Abstract
Sociologist John W. Meyer’s neo-institutionalist “world polity” perspective has had considerable influence on scholarly interrogations of globalization, international relations, and transnational governance. Put simply, Meyer and his collaborators argue that modern nation states are embedded increasingly within dense webs of shared cultural meaning, grounded predominantly in “Western” values, norms, and standards such as international human rights, which script their behavior and have led to striking levels of isomorphism or homogeneity across otherwise highly differentiated country contexts. Recently, the world polity perspective has been used by other sociologists to analyze why so many states across all regions of the world have apparently moved so swiftly since the Second World War to liberalize their criminal laws against same-sex genital relations (so-called “sodomy laws”). This chapter reappraises the world polity perspective on global sodomy law reform. In doing so, it draws attention to long-standing criticisms that Meyer’s work, in its emphasis on convergence of global cultural values, underplays or ignores entirely the continuing role of conflict in world society, and the dynamics of power and resistance through which that conflict is resolved. In turn, the chapter uses four recent case studies to evaluate the relevance of world polity analysis to the social process of sodomy law reform given the particular regimes of conflict, power, and resistance, especially between global North and South, which it shows are also shaping this particular social process.
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Notes
- 1.
The term “sodomy law” is used as shorthand in this chapter for the criminalization of adult same-sex sexual activity between men or between women in private. This avoids important questions, of course, about the implications of criminal regulations applied to public same-sex sexual activities, which are often aggressively policed even when private sexual behavior is legalized. It also leaves to one side other targets for criminalization to regulate same-sex desire, such as recent controversial legislation in Russia that extends liability for distributing "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations" to minors.
- 2.
This “economy of silence,” which reflects the shame and cultural suppression associated with homosexuality, especially in the West, is illustrated most clearly by English jurist Blackstone’s description of buggery as “that horrible crime not to be named among Christians” (Moran 1996, p. 36).
- 3.
Frank and his colleagues are careful to avoid emptying local social movement activity around sodomy law reform of any and all significance. The authors acknowledge, for instance, recent work that shows how sodomy law reform is motivated by goals of cultural transformation (especially group recognition) and social movement mobilization, as much as it is by political change to sodomy laws themselves, and that these equally significant aims are usually achieved most successfully by local social movements (Bernstein 2003). They also recognize that local social movements can have important implications for the relative speed with which sodomy law reform is achieved (Kane 2007).
- 4.
- 5.
Meyer does grapple briefly with the question of direct resistance to world culture in his work, with particular focus on religious and nationalist extremism. He notes: “[e]xplicit rejection of world-cultural principles sometimes occurs, particularly by nationalist or religious movements whose purported opposition to modernity is seen as a threat to geopolitical stability” (Meyer et al. 1997a, p. 187). However, his analysis of these oppositional forces then downplays the implications of this resistance, foregrounding instead how religious and nationalist movements are always already located within the same world culture they seek to reject. He suggests that that there is a tendency to “[underestimate] the extent to which such movements conform to rationalized models of societal order and purpose. These movements mobilize around principles inscribed in world-cultural scripts, derive their organizing capacity from the legitimacy of these scripts, and edit their supposedly primordial claims to maximize this legitimacy” (p. 187). From this perspective, Meyer and his collaborators conclude that: “[i]n general, nationalist and religious movements intensify isomorphism more than they resist it” (ibid). Similar arguments have been made by world polity theorists questioning the long term significance of the purported conflict between Islam and the West (see Lecher and Boli 2005, Chap. 9).
- 6.
See also the criticism that Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis “remains at best unproven, and at worst subject to the criticism that it oversimplifies and overgeneralizes the nature of contemporary cultural schisms” (Holton 1998, p. 184).
- 7.
The letter in full can be found at http://www.unwatch.org/atf/cf/%7B6deb65da-be5b-4cae-8056-8bf0bedf4d17%7D/OIC%20TO%20PRESIDENT.PDF.
- 8.
The statement can be found in full at http://www.amsher.net/news/ViewArticle.aspx?id=1200
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Acknowledgments
A version of this chapter was first presented as a seminar paper at Kent Law School, England, in May 2013. My thanks go to all those who attended the seminar for their invaluable comments and criticisms on that earlier draft, and especially Emilie Cloatre for organizing the event. Thanks also to Dana Peterson and Vanessa R. Panfil for their patience throughout the writing process, as well as their helpful advice and support. As ever all errors remain my own.
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Cobb, N. (2014). Rethinking the “World Polity” Perspective on Global Sodomy Law Reform. In: Peterson, D., Panfil, V. (eds) Handbook of LGBT Communities, Crime, and Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9188-0_14
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