Accusation

George Pavlich holds a Canada Research Chair in Social Theory, Culture, and Law and is a professor of law and sociology at the University of Alberta. His books include Justice Fragmented: Mediating Community Disputes under Postmodern Conditions; Critique and Radical Discourses on Crime; Governing Paradoxes of Restorative Justice; and Law and Society Redefined. He is a co-editor of Sociology for the Asking; Questioning Sociology; After Sovereignty; Governance and Regulation in Social Life; and Rethinking Law, Society, and Governance: Foucault’s Bequest.

Matthew P. Unger is an assistant professor in sociology and anthropology at Concordia University. His forthcoming monograph, Sound, Symbol, Sociality, uses the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur to understand the intersection of the social, juridical, and political implications within aesthetic judgment.

Contributors: Mark Antaki, Jennifer L. Culbert, James Martel, Renisa Mawani, Keally McBride

This essay collection from UBC Press, with its clever, simple cover of a large red A, asks us to consider what accusation really means, and how it can be used as a weapon.

Meagan Ward:

With numerous challenges plaguing the modern criminal justice system, it is important to understand where these challenges originate. Accusation provides a philosophical and ideological understanding of the role of accusation in the origin and structuring of modern systems that would be of interest to a variety of criminal justice scholars. Through this deeper understanding, Accusation invites the development of a new approach to criminal justice and the reframing of accusation to address the way subjects enter and interact with these modern systems.

Karin van Marle, department head and professor of jurisprudence, University of Pretoria:
Accusation responds to a gap in scholarship – namely the neglect of a thorough exploration of accusation from a theoretical, philosophical, and critical angle. By unearthing the narrative, symbolic, ideological, aesthetic, and cultural dimensions of the ideas and practices through which people are accused of crime, it asks important questions about accusation and lights the way for future work, discussion, and debate.

Linda Meyer, professor of law, Quinnipiac University, and author of The Justice of Mercy:
Moving far beyond the usual laments about over-criminalization and excessive sentences, this fine collection of thought-provoking essays deeply challenges our usual ways of understanding what it is to accuse, and pushes us toward alternative understandings of responsibility, judgment, and crime.