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Randy K. Lippert, Sanctuary, Sovereignty and Sacrifice: Canadian Sanctuary Incidents, Power, and Law.

Article Excerpt
RANDY K. LIPPERT, Sanctuary, Sovereignty and Sacrifice: Canadian Sanctuary Incidents, Power, and Law. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005, x + 210 p., Bibliography, Index.

Randy Lippert's Sanctuary, Sovereignty and Sacrifice is an ambitious work that manages to successfully interrogate an empirical phenomenon (sanctuary incidents) through a set of highly sophisticated theoretical concepts. The author's use of Foucault's notions of pastoral power, sovereign power and governmentality/bio-power, in connection with Agamben's development of the concepts of sovereign decision and exceptionality in relation to law, allow him to make interventions in the area of governmentality studies on methodological, theoretical and political levels. While clearly having a nuanced understanding of the concepts he deploys, Lippert consistently remains engaged with the empirical event of sanctuary through his methodologically innovative (in terms of governmentality studies) use of official government documents in conjunction with interviews, or as he writes "talk," of individuals directly involved in sanctuary incidents.

Lippert traces the development of refugee determination and resettlement programs in Canada under advanced liberalism. This development is characterized by the juridification of inland refugee determination and an increased involvement of churches and...