Dear all,
Please find attached and below the conference call for the upcoming
conference on Punishment.
Looking forward to your contributions.
Please address questions to [log in to unmask]
Best,
Timm Sureau
International Max Planck Research School ‘Retaliation, Mediation and
Punishment’ (IMPRS-REMEP)
Conference Call ‘Punishment: Negotiating Society’
14 – 16 February, 2018
Venue: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle an der Saale,
Germany
Deadline for abstract submission: 17 December, 2017
REMEP is a multidisciplinary research school that examines the concepts
of retaliation, mediation and punishment from different theoretical and
methodological angles, with a focus on their role on peace and social
order. This conference looks at the social context of punishment.
We start from the premise that punishment involves not only a handful of
actors (i.e., members of the jurisdiction, perpetrators, victims, etc.)
but a complex array of actors, including families, kin groups, and other
polities that judge and punish; peers; associations; the audience(s)
(including the media audience and the (mass) public); the punished
(including, group-, surrogate- or proxy-punishment); and executive
bodies such as states and private prison managements. We see punishment
not only in the context of retaliation, deterrence, prevention,
incapacitation and rehabilitation/retribution, but also as a reflection
of society and as a constant negotiation of legitimacy, a renegotiation
of social order and control. Populism, neoliberalism, misogyny,
nationalism, and racism – to name just a few phenomena – are negotiated
in the context of punishment.
This conference will be anchored around three key issues:
1. Theory, legitimacy and history of punishment
In this section, we propose to concentrate on the development of a
coherent framework and theories of punishment in order to elaborate the
semantics of punishment. Topics within this include the purposes of
punishment in various legal systems and the historical shifts that
punishment has undergone. We further seek theoretical contributions
related to the informal, micro, local, national, international, and
global influences on punishment policies and especially the challenges
that emerge when these levels interact. Both historically and in the
present, challenges can be observed especially at the fringes of
normativities, it is here where legitimation is scrutinized. This
occurs, for instance, in cases in which the perpetrator is also a
victim, e.g. in the case of (former) child soldiers. A less obvious
example are trials that shift venues from local to national or to the
International Criminal Court, including changes of prisons and
favourable prison conditions. This can culminate in the evasion of
mundane punishment, replacing it with divine punishment by shifting the
discourse from a legal to a religious one. Secular, domestic, familial,
religious, cultural, and human rights discourses interact and demand for
a more complex understanding of criminality and punishment. Furthermore,
these interactions result in a need to find alternatives to criminal
procedures that include restorative justice.
2. Media audiences, mass publics, and group punishment
The contested term “penal populism” is at the centre of a debate that
questions the involvement of “the public” in the criminal justice
systems, based on the argument that the presence of the public tends to
encourage symbolic actions which disregard the proportionality principle
in favour of populist gain. Since populism targets political success in
elections, it potentially leads to preventive policies that are
detrimental to minority groups, increasing the likelihood of punishment
becoming a matter of living on the wrong side of the street or having
the wrong passport. Such populist measures further reduce the use of
risk prevention in the form of social programmes, instead giving
preference to repressive measures. We are seeking to unravel the
interaction of media, populists, and the public that is said to have
weakened the principle of equality before the law; simultaneously, we
propose to move away from this approach and analyse the justice system
now and in the past as a tool of and for governing and for the creation
of social order and the exertion of social control, benefitting some but
not necessarily all.
3. Interdisciplinary approach to punishment
To ensure different approaches to punishment and critical perspectives
on our law- and social-science-based analysis, we especially invite
scholars from other disciplines – for example, neuroscientists who are
working on understanding the relation of the brain to punishment and
behaviour and investigating changes in the frontal cortex that occur
during and before acts of crime. Such research puts questions of free
will, social control, deviant behaviour, and crime at the forefront.
Further, we invite political economists who are studying the effects,
benefits, and disadvantages of private prisons and home-confinement
technologies and how these increase the likelihood of mass
condemnations; and evolutionary anthropologists who include the
evolutionary effects of punishment in their studies.
Speakers will be invited by the organizers on the basis of submitted
abstracts. PhD students within the REMEP program are encouraged to
submit an abstract. Abstracts should not exceed 500 words and should be
submitted to Timm Sureau ([log in to unmask]) and Günther Schlee
([log in to unmask]) by December 17, 2017. Further questions should be
directed to the coordinator Timm Sureau.
A selection from submitted abstracts will be made by early January 2018.
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