Gray Cavender

Nancy C. Jurik

Justice Provocateur focuses on Prime Suspect, a popular British television film series starring Oscar and Emmy award-winning actress Helen Mirren as fictional London policewoman Jane Tennison. Gray Cavender and Nancy C. Jurik examine the media constructions of justice, gender, and police work in the show, exploring its progressive treatment of contemporary social problems in which women are central protagonists. They argue that the show acts as a vehicle for progressive moral fiction--fiction that gives voice to victim experiences, locates those experiences within a larger social context, transcends traditional legal definitions of justice for victims, and offers insights into ways that individuals might challenge oppressive social and organizational arrangements. Although Prime Suspect is often seen as a uniquely progressive, feminist-inspired example within the typically more conservative, male-dominated crime genre, Cavender and Jurik also address the complexity of the films' gender politics. Consistent with some significant criticisms of the films, they identify key moments in the series when Tennison's character appears to move from a successful woman who has it all to a post-feminist stereotype of a lonely, aging career woman with no strong family or friendship ties. Shrewdly interpreting the show as an illustration of the tensions and contradictions of women's experiences and their various relations to power, Justice Provocateur provides a framework for interrogating the meanings and implications of justice, gender, and social transformation both on and off the screen.

Jane Tennison and Policing in Prime Suspect

Justice Provocateur

Susan Ehrlich Martin

Doing Justice, Doing Gender: Women in Legal and Criminal Justice Occupations is a highly readable, sociologically grounded analysis of women working in traditionally male dominant justice occupations of law, policing, and corrections. This Second Edition represents not only a thorough update of research on women in these fields, but a careful reconsideration of changes in justice organizations and occupations and their impact on women's justice work roles over the past 40 years.

Women in Legal and Criminal Justice Occupations

Doing Justice, Doing Gender

Declines in real wages, increases in the number of poor families, and cutbacks to welfare and other safety-net programs have stimulated the popularity of microenterprise development programs (MDPs). These programs typically offer training and loans to individuals seeking to operate very small businesses. MDPs are often presented as a path to the self-sufficiency that comes with entrepreneurship and as an example of the success of market-based alternatives to government programs. In Bootstrap Dreams, Nancy C. Jurik analyzes the origins and maturation of these programs in the United States. Based on a national sample of fifty programs and an eight-year case study of one in particular, this is a rare book about microenterprise development. Jurik understands the positive social mission of MDPs, but she is not blind to the problems that they encounter. Jurik's clear perception of potential difficulties and her keen ability to place the microenterprise movement in the larger context of welfare reform and globalization make Bootstrap Dreams a valuable book.

Nancy C. Jurik

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