Book Reviews : CAROL SMART, Law, Crime and Sexuality: Essays in Feminism. London: Sage, 1995, 256 pp., £35.00 clothbound/£12.95 paperback
| Author | Dany Lacombe |
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/096466399700600107 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
145-
BOOK
REVIEWS
CAROL
SMART,
Law,
Crime
and
Sexuality:
Essays
in
Feminism.
London:
Sage,
1995,
256
pp.,
£35.00
clothbound/£12.95
paperback.
Carol
Smart’s
importance
in
the
recent
history
of
criminology
and
the
sociology
of
law
is
undeniable.
A
pioneer
feminist
in
criminology,
she
has
encouraged
many
to
struggle
against
the
sexism
of
this
tradition-bound
discipline
and
to
do
criminology
about
and
for
women.
Smart
has
inspired
us
to
’drop’
conventional
criminology
and,
instead,
to
examine
the
way
law
constructs
women
as
body
and
sex -
as
what
she
refers
to
as
the
’Woman
of
Legal
Discourse’.
And,
more
recently,
taking
the
postmodern
turn,
Smart
has
challenged
feminist
foundationalism,
generating
quite
a
stir
among
those
fond
of
making
prescriptions
on
how
best
to
achieve
the
good
life.
Law,
Crime
and
Sexuality
provides
an
excellent
forum
to
evaluate
and
debate
those
aspects
of
Carol
Smart’s
work
in
criminology,
the
sociology
of
law
and
sexuality,
and
feminism,
which
still
continue
to
influence
a
large
generation
of
students
and
scholars.
The
essays
in
Law,
Crime
and
Sexuality
will
present
those
unfamiliar
with
Smart’s
work
with
an
intellectual
history
of
her
development
as
a
feminist
sociolegal
scholar;
a
theoretical
understanding
of
how
law
produces
a
knowledge
of
woman
that
lends
itself
to
the
discipline,
regulation
and
control
of
women;
and
a
dynamic
rebuttal
of
the
feminist
claim
that
postmodernism,
with
its
abandonment
of
the
subject,
inevitably
leads
to
the
loss
of
an
emancipatory
politics.
For
those
familiar
with
Smart’s
work,
however,
the
essays
in
Law,
Crime
and
Sexuality
will
not
trigger
too
strong
a
reaction,
for
they
have
all
been
published
before -
except
for
the
Introduction
and
the
Postscript.
Hence
the
book
is
not
really
’new’
and
makes
my
task
as
a
reviewer
some-
what
awkward.
Shall
I
risk
losing
you
at
this
point
by
summarizing
the
13
chapters
you
might
already
be
familiar
with?
Or
shall
I
take
a
greater
peril
and
engage
with
Smart
by
debating
some
of
her
claims
about
her
approach
on
feminism
and
law?
I’ll
risk
the
latter.
In
Law,
Crime
and
Sexuality,
Smart
asserts
that
her
intellectual
history
is
charac-
terized
by
discontinuities:
she
has
moved
from
being
a
criminologist
to
a
sociologist
of
law;
from
a
critic
of
law
as
’male’
and
’sexist’
to
an
analyst
of
law
as
a
’gendering’
practice;
and
from
an
empiricist
feminist
to
a
postmodern
feminist.
Yet,
one
can
detect
a
certain
conceptual
continuity
lurking
behind
the
apparent
ruptures
in
this
history.
Indeed,
I
would
go
as
far
as
to
argue
that
the
persistence
of
certain
central
concepts
within
her
theoretical
battery
undermines
any
claims
she
makes
to
being
postmodern.
The
most
important
of
these
concepts
is
’The
Power
of
Law’.
In
the
remaining
parts
SOCIAL
&
LEGAL
STUDIES
ISSN
0964
6639
Copyright
©
1997
SAGE
Publications,
London,
Thousand
Oaks,
CA
and
New
Delhi,
Vol.
6
(1), 145-157
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