Internationalism and Commitment at the Kitchen Table

Abstract

The contributors to this issue focus on legal internationalism (Peroni 2016; Turan 2016), including hybrid mixes with nationalist forms (Sankey 2016). They have provoked us as editors to think more about these sites and forms of engagement. Sankey shows how civic participation in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) has played a key role in surfacing the gendered harms of separation and starvation. Turan highlights the problems with International Criminal Court (ICC) exclusion of the experience of men and boys from sexual violence. Peroni expresses her hesitations over the Istanbul Convention given an association between assumed vulnerability and migrant women, while admiring its uncoupling of violence and culture. Cruz’s interview with Wendy Brown (2016) contextualizes and expands on these themes as they consider, with other participants, the future of feminist theory in the context of neo-liberal capturing of rights and legal space. Thinking more about internationalism and commitment in this context also helps us hold a mirror up to ourselves as we reflect more critically on our own naming of FLS as an ‘international’ journal. Together these contributions, and the reviews of new work, play a role in fleshing out an editorial commitment to enacting the journal as a living thing that ‘hangs together somehow’ (Mol 2002) even as it is known differently in different places.

Note: (Online open access doi: 10.1007/s10691-016-9318-8)

Keywords: feminist legal studies, feminism, critical legal methods, internationalism, neoliberalism, multi-dimensionality, kitchen table, editing, publishing