Description
Book SynopsisMartha Minow takes a hard look at the way our legal system functions in dealing with people on the basis of race, gender, age, ethnicity, religion, and disability.
Trade ReviewIn a work that evidences both powerful analytic skills and a compassionate regard for the problems devalued persons confront in their daily lives, Minow makes it incontrovertibly clear that the legal issues she explores are social and moral issues as well. Her book is a masterful example of the demythologizing of law; it should be of great interest not only to sociologists who study the legal system, but also to all those whose work focuses on stigmatizing processes and stigmatized populations.
-- Edwin M. Schur * Contemporary Sociology *
Minow wants to change our understanding of difference, to dislodge the oppressive meaning of difference as deviance from the norm and challenge the unstated reference point by which difference is defined. Much of Minow's book is devoted to tracing the intellectual origins of the social relations approach. Her wide-ranging summary of intellectual trends, from deconstruction to interpretative anthropology to pragmatism in philosophy, invest the social relations approach with a rich history.
-- Martha Chamallas * Signs *
Minow's thesis challenges the very basis of legal reasoning. Categorical thinking, she admits, may even be a psychological imperative to simplify a complex world. But she argues persuasively the a society that takes the problem of inequality seriously must abandon trying to fit people into categories and instead make decisions based on the complexity of our social problems.
-- Debbie Ratterman * Off Our Backs *
