Fictions of Intention in the “Cultural Defense”

Demian, Melissa

doi:10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00076.x

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Indeed, it appears that the legal sphere gives support to particularly essentialist presentations of cultural minority identities (Coffman 2007, Demian 2008, Good 2008, McKinley 2009. This was demonstrated also in my data when, for example, the District Court suggested in their verdict concerning Mr Amin's case that the defendant and plaintiff are both Kurds who share the same cultural background (quote on p. 8).…”

Section: Trained Experts and The Potential Of Cultural Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

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From Invisible to Visible: Locating “Cultural Expertise” in the Law Courts of Two Finnish Cities

Cooke¹

2019

Studies in Law, Politics and Society

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In this chapter, I examine the informal cultural expertise utilised in the District Courts and Courts of Appeal of two Finnish cities. I argue that the parties that serve as providers of 'cultural expertise' are manifold, and include eyewitnesses, interpreters and even the courts themselves. I examine the challenges regarding the informal use of cultural expertise, drawing from debates that consider the relationship between an 'insider expert' and a 'trained expert' in acting as a cultural mediator.

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Section: Trained Experts and The Potential Of Cultural Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Good 2008: 56-57). The two options then, to either reify or nullify culture, must seem equally unattractive to most potential experts giving rise to conflicting views with regard to the possibility of cultural expertise overall (Demian 2008, Renteln 2004, Van Broeck 2011, Wikan 1999.…”

Section: Trained Experts and The Potential Of Cultural Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

From Invisible to Visible: Locating “Cultural Expertise” in the Law Courts of Two Finnish Cities

Cooke¹

2019

Studies in Law, Politics and Society

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“…Miele emphasized Brian's Iranian Muslim roots every bit as much as District Attorney Dinges, but to a different end: portraying Brian as the victim of a pathological culture. For the most part though, academic studies of "cultural defense" rest on close readings of legal opinions and related academic and journalistic commentary (For examples, see (Levine 2003;Demian 2008;Sharafi 2008)). The researchers in this field do not often engage with the participants in trials.…”

Section: Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender, Madness, Religion, and Iranian-American Identity: Observations on a 2006 Murder Trial in Williamsport, Pennsylvania

Amin

2017

Social Sciences

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Using participant observation, oral history interviews, and a study of court transcripts, Internet chats, and press coverage of a 2006 murder trial of an Iranian-American man in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, we can better appreciate the dynamic intersection of ethnicity, religion, and gender in constructing the social identity of Iranian-Americans. Brian Hosayn Yasipour, who immigrated to the United States in 1969, was convicted of murder in the third degree for killing his four-year-old daughter in 2001 during a custody dispute with his estranged, Iranian-born wife. He managed to avoid the death penalty. Debates about his guilt in America hinged on assessments of his mental state at the time of the crime and this, in turn, hinged on debates about how normative his actions would have been in Iran. Until his arrest, Brian had led a highly mobile life-moving back and forth between America, where he lived as a Christian, and Iran, where he visited as a Muslim. Was he a calculating Iranian-Islamic patriarch, outraged at the defiance of his wife and the attitudes of American courts toward his paternal rights? Or was he, per the court transcripts, a "white Christian" and survivor of childhood rape back in Iran, who lapsed into madness under the strain of his second divorce? Brian actively blurred these issues in court appearances before and after the murder-often expressing his agency in terms of preserving his imaginary and physical mobility.Keywords: Iran; America; immigration; Muslim; filicide; gender; identity; mobility; Islamophobia; homophobia 1. Introduction OverviewIn this study I make use of a "regimes of im/mobility" approach (Schiller and Salazar 2013;Hackl et al. 2016) to analyze how ethnic identity, religious identity and gender ideology influenced the trial of an Iranian-American man in Williamsport, Pennsylvania for murder. Trial transcripts clearly illustrate how both the defense and prosecution exploited the ambiguity of Brian Yasipour's identity to bolster arguments for and against the proposition that Brian was legally insane at the time of the crime. But they also illustrate that Brian himself did not simply exist in a liminal state-not quite American, not quite Iranian-but deliberately moved between Iranian and American contexts both physically and conceptually from the time he arrived in the United States in 1969 until his arrest. He continued to assert his mobility conceptually while incarcerated, both before and after his conviction.This study is also based on my observations as a pro bono consultant to pre-trial preparations of Brian's attorneys from [2004][2005][2006], interviews with a number of participants conducted between 2010 and 2014, local media coverage, and the Internet postings of individuals who monitored the trial. These sources clearly illustrate the instability of the social categories applied to Brian Yasipour and his family by the Court and local community. The trial accomplished a sort of judicial assimilation 2008, para. 7-8). The words "Iran," "Iranian" or "immigr...

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“…These investigate how diverging norms are negotiated and accommodated not only in state courts, but across a variety of state and non-state fora for dispute resolution. Authors such as Melissa Demian have begun to think about ‘how one might use the anthropology of legally pluralistic societies to reflect on the law of societies that see themselves as multicultural but monolegal’ (Demian, 2008, p. 434). In this endeavour, participant observation is complemented by comparison as a central technique.…”

Section: From ‘Culture’ To ‘Collaboration’?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Culture all around? Contextualising anthropological expertise in European courtroom settings

Vetters

Foblets

2016

International Journal of Law in Context

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This paper contributes to the debate on the role of anthropological expertise in the legal sphere by broadening the analytical field of vision. Rather than focusing on the anthropologist, his or her positionality, the epistemic status of anthropological knowledge or the ensuing ethical questions – as the other contributions to this themed section do – we turn the question around. Based on empirical data from a survey conducted among European judges on judiciary practice and sociocultural diversity, our focus here is on the question of how judges perceive, assess and accommodate sociocultural diversity in their daily decision-making. We furthermore investigate the conditions under which external expertise is called upon in specific legal settings and situations. We develop a conceptual argument for rethinking the role of anthropological knowledge and research in legal practice and argue for the need to pursue new forms of collaborative ethnography with judges that go beyond participant observation of their courtroom interactions. Working together with the judges who give decisions on cases, we claim, can provide scope for both critical reflection and applied problem-solving.

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Fictions of Intention in the “Cultural Defense”

Cited by 12 publications

References 41 publications

From Invisible to Visible: Locating “Cultural Expertise” in the Law Courts of Two Finnish Cities

From Invisible to Visible: Locating “Cultural Expertise” in the Law Courts of Two Finnish Cities

Gender, Madness, Religion, and Iranian-American Identity: Observations on a 2006 Murder Trial in Williamsport, Pennsylvania

Culture all around? Contextualising anthropological expertise in European courtroom settings

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