The Search for Justice in a Media Age: Reading Stephen Lawrence and Louise WoodwardWhat can we learn from the legal cases of Stephen Lawrence and Louise Woodward? How do the legal system and the media contribute to a collective understanding of class, nation, race and gender? In this book, Siobhan Holohan explores media representations of law and order in the context of notions of multi-culturalism and victim-centred politics. Two high profile cases - the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the US trial of the British au-pair, Louise Woodward - are examined. Holohan argues that the stories built up around Woodward and Lawrence - the organization of public discourse around a sacrificial figure - have contributed to exclusionary patterns of social order. The book offers a perceptive account of what makes some criminal legal cases prone to scrutiny and spectacle and provides a vivid illustration of the presence of power relations in legal decisions. In conclusion, the author draws on the model of the Macpherson report to propose a more inclusive form of social and legal judgement that takes into account social inequalities. |
Contents
The Family as Moral Centre of Social | |
Symbolic Transformations | |
The Scapegoat Mechanism | |
Ethnic Subjectivity and Identity Reformation | |
The Violence of Discourse | |
Other editions - View all
The Search for Justice in a Media Age: Reading Stephen Lawrence and Louise ... Siobhan Holohan No preview available - 2017 |
The Search for Justice in a Media Age: Reading Stephen Lawrence and Louise ... Siobhan Holohan No preview available - 2022 |
Common terms and phrases
accused allowed argues argument attempt au pair authority Basuta Britain capitalism child colonized construction contemporary crime criminal critical critique culture Daily Mail death debased debate Deborah Eappen Derrida deviance difference discourse domestic domestic workers dominant ideology dominant social order double jeopardy double jeopardy rule economic ethnic example family values Fanon father Foucault Freud gender Girard guilty idea identity individual innocence institutions justice labour legal system liberal London Louise Woodward Macpherson report mass media Matthew Eappen McVeigh media representations mimetic mimetic desire moral moral panic mother multiculturalism nanny Nation of Islam Neville Lawrence O.J. Simpson objective patriarchal perspective police political position postmodern public sphere race racial racism re-ordered relations relationship representative role Routledge scapegoat mechanism seen shows Simpson social system Stephen Lawrence story structural suggest symbolic theory thugs transgressive trial understand victim violence wider women Zobel's