Davina Cooper
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View article: How concepts do activism: as worlds, aids, cells, and currents
How concepts do activism: as worlds, aids, cells, and currents Open
What is conceptual activism and how should we understand the form and affordances of the concept as it takes shape within it? Drawing on interviews with twenty-three interdisciplinary academics, along with social theoretical and empirical …
View article:  "Reconceptualizing the Real in the Struggle for Gender: From Gold Standard to Fragile Accomplishment"
"Reconceptualizing the Real in the Struggle for Gender: From Gold Standard to Fragile Accomplishment" Open
View article: Introduction to Special Issue: Decertifying Legal Sex—Prefigurative Law Reform and the Future of Legal Gender
Introduction to Special Issue: Decertifying Legal Sex—Prefigurative Law Reform and the Future of Legal Gender Open
of Legal Gender project, which formally started in 2018 (in design from 2015), decided to research this question, to ask: Are there good reasons to continue to accord sex and gender legal status in Britain, including in light of developmen…
View article: Crafting Prefigurative Law in Turbulent Times: Decertification, DIY Law Reform, and the Dilemmas of Feminist Prototyping
Crafting Prefigurative Law in Turbulent Times: Decertification, DIY Law Reform, and the Dilemmas of Feminist Prototyping Open
This article explores the challenge of developing a feminist law reform proposal to decertify sex and gender based on research conducted for the ‘Future of Legal Gender' project. Locating the proposal to decertify within a do-it-yourself, …
View article: De-producing gender: the politics of sex, decertification and the figure of economy
De-producing gender: the politics of sex, decertification and the figure of economy Open
This article explores the contribution that the figure of economy can make to understanding gender in contemporary Britain, focusing on gender as a social quality and legal category that is produced, allocated and used. The article proceed…
View article: What does gender equality need? Revisiting the formal and informal in feminist legal politics
What does gender equality need? Revisiting the formal and informal in feminist legal politics Open
This article explores the political conflict over reforming how sex and gender categories are used in British law, focusing on the speculative legal proposal to ‘decertify’ sex and gender. Three interconnected arguments are advanced. First…
View article: Reimagining Gender Through Equality Law: What Legal Thoughtways Do Religion and Disability Offer?
Reimagining Gender Through Equality Law: What Legal Thoughtways Do Religion and Disability Offer? Open
View article: The hopeful edges of power: Radical governance and acting 'as if'
The hopeful edges of power: Radical governance and acting 'as if' Open
There's a playful power in interventions that assume the world is as it could be, not as it is. Bronwen Morgan (Sydney), Amelia Thorpe (Sydney) and Davina Cooper (UK) propose tools like radical governance and treating the law as utopian to…
View article: Taking Public Responsibility for Gender: When Personal Identity and Institutional Feminist Politics Meet
Taking Public Responsibility for Gender: When Personal Identity and Institutional Feminist Politics Meet Open
This essay explores the challenge that soft decertification poses for feminist politics. In soft decertification, people continue to have a formal legal sex/ gender status; however, public and other bodies act as if such status was no long…
View article: Pulling the Thread of Decertification: What Challenges are Raised by the Proposal to Reform Legal Gender Status?
Pulling the Thread of Decertification: What Challenges are Raised by the Proposal to Reform Legal Gender Status? Open
In decertification, the state withdraws from registering, assigning, or guaranteeing a person’s sex and gender, giving one shape to the growing momentum towards their informalisation. This article explores decertification as a speculative …
View article: Introduction to the Special Issue on the Future of Legal Gender: Exploring the Feminist Politics of Decertification
Introduction to the Special Issue on the Future of Legal Gender: Exploring the Feminist Politics of Decertification Open
Introduction to the special issue on the Future of Legal Gender. The editors of the special issue are Flora Renz, Davina Cooper and Emily Grabham.
View article: “State Regimes of Gender: Legal Aspects of Gender Identity Registration, Trans-Relevant Policies and Quality of LGBTIQ Lives”: A Roundtable Discussion
“State Regimes of Gender: Legal Aspects of Gender Identity Registration, Trans-Relevant Policies and Quality of LGBTIQ Lives”: A Roundtable Discussion Open
This roundtable took place at the European Conference on Politics and Gender (ECPG) in July 2019.
View article: Towards an adventurous institutional politics: The prefigurative ‘as if’ and the reposing of what’s real
Towards an adventurous institutional politics: The prefigurative ‘as if’ and the reposing of what’s real Open
Discussion of prefigurative politics typically focuses on the revisioning of means to ends within grass-roots activities taking shape against or apart from the state. This article takes a different approach. Addressing prefiguration throug…
View article: Pulling the Thread of Decertification: What Challenges are Raised by the Proposal to Reform Legal Gender Status?
Pulling the Thread of Decertification: What Challenges are Raised by the Proposal to Reform Legal Gender Status? Open
View article: Towards an Adventurous Institutional Politics: The Prefigurative ‘As If’ and the Reposing of What’s Real
Towards an Adventurous Institutional Politics: The Prefigurative ‘As If’ and the Reposing of What’s Real Open
View article: A Very Binary Drama: The Conceptual Struggle for Gender's Future
A Very Binary Drama: The Conceptual Struggle for Gender's Future Open
This article explores how both the present and change are imagined and enacted in relation to gender’s conceptual future. Its jumping off point is the current British struggle over definitions of gender and sex, and how law and public poli…
View article: A Very Binary Drama: The Conceptual Struggle for Gender's Future
A Very Binary Drama: The Conceptual Struggle for Gender's Future Open
This article explores how both the present and change are imagined and enacted in relation to gender’s conceptual future. Its jumping off point is the current British struggle over definitions of gender and sex, and how law and public poli…
View article: Materiality of research: can imaginative projects complement (and not displace) more critical research?
Materiality of research: can imaginative projects complement (and not displace) more critical research? Open
Can projects of reimagining complement more critical research? Writing in response to comments on her recent work on reimagining the state, Davina Cooper addresses the challenge of developing transformative methods, the value of institutio…
View article: Possessive Attachments: Identity Beliefs, Equality Law and the Politics of State Play
Possessive Attachments: Identity Beliefs, Equality Law and the Politics of State Play Open
One feature of the neo/liberal possessive self is the propertied character of certain beliefs: treated as belonging to those who hold them, recognized and supported in acting on the world, and protected. While an ownership paradigm predate…
View article: Possessive Attachments: Identity Beliefs, Equality Law and the Politics of State Play
Possessive Attachments: Identity Beliefs, Equality Law and the Politics of State Play Open
One feature of the neo/liberal possessive self is the propertied character of certain beliefs: treated as belonging to those who hold them, recognized and supported in acting on the world, and protected. While an ownership paradigm predate…
View article: Law in Society: Reflections on Children, Family, Culture and Philosophy, Alison Diduck, Noam Peleg and Helen Reece, Nijhoff: Brill, 2015. 678 pp. ISBN: 978-9004261488 £198.00
Law in Society: Reflections on Children, Family, Culture and Philosophy, Alison Diduck, Noam Peleg and Helen Reece, Nijhoff: Brill, 2015. 678 pp. ISBN: 978-9004261488 £198.00 Open
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View article: How a referendum might actually support democracy
How a referendum might actually support democracy Open
A fight has been raging since Brexit over whether the people’s will has expressed itself; and if it has, what did it say? Davina Cooper explores how a referendum might actually help to support a democracy
View article: If the State Decertified Gender, What Might Happen to its Meaning and Value?
If the State Decertified Gender, What Might Happen to its Meaning and Value? Open
As jurisdictions reform gender identity laws to accommodate transgender and intersex people, this article speculatively explores a more fundamental shift: eliminating state law's role in determining and assigning gender status altogether. …
View article: Prefiguring the State
Prefiguring the State Open
Merging means and ends, prefigurative politics perform life as it is wished‐for, both to experience better practice and to advance change. This paper contributes to prefigurative thinking in three ways. It explores what it might mean to pr…
View article: Retrieving the state for radical politics -a conceptual and playful challenge
Retrieving the state for radical politics -a conceptual and playful challenge Open
Whether states can ever contribute to progressive social transformation has long divided the left. But is this division dependent on a particular state conception? If the state can be meaningfully conceptualised in multiple ways, are there…
View article: Transformative State Publics
Transformative State Publics Open
View article: Transformative state publics
Transformative state publics Open
Against the conventional assumption that publics, and particularly radical publics, are outside the state, this article explores their mutual combination and entanglement in order to consider how states might contribute to progressive poli…
View article: Conversing with ghosts: prefigurative talk and the shifting contours of intellectual debate.
Conversing with ghosts: prefigurative talk and the shifting contours of intellectual debate. Open
Next in our #AcWri2016 series is a reflection on conversational writing and academic thought. Academic discussion typically appears as clustered conversations. Davina Cooper focuses on the dilemma posed by prefigurative contributions, wher…
View article: Enacting Counter-States Through Play
Enacting Counter-States Through Play Open
View article: Bringing the State Up Conceptually: Forging a Body Politics Through Anti-Gay Christian Refusal
Bringing the State Up Conceptually: Forging a Body Politics Through Anti-Gay Christian Refusal Open
If how the state is imagined shapes social and political action, the politics of state imagining provides an important site for progressive reflection. Arguing that conceptual approaches which support critique may not necessarily prove the…