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Interpretive Communities

Ian Johnstone

in The Power of Deliberation: International Law, Politics and Organizations

This chapter develops the concept of an interpretive community to explain how and why argumentation structures international order and affects state behavior. First, it discusses the nature of ... More

This chapter develops the concept of an interpretive community to explain how and why argumentation structures international order and affects state behavior. First, it discusses the nature of interpretation and interpretive communities. It then considers the composition of interpretive communities and how they relate to formal international organizations. It explains two principal functions that interpretive communities serve: they set the parameters of legal discourse and, in effect, pass judgment on legal claims (thereby impacting compliance with law); and they define/interpret/extend the rules of international life (thereby impacting evolution of the law). The chapter concludes with a discussion of the legitimacy of interpretive communities, parallel to the argument at the end of Chapter 2 on the legitimacy of international organizations.Less

Interpretive Communities in International Law

Michael Waibel

in Interpretation in International Law

This chapter explores how the wide range of interpreters in international law affects interpretation. Understanding the role of interpretive communities in the interpretive process—an influence that ... More

This chapter explores how the wide range of interpreters in international law affects interpretation. Understanding the role of interpretive communities in the interpretive process—an influence that is routinely underappreciated—is crucial. To look only at interpretive directions, such as the provisions on interpretation found in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, is insufficient. Any account of interpretation is incomplete without the sociological dimension of interpretive communities. The meaning of international law norms hinges on background principles shared by interpreters who form part of one or several interpretive communities. The chapter begins by discussing the character of interpretive communities. It then goes on to show how practices and shared understandings within those interpretive communities shape interpretation. It suggests that interpretive debates in international law are part of a contest between various actors over diverse normative visions of international law.Less

Responsibility to Protect

Ian Johnstone

in The Power of Deliberation: International Law, Politics and Organizations

This chapter begins by describing the United Nations Security Council (SC) as a four-tier deliberative setting, where at least minimal preconditions for reasoned argumentation exist. It then examines ... More

This chapter begins by describing the United Nations Security Council (SC) as a four-tier deliberative setting, where at least minimal preconditions for reasoned argumentation exist. It then examines the debates over the Kosovo intervention, arguing that the positions taken in those debates can only be explained by the notion of discourse within an interpretive community, and that ultimately the discourse affected how the Kosovo episode played out. The chapter considers the broader normative impact of that episode, focusing on the “responsibility to protect” (R2P). It gives special attention to the role of the UN Secretary-General as norm entrepreneur—an influential voice who not only participated in the debates over the legality of intervention but mobilized international support for the emerging norm. While that story is far from over, it illustrates how legal argumentation within an interpretive community can generate soft law that may someday crystallize as hard law.Less

Introduction

Ian Johnstone

in The Power of Deliberation: International Law, Politics and Organizations

This book focuses on deliberation in and around international organizations (IOs). It draws on various strands of legal, political, and international relations theory to identify common features of ... More

This book focuses on deliberation in and around international organizations (IOs). It draws on various strands of legal, political, and international relations theory to identify common features of legal argumentation and deliberative politics. The central claim is that IOs are places where “interpretive communities” coalesce, and the quality of the deliberations that these communities provoke is a measure of the legitimacy of the organization. This introductory chapter summarizes the theoretical argument developed more fully in the next two chapters, which is used as a framework for analyzing a number of cases. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less

William Worcester and the Commonweal of Readers

Daniel Wakelin

in Humanism, Reading, and English Literature 1430-1530

This chapter firstly traces how in his notebooks and marginalia, William Worcester evokes and almost invents an imagined community or interpretive community of humanist scholars. The chapter then ... More

This chapter firstly traces how in his notebooks and marginalia, William Worcester evokes and almost invents an imagined community or interpretive community of humanist scholars. The chapter then traces how Worcester gleans political ideas from his reading of Cicero, Alain Chartier, and John of Wales. Worcester's political writing in The Boke of Noblesse is evaluated in the light of his reading. His humanist studies are not the only source of his ideas about the commonweal or common good, but his imaginary readership of humanists is essential to his dream of good governance and the commonweal.Less

Conclusion

Ian Johnstone

in The Power of Deliberation: International Law, Politics and Organizations

This concluding chapter synthesizes the findings from the case studies to substantiate the claim that argumentation influences international politics through a diffuse discursive process. It ... More

This concluding chapter synthesizes the findings from the case studies to substantiate the claim that argumentation influences international politics through a diffuse discursive process. It elaborates on the convergence between legal argumentation and deliberative politics. It recaps the thesis that the discursive process can only be understood by considering the role of interpretive communities, whose power comes from the reputational costs they can extract, while also setting the parameters for constructive dialogue about incremental extensions of existing legal regimes. The judgment and dialogue occurs in many settings, but it is most concentrated in international organizations (IOs). A theme highlighted in the chapter is that the operational and discursive practices of IOs are a new source of international law.Less

Straight Outta Ganton: Virtual Tourism, Fieldwork, and Performance

Kiri Miller

in Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance

This chapter works through several analytical frameworks for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, addressing the game as a tourist destination, a fieldwork site, a virtual museum, a vehicle for vicarious ... More

This chapter works through several analytical frameworks for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, addressing the game as a tourist destination, a fieldwork site, a virtual museum, a vehicle for vicarious embodied performance, and a pop culture artifact whose double-voiced aesthetic has given rise to diverse interpretive communities. The GTA games encourage players to adopt touristic, ethnographic, and colonialist orientations to gameworld exploration. As they play, their strategic experimentation and fortuitous blunders highlight the gap between their own physical abilities, learned behaviors, and life history and those of their avatars. Digital gameplay is a form of expressive culture developed through collaborative performance and intertextual interpretation. GTA: San Andreas offers a rich case study because its lead character is African American (a rarity in video games) and its storylines and aesthetic are derived from hip-hop culture, a well-established arena for staging conflicts between individual expressivity and oppressive restrictions.Less

Opening, Closing, and Moving through Interpretive Disputes

Martin Camper

in Arguing over Texts: The Rhetoric of Interpretation

Chapter 8 explores how the interpretive stases are logically related to each other and how interpretive disputes are initiated and resolved. The chapter explains how the interpretive stases occur in ... More

Chapter 8 explores how the interpretive stases are logically related to each other and how interpretive disputes are initiated and resolved. The chapter explains how the interpretive stases occur in a predictable, presuppositional sequence in which certain interpretive issues must be resolved or settled before further interpretive issues can be considered. The chapter also discusses what happens when additional passages or texts are brought in to support an argument about another passage or text. Passages from Margaret Fell’s seventeenth-century pamphlet arguing for women’s right to preach illustrate these points. Building on Patricia Roberts-Miller’s framework for understanding deliberative conflicts, the chapter outlines four different types of interpretive communities based on their valuation and use of disagreement and interpretive argument. Each of these types of communities initiates and resolves interpretive disputes in different ways. The chapter also describes three constraining factors that influence the felt need to resolve an interpretive disagreement.Less

Communicative action in International Relations

Naomi Head

in Justifying violence: Communicative ethics and the use of force in Kosovo

The chapter explores the ‘linguistic turn’ in critical and social theory of which Habermas was a central proponent and which has considerably influenced constructivist and critical theorists in ... More

The chapter explores the ‘linguistic turn’ in critical and social theory of which Habermas was a central proponent and which has considerably influenced constructivist and critical theorists in International Relations. By exploring the work of scholars in both critical and constructivist IR camps who bring together the tripartite themes of the legitimacy of the use of force, a communicative-theoretic approach, and the intervention in Kosovo, the chapter argues that the underlying purposes of the critical and constructivist projects in IR remain somewhat different. Moreover, neither, as they have been articulated to date, fully captures the potential offered by a Habermasian-informed analysis of the role of justifications for the use of force.Less

Narratives of Attitude Change and Resistant Subcultures

Peter Hart-Brinson

in The Gay Marriage Generation: How the LGBTQ Movement Transformed American Culture

This chapter analyzes the exceptional cases-the people who appear to contradict the predictions of generational theory with respect to their discourses and attitudes about gay marriage. Young ... More

This chapter analyzes the exceptional cases-the people who appear to contradict the predictions of generational theory with respect to their discourses and attitudes about gay marriage. Young conservatives who oppose gay marriage and old liberals who have always supported gay rights are parts of resistant subcultures that insulated them from generational change. Similarly, older liberals who changed their attitudes about gay marriage illuminate the process by which generational change can cause period effects. It is argued that these exceptions are compatible with generational theory because of the difference between the cohort and the generation.Less

Interpretation in International Law as a Transcultural Project

René Provost

in Interpretation in International Law

Taking testimonies before the SCSL recounting various episodes of cannibalism as an example, the chapter explores how international law can create a narrative of legality in relation to such an act. ... More

Taking testimonies before the SCSL recounting various episodes of cannibalism as an example, the chapter explores how international law can create a narrative of legality in relation to such an act. If a practice, considered to amount to an international crime, holds deep cultural meaning in a given circumstance, must legal interpretation yield to a significant extent to the interpretation of that practice from a standpoint internal to the community concerned? The interpretation of international law and of local culture emerge as ineluctably interwoven, with international law acting as a tool and a justification to reinterpret local culture through the prism of legal norms devoid of any local rootedness. The danger is an outcome whereby international law fails to be perceived as legitimate by the agents whose behaviour it seeks to regulate and, as a result, fails to trigger the kind of normative engagement required to make law real.Less

The Game of Interpretation in International Law: The Players, the Cards, and Why the Game is Worth the Candle

Andrea Bianchi

in Interpretation in International Law

This chapter uses the metaphor of the game to explain how interpretation works in international law. The rules of play are known and complied with, even though which cards to play is left to the ... More

This chapter uses the metaphor of the game to explain how interpretation works in international law. The rules of play are known and complied with, even though which cards to play is left to the skills and strategies of the individual players. In order to win the game, one must secure adherence to his or her own interpretation of the law and players can resort to a wide array of strategies to enhance the effectiveness of their game. After examining the practice of ‘how to do interpretation’, the focus of analysis is shifted to the meta-discourse of ‘playing the game of game playing’, where such fundamental questions as what is the nature of the game and who gets to decide the rules are addressed. Finally, the issues of why the players think that the game is worth the candle and why this question is hardly ever posed are tackled.Less

Conclusion

Myriam J. A. Chancy

in Autochthonomies: Transnationalism, Testimony, and Transmission in the African Diaspora

The conclusion summarizes the study’s main findings and re-centers the argument that narrow limits of interpretation, when it comes to African Diasporic texts, leads to the persistence of hierarchal ... More

The conclusion summarizes the study’s main findings and re-centers the argument that narrow limits of interpretation, when it comes to African Diasporic texts, leads to the persistence of hierarchal models of power relations based on constructions of race, guaranteeing the persistence of racist constructions and consequences upon lived lives. One of the consequences of such misreadings and categorizations also means that the fields of analyses in which these texts circulate replicate interpretive incompetencies. The conclusion summarizes how the study has sought to demonstrate that there are other means of reading African Diasporic texts, such that analyses and critical assessments of such texts are in conversation with and responsive to their interpretive communities.Less

Writing and Reading in the Margins: Iurii Fel'zen's Significant Absences

in The Jewish Persona in the European Imagination: A Case of Russian Literature

This chapter examines Iiuri Fel'zen's treatment of “the Jews” in his novels. It compares Isaak Babel's deceptively explicit engagement of “Jewish” subject matter with its cryptic treatment in Iurii ... More

This chapter examines Iiuri Fel'zen's treatment of “the Jews” in his novels. It compares Isaak Babel's deceptively explicit engagement of “Jewish” subject matter with its cryptic treatment in Iurii Fel'zen's unfinished novelistic project about the aesthetic and philosophical maturation of a Russian émigré writer. The chapter argues that Fel'zen and Babel's use the lexicon of “Jewish” difference in search of a place in the majority culture allowed them to shield their authorial personae from the stigmatization performed by the very imaginative lexicon they operate and share with their interpretive communities.Less

The Genres of Authority

Thomas J. McSweeney

in Priests of the Law: Roman Law and the Making of the Common Law's First Professionals

This chapter argues that the authors of Bracton treated the cases they cited in the treatise as if they were the opinions of jurists. In the process of reconstituting the courts’ records as ... More

This chapter argues that the authors of Bracton treated the cases they cited in the treatise as if they were the opinions of jurists. In the process of reconstituting the courts’ records as authoritative texts, the justices transformed themselves into jurists on the Roman model. In Bracton, the plea roll entry is assimilated to genres of civilian and canonist texts that were specifically associated with jurists. One of the authors compares the cases drawn from the plea rolls to consilia and responsa, texts in which an important jurist gave his opinion on a legal matter. They took these texts, which the royal courts had already been producing for decades when Martin of Pattishall and William of Raleigh entered the courts, and read them through the lens of the texts they had encountered in the schools, connecting their work in the courts with the culture of Roman and canon law.Less

Epilogue: Me and May

Sharon Ammen

in May Irwin: Singing, Shouting, and the Shadow of Minstrelsy

The author’s epilogue examines two of her performances of May Irwin’s material–one in Clayton, New York to a group of older May Irwin fans, and one to a mixed group of African-Americans and white ... More

The author’s epilogue examines two of her performances of May Irwin’s material–one in Clayton, New York to a group of older May Irwin fans, and one to a mixed group of African-Americans and white audience members attending a daylong panel on race who had viewed a video from the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia prior to a performance titled Reconstruction to Ragtime. The difference between audience responses and interpretive communities and the nature of the material presented in a readers’ theatre format is taken into account. Audience demographics are examined and the multiple reactions, including audience laughter, to racist material are analyzed.Less

The Core UN Human Rights Treaty Systems

Steven Wheatley

in The Idea of International Human Rights Law

Chapter 4 examines the core United Nations human rights treaties. It shows how we can think of these as complex systems, the result of the interactions of the states parties and the treaty bodies. ... More

Chapter 4 examines the core United Nations human rights treaties. It shows how we can think of these as complex systems, the result of the interactions of the states parties and the treaty bodies. The work first explains the regime on opposability and denunciation, which establishes the binding nature of the conventions, before considering the law on reservations, noting how this differs from the scheme under general international law. The chapter then turns to the interpretation of convention rights, detailing the distinctive pro homine (‘in favour of the individual’) approach applied to human rights treaties. The law on interpretation also requires that we examine the subsequent practice of states parties, as well as the pronouncements of the treaty bodies. The doctrine of evolutionary interpretation explains how the ‘ordinary meaning’ of treaty terms can evolve with developments in technical and scientific knowledge, changes in societal understandings, and wider modifications in regulatory approaches outside of the human rights treaty system.Less