SJ Special Issue -- Call for Papers (January 15, 2017)

CALL FOR PAPERS

                                                                       

Special Issue of Social Justice on Punishment & History

Issue editor: Ashley Rubin (ashley.rubin@utoronto.ca)

Deadline: January 15, 2017

Periods of penal transition often encourage historical reflection, whether to understand the present situation of crisis and/or change, or to learn from past strategies and mistakes. As conversations about mass incarceration in the United States increasingly revolve around change, and societies around the world face distinctive sets of challenges in the field of punishment and social control, historical interrogations of punishment may be especially relevant.

This special issue of Social Justice on the topic of punishment and history will interrogate the role of history in the study of punishment, illuminating its utility and limitations for understanding penal change. In particular, we aim to identify the utility of historical examinations of punishment for understanding the current constellation of inequalities, (dis)empowerment, and suffering wrought by contemporary criminal justice policy and practice. Thus, rather than seeking the historical origins of mass incarceration, this issue examines how penal history, broadly intended, might provide lessons for understanding punishment as a social institution and its consequences for society, especially society’s most vulnerable members.

The issue will try to answer the following questions: What is the role of history in interdisciplinary, especially sociological or sociolegal, studies of punishment? What lessons do historical instances of punishment reveal for the current penal climate and current penal practices? How do conceptions of what constitutes punishment, or what punishment should accomplish, change across time and space? How do our own understandings of punishment shift when we examine these other conceptions? How does punishment’s impact on inequalities across class, race, gender, and sexuality change (or persist) in different temporal-spatial contexts?

This issue will rely on broad conceptions of punishment and history. Scholars are invited to examine some element or type of punishment, including policing and quasi-punishments (such as those imposed upon immigrants, welfare recipients, and others), whether imposed officially or unofficially, by state or non-state actors. There is no restriction on the time period examined, provided that some period before 2000 receives significant attention within the manuscript. Papers may be fully historical (e.g., examining only a past period with little relation to current practices) or more genealogical (e.g., discussing the relevance of past events to the present situation). Additionally, any methodology (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods) is welcome. Finally, papers may examine any geographical setting (e.g., there is no preference for US or North American settings and no restriction on local, national, or international units of analysis).

Papers should be 7,000 to 8,000 words. Please follow the format guidelines available on the Social Justice website (http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/contact-us/submissions/). Your submission should be emailed to Ashley Rubin at ashley.rubin@utoronto.ca by January 15, 2017.

Call for LSA panels on big data, risk and technology -- Updated Deadline, 10/1

From Rob Werth:

For the 2017 LSA meetings in Mexico City, we (Kelly Hannah-Moffat, Ben Fleury-Steiner, Paula Maurutto, and Robert Werth) are putting together a series of (2-3) panels for the thematic session “Punishment, society and technology: Exploring big data, risk and emerging techniques of crime control.”  We are looking for papers that engage with ongoing debates from a variety of disciplines, including criminology, sociolegal studies, anthropology, law, science and technology studies, and other interdisciplinary fields. We encourage both theoretically engaged submissions and empirically-based work. The panels will be co-sponsored by the Ethnography, Law & Society and Punishment & Society collaborative research networks. The papers included in these panels may be included in a special issue of a journal or edited collection.  If you believe your current project would make a good fit, please send us a title and short abstract (approx. 1 page) by October 1st via email to: Robert Werth at: rwerth@rice.edu .  Below is an outline of the thematic statement for this series of panels, and feel free to email questions to any one of us at:  hannah.moffat@utoronto.ca, p.maurutto@utoronto.ca, bfs@udel.edu, or rwerth@rice.edu. 

Punishment, society and technology:  Exploring big data, risk and emerging techniques of crime control

Desires to leverage technology and data in the governance of crime and security are increasingly pervasive. “Big data” analytics are contributing to the development of new understandings of risk, surveillance and crime control as well as producing new technologies which are being used by police, courts, prisons, and probation/parole agencies, as well as numerous non-state actors (ranging from halfway houses to credit card fraud departments). The sheer volume of data and advances in technological adaptations is extraordinary, and the ways in which these impact regimes of control remains opaque. Indeed, social scientists have not sufficiently explored, documented and theorized the effects of big data analytics and related technologies on institutions, communities and individuals. This series of panels will explore big data analytics and emergent/shifting technologies – examining their dispersal, operation and interaction with existing techniques, logics, and means for governing crime and security. We anticipate that papers will address some of the following questions: How are emergent big data analytics and rationalities intersecting with and impacting risk, surveillance, policing, punishment, crime prevention, law? Do new techniques, instruments and mechanisms reconfigure public-private partnerships, and are they blurring the boundaries between the two? How do these technologies and analytics affect existing race, class, gender, and other inequalities historically endemic to systems of justice?  How do ‘practitioners’ understand, embrace, alter or subvert such technologies?  How do these technologies constitute the rights of individuals in conflict with the law?  How do activist and advocacy groups perceive, contest, and use big data technologies? 

Due date: October 1^st

Call for LSA panels on big data, risk and technology

Posted c/o Rob Werth:

For the 2017 LSA meetings in Mexico City, we (Kelly Hannah-Moffat, Ben Fleury-Steiner, Paula Maurutto, and Robert Werth) are putting together a series of (2-3) panels for the thematic session “Punishment, society and technology: Exploring big data, risk and emerging techniques of crime control.”  We are looking for papers that engage with ongoing debates from a variety of disciplines, including criminology, sociolegal studies, anthropology, law, science and technology studies, and other interdisciplinary fields. We encourage both theoretically engaged submissions and empirically-based work. The panels will be co-sponsored by the Punishment & Society and Ethnography, Law & Society collaborative research networks. The papers included in these panels may be included in a special issue of a journal or edited collection.  If you believe your current project would make a good fit, please send us a title and short abstract (approx. 1 page) by September 21st via email to: Robert Werth at: rwerth@rice.edu .  Below is an outline of the thematic statement for this series of panels, and email questions to any one of us at:  hannah.moffat@utoronto.ca, p.maurutto@utoronto.ca, bfs@udel.edu, or rwerth@rice.edu. 

Punishment, society and technology:  Exploring big data, risk and emerging techniques of crime control

Desires to leverage technology and data in the governance of crime and security are increasingly pervasive. “Big data” analytics are contributing to the development of new understandings of risk, surveillance and crime control as well as producing new technologies which are being used by police, courts, prisons, and probation/parole agencies, as well as numerous non-state actors (ranging from halfway houses to credit card fraud departments). The sheer volume of data and advances in technological adaptations is extraordinary, and the ways in which these impact regimes of control remains opaque. Indeed, social scientists have not sufficiently explored, documented and theorized the effects of big data analytics and related technologies on institutions, communities and individuals. This series of panels will explore big data analytics and emergent/shifting technologies – examining their dispersal, operation and interaction with existing techniques, logics, and means for governing crime and security. We anticipate that papers will address some of the following questions: How are emergent big data analytics and rationalities intersecting with and impacting risk, surveillance, policing, punishment, crime prevention, law? Do new techniques, instruments and mechanisms reconfigure public-private partnerships, and are they blurring the boundaries between the two? How do these technologies and analytics affect existing race, class, gender, and other inequalities historically endemic to systems of justice?  How do ‘practitioners’ understand, embrace, alter or subvert such technologies?  How do these technologies constitute the rights of individuals in conflict with the law?  How do activist and advocacy groups perceive, contest, and use big data technologies? 

  

Special Issue of Punishment & Society: Call for Papers!

The international peer-reviewed journal Punishment & Society published its first issue in 1999, at a time when punitive politics and populism was reaching an apex globally, and when longstanding penal logics were being supplanted by novel ones. In his inaugural editorial, founding editor David Garland characterized punishment as “one of the most pressing problems of our age,” that called for a distinct intellectual outlet for scholarship on punishment. “The new centrality of penal politics and the changing configuration of the field, together with the growth over the last two decades of a vigorous and impressive body of new penological scholarship made it seem timely and important to establish a forum for this kind of discussion and debate.” The journal has since established itself as the premiere international publication on issues of punishment and penal control.

Punishment & Society will publish a special 20th anniversary issue of the journal in Fall 2018. We seek submissions for the 20th anniversary issue that are in conversation with the many penal developments that have been highlighted and debated over the last two decades in the journal. Interested scholars should submit a 750- to 1000-word summary (including references) of an original empirical or theoretical article to be considered for inclusion in the 20th anniversary issue. The summary should identify the particular line of inquiry, as previously featured in the journal, that will propel the manuscript, as well as the original empirical and theoretical contributions of the proposed manuscript.

Authors of selected submissions will be invited to a small workshop to refine their manuscripts, facilitated by current and former editors of the journal. The workshop will take place in Spring 2017 at the University of California, Irvine.

Interested authors should submit summaries of proposed manuscripts to current editors Mona Lynch (lynchm@uci.edu) and Kelly Hannah-Moffat (hannah.moffat@utoronto.ca) by Friday, November 18, 2016. Authors of selected proposals will be notified no later than early January, 2017. Full manuscript drafts (approximately 8000 words, including notes, tables, and references) will be due in March, 2017, in advance of the workshop.

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