Public Condemnation Research Articles

Human Rights Shaming and FDI: Effects of the UN Human Rights Commission and Council

Do public condemnations by the United Nations human rights bodies lead to foreign direct investment (FDI) loss for abusive regimes? The Human Rights Commission and later Council (UNHRCC) are internationally legitimized tools where member states shame repressive regimes for human rights violations in public resolutions. We argue that these resolutions can influence foreign investors in two main ways: (1) They signal that a state is an outcast, unable to secure alliances within the UN human rights bodies that protect it from being publicly shamed, with negative consequences for investment attractiveness (‘outcast’ effect). (2) They signal that a state is one of the most rogue, severe human rights violators because voting members of the UNHRCC may be aware of many human rights violations, but they pass resolutions only in the harshest cases (‘bottleneck’ effect). Any MNC associated with such a country risks severe reputational damage. Results from a panel data analysis of 165 countries (1977–2013) confirm that UNHRCC condemnations deter FDI. This effect is amplified by media reporting of human rights abuse, and stronger and more robust than a bad human rights record of a state itself. NGO shaming and milder UNHRCC sanctions (which do not reach resolution stage) have less strong effects, although the result on NGO shaming is to be seen with caution due to a reduced sample size.

„Kiri ütleb, et peab tuginema vene teadusele…“ ÜK(b)P Keskkomitee 16. juuli 1947. aasta kinnine kiri professorite N. Kljujeva ja G. Roskini süüasjas ja selle ajaloolisest kontekstist / Closed letter of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of July 16, 1947: Its historical context

„Kiri ütleb, et peab tuginema vene teadusele…“ ÜK(b)P Keskkomitee 16. juuli 1947. aasta kinnine kiri professorite N. Kljujeva ja G. Roskini süüasjas ja selle ajaloolisest kontekstist / Closed letter of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of July 16, 1947: Its historical context

ПРОСТИТУЦІЯ В РАДЯНСЬКІЙ УКРАЇНІ ЯК СОЦІАЛЬНЕ ЯВИЩЕ (1921 – 1927 рр.)

The article deals with the development of prostitution as a social phenomenon on the territory of Soviet Ukraine during the years of the New Economic Policy (NEP) from 1921 to 1927. The purpose of the study was to reveal the main causes of the peculiarities of spreading measures of counteraction and consequences of prostitution in the Ukrainian SSR during the years of the NEP. Among them, it is worth highlighting a low standard of living, unemployment, low qualifications of women. Special attention is focused on the spread of prostitution, the explanation of the main causes and characteristics. The key measures of soviet power, aimed at eradicating prostitution and reeducation of prostitutes, are disclosed. The main departments that participated in the fight against prostitution are accentuated. The features of work in this direction are singled out. On the basis of analysis of sources and historiographical base, the consequences of the spread of prostitution and the results of the struggle with it are found.The article discusses the main measures to combat prostitution including: advocacy, show trials, the organization of conferences, meetings, lectures, formation of special committees, the establishment of labor colonies for prostitutes and involvement of law enforcement agencies to raids. The first years of NEP policies were characterized by uncertainty about «flesh trade», resulting in a soft policy towards rehabilitation of prostitutes. The basic directions of propaganda against prostitution are revealed. Identified features of organizational and legislative measures aimed at combating this phenomenon. Detected criminal component prostitution and uncovered the role of police in exposing the «dens of debauchery». The prostitute's position regarding the criminal code of the USSR is determined. The main methods of rehabilitation of prostitutes are revealed: from public condemnation to the formation of labor colonies. The status of the prostitutes in the period of unrolling the NEP and the transition to the administrative-command system is determined.

Public conviction with no scientific evidence: undone popular epidemiology and the denunciation of the health effects of pesticides in a French apple-growing region

ABSTRACTPopular epidemiology refers to processes in which a group of individuals collects, produces, and analyses heterogeneous data, in order to prove the negative effects of specific economic activities or infrastructures on their health and the environment. Despite the attention they receive, social movements that engage in popular epidemiology seldom come into being and, if they do, are often abandoned before they achieve their goal. This article draws on a qualitative sociological investigation carried out in a French region, where for many years, the development of industrial agriculture has led to concerns regarding the impact of pesticides on the population’s health. It describes the emergence of a protest movement and analyses the factors that encouraged this movement to accept a certain level of uncertainty regarding the toxicity of pesticides and to devote few resources to scientific activities. More generally, this article suggests that taking into account the national structuration of environmental movements and their legal contexts is crucial to understanding popular epidemiology processes and the relationship between social movements and science.

Социальный контроль и коррупционные правонарушения юридических лиц

The article is based on the theses of the report at the VI Eurasian Anti-Corruption Forum “Social control as a key factor of anti-corruption” (Moscow, April 26—27, 2017) and is devoted to social control as a regulator of public relations, which consists in the development and implementation of social norms, allowing to maintain compliance with the rules of life, providing socially significant public interests.
 In addition the allocation of anti-corruption social control is justified, based on the relevant social norms, including moral and religious norms, morality and law. In particular, it is noted that the assessment of the activities of a legal entity as immoral and sinful may be one of the components of the justification for the need to criminalize the acts of legal entities or to establish administrative liability for such acts.
 In the opinion of the author, if we consider the immoral and sinful act of a legal entity from the position of the inner world, then the legal entity does not have such a world. However, this should not be an obstacle for assessing the act of a legal entity as immoral or sinful, because such an assessment is given by a society that can condemn a legal entity for actions committed from the moral and religious positions.
 On the basis of the analysis it is concluded that not everything that is applicable to a particular person can be applied to a legal entity, but the law and morality are developing in such a way that, perhaps in the long term, the public condemnation of legal entities for committing corrupt offences, recognized by the population as sinful and immoral, will become no less effective measure of impact than the attraction of a legal entity to administrative or criminal liability.

Emotions, Cognition, and Collective Alignment: A Response to Collins

Emotions, Cognition, and Collective Alignment: A Response to Collins

Labor of Love: Gestational Surrogacy and the Work of Making Babies. By Heather Jacobson. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2016. Pp. x+203. $90.00 (cloth); $28.95 (paper).

<i>Labor of Love: Gestational Surrogacy and the Work of Making Babies</i>. By Heather Jacobson. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2016. Pp. x+203. $90.00 (cloth); $28.95 (paper).

A ‘powerful weapon’? Tax, avoidance, and the politics of celebrity shaming

ABSTRACTIn the years following the global financial crisis, the tax affairs of celebrities began to receive significant critical attention in the UK press. ‘Tax shaming’ has been welcomed as a significant weapon in the fight for tax justice: it is argued that in lieu of the government action needed to close loopholes in tax law, the threat of public condemnation serves to deter would-be tax avoiders. Focusing on news stories about celebrity tax avoiders, this article complicates this prevailing view of tax shaming. Drawing on cultural studies and cultural economy approaches, I argue that commentators have overlooked the forms of identification that tax shaming stories afford. Through a discussion of the discursive figure of the beleaguered ‘taxpayer’ in neoliberal culture, I propose that celebrity tax shaming consolidates identification with this subject position, deepening anti-tax sentiment. Stories that ostensibly ‘shame’ celebrities also support identification with the figure of the tax avoider, perpetuating fantasies of avoidance, evasion and escape. The article concludes that tax shaming contributes to the formation of emergent taxation imaginaries, animating politically salient conceptions of the ‘taxpayer’ and of avoidance that tend to promote logics of tax efficiency and minimization.

Преступления юридических лиц как безнравственные и греховные деяния

The article is dedicated to the issue of moral foundations of criminal liability of legal entities, review of the crimes committed by legal entities as immoral and sinful acts. It is noted that definition of the activity of a legal entity as immoral and sinful may be one of the constituent parts for justification of the necessity of criminalization of the acts of legal entities or establishment of administrative liability for such acts. Based on the carried out analysis the author comes to a conclusion that public condemnation of legal entities for the performance of acts acknowledged by the population as sinful and immoral will become over time no less efficient measure of influence than imposition of administrative or criminal liability on a legal entity.

50 Years of Occupation

50 Years of Occupation

Mummy Blogs and Representations of Motherhood: “Bad Mummies” and Their Readers

Digital technologies have opened up new environments in which the experiences of motherhood and mothering are narrated and negotiated. Studies of “mummy blogs” have explored the ways in which blogs, as social media networks, can provide solace, support, and social capital for mothers. However, research has not addressed how mothers, as readers of blogs, use the mamasphere as a cultural site through which the identities and role of motherhood, and the mother–child relationship, are socially and digitally (re)constructed. This article focuses on confessional blogging of the “bad” or “slummy” mummy: blogs that share stories of boredom, frustration, and maternal deficiency while relishing the subversive status of the “bad” mummy. Drawing on understandings of social media as a space of social surveillance and networked publics, the article argues that in framing narratives of motherhood in terms of parental failure and a desperation for gin, “bad mummy” blogs collapse social contexts in important and interesting ways. Using an example of a conflict between two mummy bloggers, the article will reflect on the ways in which the digital terrain of motherhood can both liberate and constrain: a space for mothers to express and share frustrations and seek solidarity, a space of public condemnation and judgment, and a space that poses ethical issues in the digital curation of family life.

The Polygynous Household in Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives: A Haven in a Heartless World

Despite its author’s public condemnation of the impediments to female autonomy, equality, freedom, dignity and self-realisation inherent in polygamy, the polyvalent nature of the contemporary Nigerian novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, suggests the necessary material and moral complexity of any analysis of plural marriage in postcolonial Africa. Parodic play in this novel highlights the ways in which the apparently monstrous patriarch and daily perversions of traditional marriage and household ideals represent the only security both for relatively advantaged and disadvantaged women in twenty-first century Nigeria. Literary analysis of the novel is embedded within a survey of history and religion which show the ways in which monogamy was a self-reflexive, mirror-image of the colonial and Christian missionary projects. The study of the novel is also contextualised by socio-anthropological literature that underscores the ways in which the global forces which promote romantic love as the sole foundation of monogamous marriage exclusively, ironically, are part of the global flows which create the punitive economic and social conditions to which plural marriage is an entirely rational response shaped by local cultural contexts.

Gays, Cross-Dressers, and Emos

Gays, Cross-Dressers, and Emos

Blunders and Blame: How Armed Non-State Actors React to Their Mistakes

ABSTRACTArmed non-state actors make mistakes. Why this phenomenon occurs, and how organizations respond to their blunders, has remained understudied. This article draws on interdisciplinary research to examine sources of errors, and offers a public sensitivity argument to explain why groups claim and even apologize for their blunders. The quantitative analysis finds that all armed groups, regardless of ideology and organizational structure, are willing to apologize when there are unintended high casualty rates. A detailed analysis of three Provisional Irish Republican Army incidents reveals that public opinion is sensitive to the nature of the victims, and shows how public condemnation can impact organizational behavior.

“The Indians of every denomination were free, and independent of us”: Anglo-Virginian explorations of indigenous slavery, freedom, and society, 1772–1830

ABSTRACTIn arguing against Indian slavery, plaintiff’s attorneys in the 1772 Virginia General Court case Robin v Hardaway faced a dilemma: how could they condemn enslavement while mollifying public conviction that Indigenous “savagery” made them dangerous to community stability? Their solution, rooted in a nearly two-century discourse of slavery and freedom, was to insist that Indians derived from independent polities (unlike other enslaved communities). As such, they were both inherently free and outside the evolving Anglo-American body politic, and whites could legitimately deprive them of property, happiness, and safety. Subsequent Virginia freedom cases contributed to the discourse employed in Robin, as did early-nineteenth-century US Supreme Court decisions. It came to underpin civilization policies as well as removal, once older understandings of Anglo-American “civility” became untenable to Southern whites.

1952–1953 metų antisemitinė kampanija Sovietų Socialistinių Respublikų Sąjungoje

The anti-Semitism of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin became, at the beginning of the Cold War, an anti-Semitic paranoia and took on the most radical form during the campaign against Western influence on Soviet society. Soon after the destruction of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, the Doctors’ Plot campaign was launched at the end of 1952; it soon became a perfect basis for blaming all Jews as disloyal to the Soviet regime. In the republics of the USSR the local Communist leaders supported the anti-Semitic campaign in Moscow with allegations about Jewish medical crimes at the local level. Despite much circumstantial evidence and many testimonies there still is no strong basis for the conclusion that the anti-Semitic campaign of 1952-1953 would soon turn into a large-scale repression campaign or wholesale genocide of the Jewish population in the USSR, but the clear anti-Jewish policy and the Soviet practice of the mass repression of nations leaves little doubt that the Soviet society was mentally prepared for the deportation of Jews to Siberia. The Soviet regime practiced constant archive purge campaigns, and documents about politically sensitive issues or regime crime were destroyed on a regular basis. Despite all regime efforts, some traces of anti-Semitic campaign preparation, control, and coordination may be found not in the central state institutions of the USSR but in the Communist Party archives of the republics. At the republican level Communist party Central Committees some top secret documents of the anti-Semitic campaign of 1953 were preserved in specific archive units, the so-called Osobaja Papka. In the USSR the reports of local party leaders to Moscow always described never-existing enthusiastic popular support for Soviet policies; thus the true scale of anti-Semitism in society can’t be determined on the basis of such sources. But they demonstrate that local Soviet institutions supported the spread of anti-Semitism during the infamous Doctors’ Plot campaign of 1953. They also permit the conclusion that any anti-Semitic campaign would not be limited to negative propaganda and at least part of Soviet society was ready to accept some repression of Jews. Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 put an early end to the anti-Semitic campaign. Soon Stalin’s political heirs quashed charges against the doctors and even punished a few distinguished instigators of the campaign, but there was no official and public condemnation of that anti-Semitic campaign. Thereupon anti-Semitism became less aggressive but still remained very strong in the USSR.

A wild tree toward the north: Jacob Boehme's Theosophical vision of Islam

Jacob Boehme, who was given by his friends the respectful title 'Philosophus Teutonicus', is one of the greatest theosophers and mystics at the beginning of the seventeenth century, whose influence extends to the present day. He was born in 1757 in the village Alt-Seidenberg near Görlitz, in a Protestant family of peasant background. Boehme spent most of his life in Görlitz, as a member of the Cobbler's Guild. His first mystical experience was in 1600, when he contemplated the Byss and the Abyss. Published in 1612, 'Aurora: the Day-Spring (Morgenröte im Aufgang)' was Boehme's first attempt to describe his great theosophical vision. It immediately incurred the public condemnation of Görlitz's Protestant Church. He was forbidden to write further. Boehme kept silent for six years and then published 'A Description of the Three Principles of the Divine Essence (Beschreibung der drei Prinzipien göttlichen Wesens)' in 1619 and many other works. A large commentary of Genesis, 'Mysterium Magnum' came out in 1623, followed by 'The Way to Christ (Der Weg zu Christo)' in 1624. In the same year Jacob Boehme died on November 20th in Görlitz. According to his own self-conception, Boehme's doctrine of divine wisdom (Theo-Sophia) is a divine science which was revealed to him in its entirety (see Pietsch: 1999, 205-228). Boehme's extensive works are characterised by continually new approaches to the task of developing the entirety of this vision. Although his writings deeply influenced some of the most significant thinkers such as Gichtel, the Cambridge Platonists, Newton, Leibniz, Blake, Hegel, Schelling, Novalis, Franz von Baader and Berdyaev, many aspects of Boehme's thought have remained unexamined until today. That Boehme's comprehensive approach also necessitated the incorporation of a world religion such as Islam into his view of salvation history (Heilsgeschichte) is a point that has not received sufficient attention. This article will summarise and consider his views relating to the subject.

(De)Liberalizing Judicial Independence in Post-January 25th Egypt

The January 25th Egyptian revolution was initiated in the public square and defeated in the courts. In the months following the forced resignation of longtime president Hosni Mubarak, a protracted power struggle ensued between a people demanding self-governance and a chronically authoritarian regime. As the various stakeholders within the “deep state” realized their political disadvantage in mass street mobilizations by youth activists and opposition groups, they strategically transferred the conflict to the courts. Cognizant of Mubarak’s success in co-opting significant portions of the judiciary, the military-led interim government trusted the judges to deploy thin notions of rule of law to quash Egyptians’ demands for substantive justice and populist democracy. Thus, an assessment of Egypt’s so-called January 25th Revolution warrants an inquiry into the role that courts played in the retrenchment of a centralized, authoritarian state and what ultimately became a stillborn revolution. In the heady days following Mubarak’s forced resignation, youth activists and the Muslim Brotherhood had few qualms with litigating the revolution. In the 1990s, the judiciary had been the only state institution that dared to check executive powers through rights-protective rulings and public condemnations of fraud in the 2005 parliamentary elections. Indeed, the Egyptian judiciary had a long history of fighting for its independence from executive branch interference such that both secular activists and Muslim Brotherhood supporters viewed it as a liberal institution that would side with their calls for social justice. What transpired since 2011, however, has exposed the fallacy of these assumptions and called into question the liberal underpinnings of Egypt’s judiciary. In the end, the judges’ self-ascribed roles as the guardians of social order and political stability has proven to be more rhetorical than substantive. Accordingly, this article examines how a critical mass of Egyptian judges have strayed from the judiciary’s liberal roots dating back to the 19th century, resulting in the legitimation of the same authoritarian regime but for a new military elite coalition at the helm. Through mass death sentences of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) leaders and alleged supporters, convictions of dissident journalists, and punitive sentences of youth activists for protesting; the judiciary has signaled support for illiberal authoritarian practices that systematically quash personal, political, and legal liberty.

FORMS OF DISPLAY OF MORAL SHAME: SYSTEM ANALYSES

The article investigates the features of shame as polyphonic moral sense. The system analyses of the forms of display of shame are implemented, starting from elementary decency and ending a shame as the highest degree of public condemnation of immoral acts. The measure and the extremes are comprehended in the process of description of value of moral shame for a person and society.

His Voice Must Be Heard: Dennis Brutus, the Anti‐Apartheid Movement, and the Struggle for Political Asylum in the United States

After receiving a surprise deportation order in 1981, exiled South African poet and activist Dennis Brutus embarked on a 2‐year struggle with the Reagan administration and its constructive engagement policies, underscoring the growing rift between public condemnation of apartheid and the U.S. government's continued support of the South African government. In the twenty years since the Sharpeville Massacre vaulted apartheid into America's collective public consciousness, the anti‐apartheid forces in the United States had won few victories against the U.S. government. Brutus's ensuing deportation offered a unique opportunity to directly challenge the U.S. government and its support of South Africa. This article explores Brutus's struggle, which offers insight into not only the complicated experience of exile, but also the complex interplay between activism and foreign policy that manifested itself through the burgeoning anti‐apartheid movement and the recalcitrant U.S. government at the beginning of the 1980s.