European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social
Control
41st Annual Conference
Critical Criminology
in a Changing World - Tradition & Innovation
29 August – 1
September 2013
University of
Oslo, Norway
CALL FOR
PAPERS
With the formation of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and
Social Control in the early 1970s, the aim was to establish an alternative
critical criminology forum. The group’s founders sought not just to cover
topics marginalised or ignored by mainstream, administrative and official
criminology but to establish a new network that could support, and provide
solidarity with, emerging social movements. Recognising the dominant influence
of Anglo-American criminology and other related disciplines such as sociology,
this new forum was to be characterised by a distinct European focus. This sense
of place was to be significant on a further level, linking the conference theme
with the conference location and offering support to local political activists,
for example through press releases and resolutions and sometimes even joining
them on demonstrations. Shaped by an unequivocal commitment to social justice;
inspired by the radical activism of the Norwegian prisoner rights movement, the
French mental patients' union and the German radical lawyers' group; and
building on the model of the York Deviancy Conferences in England in the early
1970s, the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control held its
first conference in Italy in 1973.
The European Group last convened a conference in Norway in 1988, nearly twenty five years ago. The two decades that have passed since this time have witnessed great changes in modern society, for example relating to globalisation, migration and the development and use of communication technology and social media. Whilst these changes have had many positive effects, they have also generated many human casualties and wreaked havoc in the natural world. New technologies, for example, may be used to increase the surveillance of people under the pretext of protection, for example, against a narrowly (and often ethnically) defined notion of terrorism. Recent developments have also engendered changes in the ways in which crimes are perceived and what role the concepts of harm should play in such analysis. Included in the broadening of criminology as a discipline is the recognition of the fact that not only humans are victims, but also the natural environment and the other species which inhabit the earth. For example, the fact that more people die from air pollution than those who are victims of traditional street crime, has generated new perspectives, in green criminology. Green criminology is but one example of a new criminological perspective to which can be added cultural criminology, post-colonial criminology, queer criminology, gothic criminology and feminist criminology, alongside other important developments in related disciplines such as urban studies, anthropology and geography. As a consequence, there are also changes in terms of what the ‘criminological imagination’ entails and the role it should play in understanding and counteracting the multitude of harms people and non human species are subject to.
The conference organisers particularly welcome papers which empirically
and theoretically discuss the ways in which those studying deviance and social
control have traditionally responded to challenges in society and how and in
which ways ‘criminology’ is challenged today.
For example, papers could engage with questions concerning how these
challenges should be met in the development of new theoretical perspectives?
what are the limits to critical criminology? and what, if anything, defines critical
analysis in criminology?
We welcome papers on a range of issues connected to
the theme of Critical Criminology in a Changing World - Tradition & Innovation.
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