Next week the CJRC will host a seminar with guest speakers Professor Raewyn Connell (University of Sydney) and Dr Jarrett Blaustein (Monash University) on Crime and Justice in the Global South.
- Date: Thursday 6 October 2016
- Time: 3.30-5pm
- Location: C412, Level 4 C Block, QUT Gardens Point Campus, 2 George St Brisbane 4000
- Register attendance by Tuesday 4 October 2016 to am.gurd@qut.edu.au
Abstracts:
“Decolonizing knowledge for changing criminology” – by Professor Raewyn Connell
In this talk Professor Connell will discuss a major problem in contemporary social science and its implications for criminology. This problem is the embedding of the modern research-based knowledge formation – which we profess in universities – in global structures of power, inequality and exploitation, from early-modern colonialism to contemporary neoliberal globalization. Professor Connell will explore the coloniality of knowledge and the major division of labour in the global economy of knowledge; then introduce the other knowledge formations operating in the contemporary world – indigenous knowledge, alternative universalisms, and southern theory. This analysis begins to define some tasks for the social sciences and specifically for criminology, which point towards a more democratic politics of knowledge. The presentation will illustrate these lines of thought with reflections on three issues: struggles for the land; the normality of state violence; and criminogenic economies.
“Ethical criminologists fly economy: process-oriented criminological engagement in the Global South” – by Dr. Jarrett Blaustein
Criminologists from the Global North increasingly find themselves engaging with policy makers and practitioners in the Global South. Some Northern criminologists are approached for their topical and methodological expertise while others proactively work to situate themselves in transnational policy communities for the purpose of maximising their research ‘impact’. International engagement may be prompted by a combination of idealistic and opportunistic factors but it is widely acknowledged that such activities can generate unanticipated harms. These harms can be understood in relation to the criminological, cultural and social consequences of knowledge transfer activities for recipient societies as well as the disempowerment or marginalisation of alternative, local understandings of the criminal question. While there are many pitfalls awaiting Northern criminologists undertaking or promoting their research in the Global South, Dr. Blaustein will draw upon the idea of ‘civic criminology’ to argue that it may still be possible to do so in an ethical and potentially beneficial manner. The process-oriented model of criminological engagement that Dr. Blaustein will advocate prioritises facilitating deliberations with different stakeholders, both international and local, that are in the words of political theorist John Dryzek, ‘authentic, inclusive and consequential’.
About the speakers:
Raewyn is best known internationally for studies on masculinity. She was one of the founders of this research field and her book Masculinities (1995, 2005) is the best known in the field. The concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ has been particularly influential and has attracted much debate. As well as doing some of the pioneering empirical work in this field, Raewyn has written extensively about its applications to education, health, and the reduction of violence.
Since the 1960s Raewyn has been concerned with the politics of intellectual life, gradually developing a sociology of intellectuals that focussed on the labour process of knowledge formation and circulation. Based mainly in Australia, and travelling extensively since the 1980s, Raewyn developed a critique of the Northern bias of mainstream social science and the colonial structures of knowledge. Her book Southern Theory (2007) discusses intellectuals and social theories from the global periphery and explores paths towards knowledge democracy on a world scale. More recently Raewyn has applied this approach to gender and masculinity, and to neoliberal politics and economics.
Jarrett Blaustein is a lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences and the Major Convener for Criminology. His research focuses on the relationship between economic development and security, international criminal justice policy mobilities, transnational policing and epistemological questions that relate to the study of criminology as a global discipline.
His research appears in leading criminology journals including Theoretical Criminology, Policing & Society and the European Journal of Criminology and in 2015 he published a sole-authored book titled Speaking Truths to Power: Policy Ethnography and Police Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina with Oxford University Press.
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