Journal article
Institutions in feminist and republican science fiction
The Legal studies forum, Vol.22(4), pp.641-653
09/22/1998
Abstract
The goal of much legal scholarship of late has been the design of better institutions. Hence we do well to understand what institutions
are and how they work. This means coming to terms with the everyday ways in which people in particular institutions make sense of their
priorities and circumstances. That in turn means thinking through the institutional dynamics of action by specific people in richly imagined
places.
In this essay we explore the images and reforms of institutions found in science fiction with a focus on republican and feminist projects
in the genre. Science fiction recovers the institutional inspirations of earlier myths of law and politics (republicanism) while detailing their
relevance to more recent concerns (feminism). Science fiction probes the politics of everyday life, reinventing societies, economies, biologies,
geologies, ethics, and aesthetics for ordinary people. In yoking everyday politics to myth, speculative fiction tries to move us intelligently into
cultural trajectories for the future. Science fiction is a primary source of specific thought-experiments that reimagine our institutions.
Notwithstanding recent proclamations of "the new institutionalism" in economics and political science, neither discipline attends all that well
to the business of rethinking institutions. Neoclassical economists abstract from markets to games, while mainstream political scientists
study decisions and elections. Sociology and anthropology do better in their study of institutions, but not much. Science fiction, by contrast,
encompasses utopias and dystopias among its many subgenres. It frequently examines institutions of law and politics. Yet science fiction
is a diverse genre, and here we analyze only republican and feminist works.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Institutions in feminist and republican science fiction
- Creators
- Anna Lorien NelsonJohn S Nelson
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- The Legal studies forum, Vol.22(4), pp.641-653
- Publisher
- American Legal Studies Association
- ISSN
- 0894-5993
- eISSN
- 2163-5110
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 09/22/1998
- Description audience
- Professional
- Academic Unit
- Political Science; Graduate College Operations Distr; International Programs
- Record Identifier
- 9983983216202771
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