement of ‘Freedom of Commerce’ as a Necessary Condition to the Creation of Canadian Multiculturalism

In the 1940s the Canadian legal system was one which seemed incapable of recognizing racial discrimination as a problem worthy of jurisprudential attention. The 1939 Supreme Court of Canada decision in Christie v York Corporation confirmed that the owners of a tavern were entitled to refuse to serve a black man; in the infamous case of Viola Desmond, the courts held that a theatre owner was within its rights to segregate seating on the basis of skin colour. Excepting marginal voices expressing concern, no significant protest was raised against the court decisions. Sixty years later, facts virtually identical to those found in the Christie case resulted in a large monetary penalty being levied against the offending bar owner—like an inversion of Christie before it, the decision was so congruent with contemporary sensibilities that it occasioned virtually no comment. Using the Christie and Desmond cases and the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as focal points, this paper traces the linguistic and legal changes which help explain such radically different responses from the legal system.

Lifting the Lid on Sexuality and Ageing

This article offers ‘insider perspectives’ on participatory action research (PAR) by exploring the reflective narratives of older volunteer researchers who were involved in a recent participatory action research project into the needs, experiences and aspirations of older lesbian women and gay men (OLGs) living in Dorset, England. It explores in their own words the experiences of being a volunteer researcher on a project that explored the marginalized identities of older lesbians and gay men. The Gay and Grey project was funded for three years by the Big Lottery Fund, and was a joint initiative between Help and Care, a voluntary agency working with older people in Dorset, and Bournemouth University. In this article the volunteers offer narrative reflections on their involvement in this project, and what it meant to them. The tensions in participatory action research will be explored in terms of the different expectations of stake-holders in the research. Consideration will be given to what can be learnt from the narratives of volunteer researchers, and the issues of inclusivity within marginalized voices.

Mary as the Storehouse of Wisdom: Paradise Regained and the Regaining of Marginal Voices

Mary as the Storehouse of Wisdom: Paradise Regained and the Regaining of Marginal Voices

An exploratory study of students’ constructions of gender in science, engineering and technology

Despite an appreciation of the need to increase gender sensitivity and awareness among tertiary students in the field of science, engineering and technology (SET), there is a paucity of research that explores how students in this field construct gender. A greater understanding of such constructions can assist in transforming gender relations and creating a more gender‐sensitive learning environment for SET students. This paper explores SET students’ constructions of gender and the discourses they draw on when constructing female participation in SET. Focus group discussions were conducted with male and female students from an urban South African university. A discourse analysis identified various restrictive discourses that resist female participation in SET and value traditional gender roles for men and women, as well as more marginal voices that support gender equity. The paper concludes with recommendations for interventions aimed at challenging restrictive constructions of gender in higher education.

Diasporic subjectivity as an ethical position

The paper highlights some of the ways in which diasporas challenge the dominant narratives of belonging that give primacy to the bounded community of nation‐states. It argues for a critical appropriation of diasporic subjectivity as an ethical position that reveals the contested and constructed nature of culture. This position requires analytical frameworks that recognise power relations behind cultural claims and allow us to appreciate the silenced and marginalised voices subsumed under the categories of diaspora and culture.

A Cage of Voices

“I have a stomach full of words, but I just can’t say them” is a statement often uttered by migrant women in contemporary China. Using this as a point of entry, this article explores the paradoxical role that the Dagongmei’s Home, a Beijing women’s organization that promotes the rights and interests of female migrants, plays in producing identities for its members and in channeling their voices into the public arena. The Dagongmei’s Home is both a site of articulation and a cage that limits and contains the marginal voices of migrant women. By “hailing” its members into subjectivity as the dagongmei (working sister), the organization empowers these women to speak in otherwise closed spaces. However, since the women can only speak as dagongmei, they end up reproducing the state’s discourse of modernization. Nevertheless, a community-based drama workshop set up by a British woman in collaboration with the Home becomes an unlikely site of resistance as migrant women break the script of strong women sacrificing for the nation’s economic development, thus doing dagongmei subversively.

Challenging Hegemonic Masculinities: Men's Stories on Gender Culture in Organizations

The article emphasizes the importance of storytelling in helping or hindering a change in organizational practices brought about by the entry into force of a legislative measure. It concentrates in particular on the introduction of a normative change intended to reshape the dominant gender order by giving fathers the same rights to parental leave as mothers. Whilst storytelling can be an instrument of change, it may also be perceived and used as a means to prevent such change and to consolidate dominant models. In the latter case, analysis of rebellious and marginal voices reveals hegemonic practices and brings out viewpoints silenced by the official versions. The stories of eight men, belonging to different organizations, who have experienced parental leave, enable analysis to be made of the ways in which organizational storytelling can support or prevent the introduction of a change which challenges the symbolic gender order within organizations.

Desert knowledge: integrating knowledge and development in arid and semi-arid drylands

Globalisation presents particular challenges for deserts given that their sparse populations, which are amongst the world’s poorest in an absolute economic sense, tend to be remote from major markets and have only a distant, marginal voice in political and policy decision making. Here we are defining deserts as the arid and semi-arid drylands that encompass 70% of Australia and 25% of the world’s land surfaces. The value of the knowledge that local traditions and science have generated about living sustainably in deserts is being promoted and extended through the ‘desert knowledge’ movement in Australia. The Australian research reported here, together with a contribution from Niger that offers a contrast and some lessons for Australia, is largely underpinned by a neopopulist paradigm of development stressing respect for local knowledge, participatory practice and empowerment. Research in partnership with desert Aboriginal groups is contributing to their engagement with new livelihood opportunities. The local knowledge of livestock graziers is also being engaged to support sustainable management of desert water sources and landscapes for multiple values. The research reported here also addresses opportunities and challenges for local norms, identities, knowledge systems, governance and livelihoods from broader scale processes and institutions. In doing so it contributes to a ‘neo-ideographic approach’ wherein desert people might better harness their locality, knowledge and diversity in adaptations that shape their encounters with globalisation. It also points to considerable scope to mature such an approach.

Marginal voices in the media coverage of controversial health interventions: how do they contribute to the public understanding of science?

While the media are a significant source of information for the public on science and technology, journalists are often accused of providing only a partial picture by neglecting the points of view of vulnerable stakeholders. This paper analyzes the press coverage of four controversial health interventions in order to uncover what voices are treated marginally in the media and what the relative contributions of these voices are to the stories being told. Our empirical study shows that: 1) patterns of source utilization vary depending on the health intervention and less dominant stakeholders are in fact represented; and 2) the use of marginal voices fills certain information gaps but the overall contribution of such voices to the controversies remains limited. In order to strengthen the media coverage of science and technology issues, we suggest that further research on journalistic practices: 1) move beyond the dichotomy between journalists and scientists, and 2) explore how different categories of readers appraise the meaning and relevance of media content.

Selling sorrow: testimony, representation and images of HIV‐positive South African women

In post‐apartheid South Africa, testimony and personal narrative have opened a space for marginalised voices to emerge. At the same time, to testify is to occupy a position of vulnerability. This paper focuses on a series of self‐portraits by black HIV‐positive women and points to how their entry into the public sphere and the global art market has been conditioned by their social and economic marginality. These portraits have been read as ‘maps’, providing access to the truth of the subjects they represent. Such readings perpetuate rather than challenge the myth of the transparent, authentic African subject.

Manuscript Studies, Literary Value, and the Object of Chaucer Studies

The poetry that modern editorial practice assigns to Chaucer may be charming, astute, and, simply, beautiful, but the stable Chaucer whose agency determines this achievement—the Chaucer who serves as a canonical center against whom the marginal voices of vernacular culture have been defined—is more the creation of a Shakespearian-focused textual criticism than a historical medieval reality. —Tim William Machan1