University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences. / Department of Sociology

During the period between 1870 and 1910, the category of adolescence, increasingly defined the transitional stage between childhood and adulthood in the press, law, and in everyday practice. This emerging category included youths between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one as civil and penal codes recognized it as the transition from childhood to adulthood, a label that was picked up in the press, in scientific discourses, and in the courtrooms. Thus, this study addresses the following questions: What were the changes in the notion of childhood from the 1870s to the 1890s, and what did they signify to this period of economic, technological, social, and legal transformations? What were the ramifications of these cultural assumptions of childhood in civil and criminal law? What larger social forces did the rise of adolescence reflect? To what extent did the analysis of emotions in childhood and adolescence play a role in the cultural framework of positivism? This project chronicles the ascendance of the categories regarded culturally and legally as childhood and adolescence. It covers the period during the advent of the anti-colonial insurgency against Spain in Cuba and during the thirty-four–year period (1876-1910) when educators, criminologists, reporters, and parents took on these questions as age-based categories in civil and criminal law; and institutions organized around age became the norm in law and in everyday practice in Mexico. While scholarship has approached the history of childhood and youth from the prism of Mexico City, this project contends that the first war for Cuban independence (1868-1878) had cultural reverberations on the Yucatán peninsula as well as on mainland Mexico. Yucatán witnessed the arrival of educators whose experiences of war in Cuba and exile to Mexico inspired them to turn their attention to the cultivation of honor and trust in children because these emotions were considered fundamental to the proper training of young Mexican citizens. The emotional training of children viewed anger as a negative emotion while the pleasant and desirable emotions of trust and honor were particularly significant in the articulation of a uniquely Mexican emotional standard of child rearing. These ideas, which emerged in the context of Cuba’s anti-colonial insurgency in 1868 against Spain served in the Yucatán peninsula as the intellectual basis for the program of emotional education, which was central to the ideology of positivism. In the disciplines of criminology and pedagogy, the attitude toward children’s emotions degenerated to the generally negative, and the hereditary factors of working-class children informed perceptions of juvenile delinquency in the Mexican press. The press during the 1880s and 1890s generated fears about child criminality, emphasizing the emotions of envy and distrust attributed to working-class children. In the 1890s and the 1900s, newspaper chronicles of youth suicide in the press produced a cultural shift from a notion of suicide based on monomania, which affected middle-class and professional adolescents, to the concept of suicide as an expression of hereditary pathologies and moral weakness attributed to working-class youths. Violent Passions argues that the invention of adolescence as a dangerous stage of development was forged both by fear of juvenile crime and stereotypes in the press as well as by new courtship practices among adolescents. Although parents in Yucatán asserted a strong influence over their daughters’ prolonged courting phases or plazos, increasingly minors challenged parental authority by drawing on notions of autonomy, romantic love, and their own concept of innocent girlhood as well as by making accusations against fathers. The shift from supervised and prolonged courting phases to young couples’ demands for the recognition of emotional concerns in their relationships generated perceptions of juvenile delinquency in Porfirian Yucatán. Violent Passions contends that scholars should regard the emergence of the category of the adolescent as an ongoing cultural conversation concerning the role of emotions in the shaping of childhood and in the life stage of adolescence, which took hold in the early years of the Porfiriato. Although scholarship on youth in modern Mexico has focused on the formative identification of youth within the framework of institutions, namely, juvenile tribunals and universities, this project draws on the analytic construct of the life stage to trace the role of emotions from childhood to adolescence in Mexico. This dissertation considers the contingent demarcations in this period as well as the role of emotions in the meaning and process of attaining adolescence in modern Mexico.

Asylum seekers have become the primary symbols of - as well as participants in - contemporary struggles over geo-political, intellectual and moral terrain. By moving place, by their mere presence in western industrial states, by demanding their refugee status claims be examined, by exposing themselves to all the techniques of scrutiny and evaluation in the presentation of their claims, asylum seekers displace traditional western ways of feeling at 'home,' and of knowing about and acting in the world. In doing so, they reveal the extent to which the legal system of rights upon which the international refugee regime is based is a messy zone of contested demands, refracted by the varying material circumstances and political power of participants. This thesis looks at asylum in Aotearoa New Zealand from the perspective of those most involved; asylum seekers, lawyers, adjudicators, members of non-government organisations and medical professionals. Situated mid-way between abstract human rights talk and the details of individual claims, it presents refugee status determination as a complex negotiation through culturally-laden frameworks of understanding and operation that are as prevalent as they are often camouflaged. In doing so, it explores how we are to evaluate the credibility and legitimacy of representations of the cultural 'other.'

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In this thesis, we present the outcomes of a research conducted on children's domestic labor in Haiti. In addition to being engaged in housekeeping work -- which has a negative impact on access to basic education -- children in domesticity are generally victims of harmful disciplinary measures as well. Consequently, our main objective is to expose the actual norms and practices regarding the education and the physical treatment of young domestic workers. / Based on legal pluralism, the approach undertaken during this research combines both theoretical and empirical research, and focuses on law and norms existing at multiple levels. / First, we present the information gathered from our theoretical approach. After exploring the notion of "Haitian child domestic servant", sketching social profiles of actors engaged in the practice of domesticity, and identifying the most significant contingent factors, we underline the principal national and international norms guaranteeing children the right to education as well as to physical integrity. / Second, we explore the local norms related to the education and to physical treatment of young domestic servants through the results of empirical research carried out in Haiti in the form of observation and interviews with relevant actors. / We conclude by identifying the framework of norms that govern the behaviour of families that host domestic children. Understanding that framework allows jurists and other actors to identify and implement the actions more likely to improve the quality of life of child domestic workers.

Indian water rights regarding irrigation agriculture and the construction o f storage and hydroelectric dams took shape from the 1870s to the 1930s and largely determined economic activities on and near reserves and reservations in Western Canada and the American West respectively. Although historians recently have provided extensive studies of American cases, Indian water rights issues in Western Canada have gained scant attention. The present study focuses on this neglected part of the history placing particular emphasis on the interactive roles Native peoples, government officials, agricultural businesses, hydroelectric developers and homesteaders played in "reclaiming" aboriginal landscapes for irrigation and water storage or hydroelectric dam projects. I explore the jurisdictional debates over water rights that these projects generated. Recognizing the importance of inter-provincial and international contexts, the thesis examines the extent to which American reclamation laws and practices influenced Canadian policymakers, bureaucrats, and technocrats. It also focuses particular attention on the development of water laws and policies in British Columbia and Alberta to identify similarities and differences that subsequently affected Native peoples. I accomplish this by providing four case studies. I note that the differences between these two provinces with respect to the development of Indian water rights were particularly significant before 1930. A key reason was that the federal government held title to Crown lands in Alberta until the latter date, whereas British Columbia entered confederation holding that title. My dissertation demonstrates that the idea of Indian water rights emerged in the late-nineteenth-century from political and legal philosophies and practices of colonialism that attempted to transform the "primitive" Native populations into the mold of yeoman farmers. It was also shaped by modifications of the common law that sought to address the needs of industrialists, miners, and settlers who developed the semi-arid and arid North American west. The water rights regime that emerged was based on a perception o f this resource that was very different from the holistic one held by indigenous populations. I note that as the Native peoples increasingly relied on the agricultural economy in the early twentieth century, and as the competition with neighboring settlers for water intensified, the question o f the extent to which the Native peoples were entitled to water became the subject of serious political and legal wrangling. Native peoples demonstrated that they had a strong desire to maintain control over water at a local level by actively carrying out irrigation projects, protecting their own reclamation works from the obstruction of settlers, fighting against the construction of storage dams by neighboring ranchers, and by successfully negotiating the terms of agreements for surrendering reserve lands to facilitate on-reserve hydro-electric projects. My thesis closes with a reflection about how these historical events help us understand contemporary Indian water claims.

Around the world, scholars and politicians are engaged in a passionate debate concerning the universality of Human Rights. The problem of inequality between men and women concerning property rights is also part of this dispute. The transposition of human rights in another cultural context may create conflicts with new fundamental values. In a cultural context that differs from the western one, those rights don't always have their place or they may be reinterpreted accordingly with different cultural visions of what is a just society. / In order to get a better understanding of this problem, this research is proposing an analysis of the relation of Indian women with the courts regarding dowry death cases, especially in Maharashtra. The increasing number of those death cases are a contemporary manifestation of inequality. The apparition of this very Indian crime is linked with the augmentation of the frequency of the dowry practice despite the Dowry Prohibition Act (1961). Through the study of jurisprudence, ethnographies and some interviews conducted with Indian women living in Montreal, it is possible to identify factors influencing the relationship of women with respect to their rights and the Indian legal system. / The proposed study shows that case analysis, combined with other research techniques, is an essential tool for understanding the dynamics between laws and practices. All findings lead to the following conclusion: legal anthropology can bring light into the debate concerning the universality of Human rights.

Prisoners' rights are human rights first. Any investigation of such rights has to have regard to that fact. In order to clearly understand the context within which prisoners' rights are provided for and protected or abused, a holistic approach is necessary. Accordingly, chapter one deals with introductory and histor ical perspectives. The magnitude of the problem under investigation is highlighted, the objectives of the study are outlined and the hypothesis is stated in these terms: The rights of prisoners under the South African Constitution are protected, observed and compare well with international norms and standards. A brief indication of the methodology of research is given and a literature survey undertaken. The chapter also deals with definitions and classifications wherein prisons and prisoners are defined and classified. An overview of the various justifications (purposes) of imprisonment is given and the chapter concludes with a survey of the origins and history of prisons and prisoners ' rights. As with all other human rights, the protection of prisoners' rights takes place at two levels: the domestic and the international level. A study of prisoners' constitutional rights necessitates a basic understanding of certain aspects of international human rights law. Chapter two begins with an overview of international protection of human rights and proceeds to explain how international human rights norms can be enforced in domestic law. The larger part of the chapter is dedicated to the law governing international human rights protection for prisoners . The instruments providing for such protection are outlined and discussed. The application and interpretation of such instruments are also examined. It is then concluded that, in spite of the problems inherent in the enforcement of human rights standards through international mechanisms, international law plays an important role in the protection of prisoners' rights. Chapter three provides a detailed discussion of the rights of prisoners as provided for under section 35 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act 108 of 1996). The discussion is enhanced and reinforced with case law illustrating the approach taken by the courts in interpreting and applying the said rights. Other constitutional rights relevant to prisoners are also discussed together with the pertinent case law. It is then concluded that the introduction of a Bill of Rights in the Constitution has brought a new dimension and challenge to the protection and realisation of prisoners' rights in South Africa. It is also concluded that the courts, especially the Constitutional Court, have risen to the challenge in attempting to give some effect and meaning to the rights of prisoners brought about by the new constitutional order. In an effort to place South Africa in a regional context, chapter four adopts a comparative approach. The rights of prisoners in various African countries are discussed. The countries include Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia and Uganda. Prisoners' rights under the constitutions of each country are first outlined. This is followed by a discussion of the approaches taken by the courts in interpreting those rights and then the views of observers regarding the protection of prisoners' rights in those countries are outlined. The conclusion is that at least on paper and in terms of judicial practice, the rights of prisoners in South Africa enjoy more constitutional protection than in other African countries. The focus of chapter five is on the investigation regarding the extent to which prisoners' rights in South Africa are implemented and protected in actual practice. The chapter contains an analysis of the statistical data obtained through field study based on prisoners' perceptions of the realization of their constitutional rights. In analysing the data, statistical illustrations are used. Statistical methods are also used in testing the hypothesis. The main conclusion of the study is that the constitutional rights of prisoners in South Africa are not sufficiently protected and implemented. This and other conclusions and recommendations are set out in chapter six. The thrust of the conclusions and recommendations is that something has to be done regarding police brutality, prison conditions and overcrowding, juvenile offenders, mentally ill prisoners , ratification and incorporation of relevant international human rights instruments and access to courts. Suggestions on how to address these issues are made. Other recommendations include abolishing the privilege system in prisons, increasing the role of NGO's, provision of education and public awareness, privatization of prisons and legislative intervention . / Thesis (LL.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2001.