Death, discourse and human rights: The construction of controversial deaths in the coroner's court

死亡、话语和人权：验尸官法庭上有争议的死亡的解释

• 批准号: 2443745
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Goldsmiths University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2443745
• 关键词: Death; discourse; human; rights; construction

This research will explore how legal discourse operates to shape accounts of controversial deaths as they are recounted in the coroner's court. Through ethnographic research it will seek to examine whether the coronial narrative decontextualizes death by reformulating and reinterpreting it, utilising the discourse of human rights to foreground certain factors whilst obscuring others.Informed by debates around the 'juridification' of human rights (Brown and Halley, 2002), this study will investigate the influence of law in "privatising" human rights discourse through the introduction of specialized language, images and concepts (Evans, 2005: 1050). Drawing on the concept of 'legal consciousness' (Merry, 1990; Ewick & Sibley, 1998), it is proposed that these specialized 'interpretative schemas' appropriate the legitimacy ascribed to law to situate its application in the coronial context as just, rational and inevitable. Interpretative schema also comprise an ideological framework made up of what Hochschild (1979) calls 'framing rules' and 'feeling rules' which regulate the generation, expression and management of emotions. Through casting emotion as 'other' to the reason and rationality of law, this framework performs a regulatory function in the coroner's court.Whilst there exists a wealth of theoretical literature on human rights, there is 'relatively little sociological research on how human rights law works in practice' (Merry, 2006: 977). This weakness has been remedied somewhat by the 'ethnographic turn' in human rights scholarship since the late 1990s (Cowan, Dembour and Wilson, 2006; Wilson, 2006; Goodale, 2006). However it remains the case that the capaciousness of rights claims requires any assessment of the possibilities and limitations of human rights be rooted in empirical, contextual and grounded inquiry into "the social life of rights" (Wilson, 2006; Grewal, 2014:3), how people in particular milieus interpret and interact with human rights.In spite of its centrality in generating official accounts of controversial deaths, the coroner's court has largely been overlooked "as a site of justice and injustice" (Scott Bray and Martin, 2016). The ways in which actors in the coroner's court - family members, lawyers and coroners - interpret and interact with human rights discourse has received scant scholarly attention with some suggesting it is long overdue (Baker, 2016; McLaughlin, 2007; Beckett, 1999).It is hoped that this research will be of interest to legal professionals, sociologists and socio-legal scholars. It is also hoped that this study will also be relevant to policy makers interested in participatory institutional design.

这项研究将探讨法律话语如何运作来塑造验尸官法庭上叙述的有争议的死亡事件。通过人种学研究，它将寻求检验死因叙事是否通过重新表述和重新解释死亡，从而使死亡脱离语境，利用人权话语来突出某些因素，同时模糊其他因素。本研究将围绕人权“司法化”的辩论（Brown和Halley，2002年）提供信息，通过引入专门的语言、图像和概念，调查法律对“私有化”人权话语的影响（Evans， 2005 年：1050）。借鉴“法律意识”的概念（Merry，1990；Ewick & Sibley，1998），有人提出，这些专门的“解释模式”采用了赋予法律的合法性，将其在死因背景下的应用定位为公正、合理和不可避免的。解释图式还包括一个意识形态框架，由 Hochschild (1979) 所说的“框架规则”和“情感规则”组成，它们调节情感的产生、表达和管理。通过将情感视为法律理性和合理性的“他者”，这一框架在验尸官法庭中发挥了监管功能。虽然存在大量关于人权的理论文献，但“关于人权法在实践中如何运作的社会学研究相对较少”（Merry，2006：977）。自 20 世纪 90 年代末以来，人权学术界的“民族志转向”在一定程度上弥补了这一弱点（Cowan、Dembour 和 Wilson，2006 年；Wilson，2006 年；Goodale，2006 年）。然而，权利主张的广泛性仍然要求对人权的可能性和局限性的任何评估都植根于对“权利的社会生活”（Wilson，2006；Grewal，2014：3）的经验性、背景性和扎根性调查（Wilson，2006；Grewal，2014：3），特别是人们如何解释人权并与人权互动。 被忽视为“正义与不正义的场所”（Scott Bray 和 Martin，2016）。验尸法庭中的参与者——家庭成员、律师和验尸官——解释人权话语并与之互动的方式很少受到学术界的关注，有些人认为早就该关注了（Baker，2016；McLaughlin，2007；Beckett，1999）。希望这项研究能够引起法律专业人士、社会学家和社会法律学者的兴趣。我们还希望这项研究也能与对参与式制度设计感兴趣的政策制定者相关。