Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T11:23:31.306Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Ethic of Diversity: Local Law and the Negotiation of Urban Norms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Mariana Valverde
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Toronto prides itself both on being diverse and on celebrating rather than merely tolerating diversity. Urban diversity has been studied by demographers, sociologists, and planners, but sociolegal analyses of the negotiation of diversity are scarce. The study described here has three elements: a study of the Toronto Licensing Tribunal, a challenge to the property standards by‐law, and a campaign to reform the rules governing street food. The key substantive finding of the research is that municipal legal processes, in a city that takes pride in its diversity, still work to effect and naturalize distinctly ethnocentric norms. The content of (some) norms is subject to revision but the normative power of law as such remains unchallenged.

Methodologically, the article, inspired by Bruno Latour and Actor Network Theory, shows the usefulness of treating local legal processes as a series of networks in which nonhuman objects (such as weeds, courtroom Bibles, and hot dogs) can sometimes be protagonists of legal dramas rather than mere objects.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , Fall 2008 , pp. 895 - 923
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2008 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berrey, Ellen. 2005. Divided over Diversity: Political Discourse in a Chicago Neighborhood. City & Community 4 (2): 143–70.Google Scholar
Binnie, Jon, and Skeggs, Bev. 2004. Cosmopolitan Knowledge and the Production and Consumption of Sexualized Space: Manchester's Gay Village. The Sociological Review 52 (1): 39–61.Google Scholar
Blomley, Nicholas. 2005. The Borrowed View: Privacy, Propriety, and the Entanglements of Property. Law & Social Inquiry 30 (4): 617–57.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Nice, Richard. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Darian‐Smith, Eve. 1999. Bridging Divides: The English Channel Tunnel and English Legal Identity in the New Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Doucet, Michael J. 2001. The Anatomy of an Urban Legend: Toronto's Multicultural Reputation. http://www.ceris.metropolis.net/frameset_e.html (accessed July 10, 2008).Google Scholar
Florida, Richard. 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Introduction. The History of Sexuality. Vol. I. Trans. Hurley, Robert. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2003. Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France, 1974–75. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Globe and Mail. 1994. Toronto may Permit Uncut Lawns. May 10, A3.Google Scholar
Good, Reginald. 2005. Admissibility of Testimony from Non‐Christian Indians in the Colonial Municipal Courts of Upper Canada/Canada West. Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 23:55–94.Google Scholar
Hawkins, Keith. 2002. Law as a Last Resort: Prosecution Decision‐Making in a Regulatory Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Iacovetta, Franca. 2006. Gatekeepers: Immigrants and the Reshaping of Postwar Canada. Toronto: Between the Lines.Google Scholar
Ingram, John. (n.d.) When Cities Grow Wild: Natural Landscaping from an Urban Planning Perspective. http://www.for‐wild.org/whenciti/ingram (site no longer active).Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1987. We Have Never Been Modern. Trans. Porter, Catherine. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2002. La Fabrique du Droit: Une Ethnographie du Conseil d'Etat. Paris: Minuit.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2004. The Politics of Nature. Trans. Porter, Catherine. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Law, John. 1999. Actor Network Theory and After. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Levi, Ron, and Valverde, Mariana. 2006. Freedom of the City: Canadian Cities and the Quest for Governmental Status. Osgoode Hall Law Journal 44 (3): 409–60.Google Scholar
Mackey, Eva. 2002. The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Mele, Christopher. 2000. Selling the Lower East Side: Culture, Real Estate, and Resistance in New York City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Don. 2003. The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Pottage, Alain, and Mundy, Martha, eds. 2004. Law, Anthropology and the Constitution of the Social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Riles, Annelise. 1999. The Network Inside Out. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Toronto Star. 1994a. Toronto lets Lawn Show their Wild Side. May 10.Google Scholar
Toronto Star. 1994b. Toronto “Flip‐flops” on Natural Lawn By‐law: City Council won't Allow Long Grass After All. June 30.Google Scholar
Toronto Star. 2007a. Putting Diversity on the Menu. March 30.Google Scholar
Toronto Star. 2007b. Officers Face Discipline in Tow‐truck Case. May 9.Google Scholar
Toronto Star. 2007c. Safe, Not Sorry: How Laws Shape What You Can Eat and the Way You Drive. May 17.Google Scholar
Valverde, Mariana. 2003. Law's Dream of a Common Knowledge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Valverde, Mariana. 2005a. Authorizing the Production of an Urban Moral Order: Appellate Courts and their Knowledge Games. Law & Society Review 39 (2): 419–56.Google Scholar
Valverde, Mariana. 2005b. Taking Land Use Seriously: Toward an Ontology of Municipal Law. Law, Text, Culture 9:34–59.Google Scholar
Valverde, Mariana. 2006. A New Entity in the History of Sexuality: The Respectable Same‐sex Couple. Feminist Studies 32 (1): 155–63.Google Scholar
Young, Craig., Diep, M., and Drabble, S. 2006. Living with Difference? The Cosmopolitan City and Urban Reimaging in Manchester, UK. Urban Studies 43 (10): 1687–1714.Google Scholar
Zizek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.Google Scholar