Gillian Balfour
Gillian Balfour is Associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Trent University.
Gillian recently completed a PhD in sociology at the University of Manitoba where she examined the role of lawyers in the criminalization of men and women accused of violent crimes. Her PhD research examined the practice of law as a social act that is constrained and enabled by socio-political interests of “law and order,” professional codes of conduct, and the identities of victims and offenders and the meaning of violence that are encoded with stereotypes of whiteness, Indianness, dangerousness, poverty, heterosexuality, femininity and masculinity.
Her research interests include law reforms in the areas of domestic and sexual violence, women, crime and social justice, feminist criminology and Aboriginal peoples in the criminal justice system. Gillian teaches Sociology of Law, Feminist Criminology and Introductory Sociology.
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Criminalizing Women
Gender and (In)Justice in Neoliberal Times, 2nd Edition
Criminalizing Women introduces readers to the key issues addressed by feminists engaged in criminology research over the past four decades. Chapters explore how narratives that construct women as errant females, prostitutes, street gang associates and symbols of moral corruption mask the connections between women’s restricted choices and the conditions of their lives.
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Understanding Societies
Readings for Introductory Sociology
This book is a collection of critical readings that animate contemporary sociological theory and research. Students will learn how sociology can be relevant in their everyday lives as they are introduced to scholars who challenge conventional thinking about how the world works. Designed as a companion reader for introductory sociology students, each reading is set in context with clear linkages to Joanne Naiman’s How Societies Work. Students will read about racial profiling, wrongful convictions, homophobia, human trafficking, professional sports, sweatshop labour, and residential schools. Each chapter illustrates how sociologists think about social inequality, power, and social transformation.
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Criminalizing Women
Gender and (In)justice in Neoliberal Times
This book introduces readers to the key issues addressed by feminists in their engagement with criminology over the past four decades. It explores the narratives of women’s lives as “errant females,” sex trade workers, “gang” members and drug traffickers to map out the connections between the choices women make and the conditions of their lives. It shows how criminalized women and girls have been disciplined, managed, corrected and punished as prisoners, patients, mothers and victims through imprisonment, medicalization and secure care. And it considers the feminist strategies that have been used to address the conditions inside women’s prisons, to defend criminalized women’s human rights and to draw attention to the systemic abuses against poor and racialized women.
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The Power to Criminalize
Violence, Inequality and Law
Law’s power to criminalize–to turn a person into a criminal–is formidable. Traditional legal doctrine argues that law dispenses justice in an impartial and unbiased fashion. Critical legal theorists claim that law reproduces gender, race and class inequalities. The Power to Criminalize offers an analysis that acknowledges the tensions between these two views of law. Drawing from crown attorneys’ files on violent crime cases and interviews with defence lawyers, the authors reveal the complex ways in which discourses of masculinity, femininity, race, class and social space inform the strategies used to litigate these cases. This analysis raises questions about the prospects of challenging law to realize a more just society.