Sociology

The circulation of techniques for violence and the role of materiality in Randal Collins’s violence theory

by Paolo Magaudda

"Sociologica" N. 2/2011

Proposal to include Bethany Home within the remit of Senator Martin McAleese’s investigation of state interactions with Magdalene institutions

by Niall Meehan

Submission to Minister of State, Justice, Equality & Law Reform Kathleen Lynch (14Jul11) by Niall Meehan and Joe Costello TD

Since 1917, according to Mary Raftery (writing in the Irish Times, 4 Nov 2004), ‘Protestant children in need of care’... more Since 1917, according to Mary Raftery (writing in the Irish Times, 4 Nov 2004), ‘Protestant children in need of care’ were ‘essentially dealt with by private institutions’. She suggested that the state’s attitude was one of ‘hands-off’. Indeed, in the 1937 Cussen report on the ‘Reformatory and Industrial School System’ and the 1970 Kennedy report on the same subject and again in the 2009 Ryan Commission report on institutional child abuse, it is stated that problematic Protestants were dispersed by the Courts among Protestant clergy who were expected to deal with matters privately.

Hence, there is a large gap in official knowledge as a result of implementing a sectarian welfare and detention system, albeit one in which the dominant confessional community was regulated more so than its smaller Christian counterpart. This practice had no statutory basis but statute law was used to enforce it, often against the stated intent of the law. Research into Bethany Home indicates that this is one reason for neglect and death in the Bethany Home.

Official records explain why officials decided not to interfere when confronted with evidence of unusually high child mortality and medical neglect in the Bethany Home. We mainly summarise them here.

Direct State involvement

Bethany was a place of detention for women convicted of crimes from the trivial to the most serious. There appears to be no statutory basis for the directing of offending Protestant females into the Bethany home until 1945, but then only in the case of female Protestant children and teenagers. Incarceration of women generally in the Bethany Home was, however, an official practice.

------------------
See also,
Church & State and the Bethany Home
http://gcd.academia.edu/NiallMeehan/Papers/277737/

The Irish State & the Bethany Home - submission to Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn (24 May 2011)

by Niall Meehan

Submitted to Ruairi Quinn TD, Minister for Education, at Leinster House meeting, 24 May 2011, by delegation consisting of Derek Leinster, Noleen Belton, Patrick Anderson McQuoid, Niall Meehan, Joe Costello TD, Robert Dowds TD.

‘The institution is kept very well is clean & comfortable… It is well recognised that a large number of... more ‘The institution is kept very well is clean & comfortable… It is well recognised that a large number of illegitimate children are delicate… from their birth’

Winslow Sterling Berry, Deputy Chief Medical Adviser, Department of Local Government and Public Health, Ireland, after visiting Bethany Home, Orwell Road, Rathgar, Dublin, 25 January, 6 October 1939 (see p. 8).

‘A beautiful institution…, seemed to be well-run and spotlessly clean… I closed the place down and sacked the matron, a nun, and also got rid of the medical officer. The deaths had been going on for years. They had done nothing about it.’

JamesDeeny, Chief Medical Adviser, Department of Health, Ireland, after visiting Bessborough Mother and Babies Home, Cork, in the mid to late 1940s (see p.11).

-----------------------
See also,
Church & State and the Bethany Home
http://gcd.academia.edu/NiallMeehan/Papers/277737/

Theorizing fear of crime: beyond the rational/irrational opposition

by Deborah Lupton

Road rage: drivers' understandings and experiences

by Deborah Lupton

Renewed authoritarianism in Southeast Asia: undermining democracy through neoliberal reform

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2009. Renewed authoritarianism in Southeast Asia: undermining democracy through neoliberal reform. Asia Pacific Viewpoint. 50 (3), 271-276.

In the wake of the Asian Crisis, cases studies from Southeast Asia often reinforced the perception that neoliberalism... more In the wake of the Asian Crisis, cases studies from Southeast Asia often reinforced the perception that neoliberalism is thriving in authoritarian states. Processes of intensive neoliberalisation in the region have now been ongoing for over a decade, yet attempts at democratic consolidation have been tenuous, fragile and incomplete at best, calling into question the supposed nexus between democracy and neoliberal reform. Accordingly, there is need for a moment of pause, to take stock of the neoliberalising process in the region, and importantly, to reframe the question and reflect on how and why authoritarianism is continuing to thrive in the neoliberalising Southeast Asian state.

¿ Cómo se piensa lo “queer” en América Latina?(Presentación Dossier)

by Maria Amelia Viteri

Toom, Victor. 2012. "Bodies of science and law: forensic DNA profiling, biological bodies and biopower." Journal of Law and Society 39(1):150-66.

by Victor Toom

The paper is part of the Special Issue 'Material Worlds: Intersections of Law, Science, Technology, and Society', edited by Chris Lawless and Alex Faulkner.

How is jurisdiction transferred from an individual’s biological body to agents of power such as the police, public... more How is jurisdiction transferred from an individual’s biological body to agents of power such as the police, public prosecutor and judiciary, and what happens to these biological bodies when transformed from private into public objects? These questions are examined by analyzing bodies situated at the intersection of science and law. More specifically, the transformation of ‘private bodies’ into ‘public bodies’ shall be analyzed by going into the details of forensic DNA profiling in the Dutch jurisdiction. It will be argued that various ‘forensic genetic practices’ enact different ‘forensic genetic bodies’. These enacted forensic genetic bodies are connected with various infringements of civil rights, which become articulated in exploring these forensic genetic bodies’ ‘normative registers’.

Demassifying Religion: Futurist Interpretations of American Socioeconomic and Religious Change

by Joshua Reichard

Published in the International Review of Social Sciences and Humanities

This article consists of a critical examination of American religious movements in light of the futurist categories of... more This article consists of a critical examination of American religious movements in light of the futurist categories of Second and Third Wave socioeconomic change. Alvin Toffler’s socioeconomic wave model is representative of shifting religious attitudes toward such socioeconomic change and sheds light on the evolution of religious thought during America’s economic transitions. Mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics were the dominant forces of mass religion in the Second Wave. Evangelicals, on the other hand, adopted Third Wave social and economic principles and emerged as the prominent American religious movement of the Third Wave; as society demassified, so did religious faith. Evangelical emphases on individualism and consumerism are examined as Third Wave socioeconomic values. In particular, the futurist wave model highlights the demassification of socioeconomic dynamics and consequently, the demassificaiton of religion in public life. By understanding the relationship between socioeconomic and religious change in the American context, other societies that undergo similar transitions can adequately adapt, preempt conflict, and develop creative solutions to social problems.

Keywords: Demassification, futurism, socioeconomic change, religious change, individualism.

Before (and After) the ‘Arab Spring’: From Connectedness to Mobilization in the Public Sphere

by Armando Salvatore

Oriente Moderno, 91, 1: 5-12

This is the introductory piece to the thematic issue of Oriente Moderno on Between Everyday Life and Political Revolution: The Social Web in the Middle East.

Audio stream interview with me, talking about my second book 'The Global Football League' (Palgrave, 2011)

by Peter Millward

In the 'New Books in Sport' series

Ideal and unsullied: Purity, subjectivity and social power

by Robbie Duschinsky

Draft only; Published in Subjectivity

There has been a good deal of empirical social scientific research which has addressed the theme of purity and has... more There has been a good deal of empirical social scientific research which has addressed the theme of purity and has indicated its social importance. However, few theoretical resources are available to scholars which explicitly attempt to analyse purity, besides Mary Douglas’s structural-functionalist model. This model has many insights, but is not well-adapted to considering issues of subjectivity or social power in contemporary Western societies. This article will attempt to take some steps towards filling this gap. It will be claimed that, through the way they appeal to an imputed essence and origin, purity discourses are often complicit in the consecration and occlusion of relations of power and processes of subjectivation. The argument will focus in particular on the operation of purity discourses in the discursive construction and practical negotiation of female adolescence.

Papadopoulos Review

by Robbie Duschinsky

Draft Only; forthcoming Journal of Social Policy

This paper offers a discursive policy analysis of the 2010 UK Home Office ‘Sexualisation of Young People’ Review,... more This paper offers a discursive policy analysis of the 2010 UK Home Office ‘Sexualisation of Young People’ Review, authored by Linda Papadopoulos. It will scrutinise the narrative presented by the text of the danger posed by cultural representations to healthy development, and trace the way that the text links this danger to catastrophic outcomes: child sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking. Examining this narrative, the article will propose that that the UK Review deploys spatial metaphors to naturalise a gendered account of childhood, sexuality and danger, evoking the creeping influence of a corrupting culture on a girl’s most private self. The article will also demonstrate that this spatial narrative underpins the epistemological structure of the text – its separation of the primary from the secondary, the real from the artificial.

Managing the Tensions of Essentialism - draft (with Sue Lampitt)

by Robbie Duschinsky

Draft only; forthcoming in Sociology

This article will propose a new interpretation of Pierre Bourdieu, as a theorist of purity and impurity. Bourdieu’s... more This article will propose a new interpretation of Pierre Bourdieu, as a theorist of purity and impurity. Bourdieu’s writings indicate that through the adjudication of things or people as relatively impure or pure an image is constructed of their essential truth. Building from Bourdieu, we will show how themes of purity and impurity can be used to manage the tensions associated with attempts to impute an essence to human nature or to reality, ensuring that moral and epistemological significance of complexity is masked. This is the reason why themes of purity and impurity so often attend polarised worldviews, and why they are frequently mobilised for justifying and operating biopolitical processes of social stratification and regulation.

Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies. Political Geography. 30 (2), 90-98.

Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that... more Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is 'irrational' marks particular cultures as ‘other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to putatively ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.

Public Space as emancipation: meditations on anarchism, radical democracy, neoliberalism and violence

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Public Space as emancipation: meditations on anarchism, radical democracy, neoliberalism and violence. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography. 43 (2), 525-562.

In establishing an anarchic framework for understanding public space as a vision for radical democracy, this article... more In establishing an anarchic framework for understanding public space as a vision for radical democracy, this article proceeds as a theoretical inquiry into how an agonistic public space might become the basis of emancipation. Public space is presented as an opportunity to move beyond the technocratic elitism that often characterizes both civil societies and the neoliberal approach to development, and is further recognized as the battlefield on which the conflicting interests of the world's rich and poor are set. Contributing to the growing recognition that geographies of resistance are relational, where the “global” and the “local” are understood as co-constitutive, a radical democratic ideal grounded in material public space is presented as paramount to repealing archic power in general, and neoliberalism’s exclusionary logic in particular.

Neoliberalism and geography: expansions, variegations, formations

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2010. Neoliberalism and geography: expansions, variegations, formations. Geography Compass. 4 (8), 1025-1038.

The pervasiveness of neoliberalism within the field of human geography is remarkable, especially when we consider its... more The pervasiveness of neoliberalism within the field of human geography is remarkable, especially when we consider its virtual absence from the literature less than a decade ago. While the growing attention afforded to neoliberalism among geographers is new, the phenomenon of neoliberalism is not. This paper traces the intellectual history of neoliberalism and its expansions across various institutional frameworks and geographical settings. I review the primary contributions geographers have made to the literature, and specifically their recognition for neoliberalism’s variegations within existing political economic matrixes and institutional frameworks. Contra the prevailing view of neoliberalism as a pure and static end-state, geographical inquiry illuminates neoliberalism as a dynamic and unfolding process. The concept of ‘neoliberalization’ is thus seen as more appropriate to geographical theorizations insofar as it recognizes neoliberalism’s hybridized and mutated forms as it travels around our world. I also consider some of the most salient ways that neoliberalism has been theorized among human geographers. In particular, I highlight understandings of neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology, as a policy-based approach to state reform, and as a particular logic of governmentality, arguing that while there are significant differences between these various formations, it may also be important to work beyond methodological, epistemological, and ontological divides in the larger interest of social justice.

Le salaire de la sueur : un éclairage socio-historique sur la lutte anti-sweatshop

by Pauline Barraud de Lagerie

Sociologie du travail 54 (2012) 45–69

Cet article se propose d’éclairer l’essor actuel d’un mouvement pour la « responsabilité sociale des entreprises » à... more Cet article se propose d’éclairer l’essor actuel d’un mouvement pour la « responsabilité sociale des entreprises » à la lumière d’une analyse socio-historique de la lutte anti-sweatshop. Nous nous attachons à montrer que la démarche consistant à imputer à la tête d’une chaîne de sous-traitance la responsabilité d’assurer le bien-être de ceux qui en constituent les derniers maillons n’est pas contemporaine de l’internationalisation des échanges et du problème des équilibres Nord-Sud. Dès le sweating system du XIXe siècle, les défenseurs des travailleurs avaient pointé du doigt la responsabilité de ceux qui, sans exercer une contrainte directe sur la main d’oeuvre, tiraient néanmoins profit de son exploitation. Mais l’analyse historique met aussi en exergue que, si le problème des médiocres conditions de travail a pu, dans d’autres contextes, trouver des solutions qui permettaient de se passer (partiellement au moins) de la responsabilisation des commettants, la lutte anti-sweatshop dans le cadre des échanges mondialisés se caractérise par un recours quasi-exclusif à l’exercice d’une pression sur les donneurs d’ordre.


Mots clés : Sweatshops ; Chaînes de sous-traitance ; conditions de travail ; Responsabilité ; Réglementation ; Mouvements sociaux

Cheliotis, L. K. and S. Xenakis (2011) ‘Crime, Fear of Crime and Punitiveness’, in L. K. Cheliotis and S. Xenakis (eds) Crime and Punishment in Contemporary Greece: International Comparative Perspectives, pp. 1-43. Bern: Peter Lang AG. (With a response by Jonathan Jackson, Monica Gerber and Carolyn Côté-Lussier, pp. 45-64).

by Leonidas Cheliotis

Over the last the three decades, punitiveness on the part of the state in Greece in the field of law and order has... more Over the last the three decades, punitiveness on the part of the state in Greece in the field of law and order has been on the ascent. The most obvious indicator of this has been the steeply rising use of imprisonment. A striking accompaniment of state punitiveness has been punitive public opinion. As soon as one broaches the question of why this is the case, however, one is confronted with at least two puzzling findings. First, the prevalence of crime has only risen modestly, in sharp disproportion to the high recorded levels of fear of criminal victimisation, of distrust in the police and judicial authorities, and of public punitiveness. And second, fear of criminal victimisation itself does not axiomatically bear a positive correlation with expressed public support for state punitiveness, though it does predict lack of confidence in criminal justice authorities. This chapter sets out to review these contradictions and the limits of available explanations. We begin by outlining the different ways in which Greece’s authoritarian past and the dictatorship of 1967-1974 in particular are thought to have influenced state and public punitiveness in the years that have followed. The next section summarises scholarly and commercial research on the levels and patterns of fear of crime and public punitiveness in contemporary Greece, as both distinct and interrelated themes. Attention is then drawn to the disconnect between crime and imprisonment rates as an illustrative example of the irrational foundations of state punitiveness and its degree of public support; a disconnect that is all the more prominent when examined with reference to the nationality of prisoners. Taking inspiration from political economies of punishment in jurisdictions elsewhere, the remainder of the chapter points to state deployment of a law-and-order discourse and the use of punishment as symbolic devices by which social insecurities, generated in large part by the state itself, are displaced and discharged onto suitably weak subsections of the population.

Violent accumulation: a postanarchist critique of property, dispossession, and the state of exception in neoliberalizing Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Violent accumulation: a postanarchist critique of property, dispossession, and the state of exception in neoliberalizing Cambodia. Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign... more Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign power, this article examines the dialectics of capitalism/primitive accumulation, civilization/savagery, and law/violence, which are argued to exist in a mutually reinforcing 'trilateral of logics'. In deciphering this triadic system, this article offers a radical (re)appraisal of capitalism, its legal process, and its civilizing effects, which together serve to mask the originary and ongoing violences of primitive accumulation and the property system. Such obfuscation suggests that wherever the trilateral of logics is enacted, so too is the state of exception called into being, exposing us all as potential homo sacer (life that does not count). Proceeding as a diagnostic assessment of sovereign power, where although signposted by Cambodia's contemporary experiences of violent land conflict, this article is not intended as a fine-grained empirical analysis. Instead, it forwards a theoretical dialogue where Cambodia's neoliberalizing processes offer a window on how sovereign power configures itself around the three discursive-institutional constellations (i.e., capitalism, civilization, and law) that form the trilateral of logics. Rather than formulating prescriptive solutions, the intention here is critique, where in particular it is argued that the preoccupation with strengthening Cambodia's legal system should not be read as a panacea for contemporary social ills, but as an imposition that serves to legitimize the violences of property.