“There Is an Eye on Us”: International Imitation, Popular Representation, and the Regulation of Homosexuality in Senegal
基于塞内加尔数据，提出“世界社会口袋”概念，解释在整体不自由的法律环境中，自由派同性恋权利观念如何通过司法部与国际模仿逻辑局部出现，而法院则坚持民众代表逻辑，拒绝性自决并维护国家主权。
Drawing on data from Senegal, this article develops the concept of pockets of world society to explain how adherence to a liberal vision of gay rights emerges within an otherwise illiberal legal landscape. Pockets of world society appear at the site where the global field of human rights penetrates the national juridical field. Senegal’s Ministry of Justice sits at this juncture. It is a member of both fields but tends toward a logic of international imitation . The ministry accommodates world society’s stance on homosexuality, offering a moderate re-interpretation of its nation’s criminalization, and quietly circumventing local law to enact global scripts of sexual actorhood. In stark contrast, Senegalese courts, located solely within the national juridical field, adhere to a logic of popular representation , rejecting sexual self-determination, insisting on national sovereignty, and carrying out the nation’s criminalization of homosexuality in accordance with both law and collective will. These conflicting logics are driven by external pressures, field membership and position, professional trajectories, and sources of legal legitimacy and social accountability. Finally, I contend that the conflict in Senegal spotlights not only world society’s limits, but its persistent strength and its ability to disrupt the coherence of the law.