University:
University College London
Course:
LAWS0035 | Criminology
Academic year:

2024
Views:

482

Pages:

6
Author:

Nam B.

Why Southernizing Criminology Presented by: Mrs. Sozzo Date: 1 March 2021 'Southern criminology' - Southern criminology' as a collective project that tries to problematize, resist and change the relations of hierarchy, dependency and subordination between the Global North and South in the production of knowledge in the complex and polyvalent field of the social studies on the 'criminal question'. (Carrington, Hogg and Sozzo, 2016; Carrington, Hogg, Scott and Sozzo, 2018; Carrington, Hogg, Scott, Walters and Sozzo, 2019). Inspirations And Intersections - Important sources of inspiration in the contemporary debate in social theory (Connell, 2007; De Souza Santos, 2014; 2018). - Several key precedents in the field during the emergence and consolidation of critical criminology (Del Olmo, 1975; 1981; 1990; Cohen, 1982; 1988; Sumner, 1982; Beirne, 1983; Zaffaroni, 1988; 1989; 1993; Cain, 2000). - In the last two decades, growing crucial interventions related to 'countercolonial'/'postcolonial'/'decolonial' criminology (Agozino, 2003; 2004; 2005; 2018; Brown, 2002; 2005; 2014; 2017; 2018; Blagg, 2008; Medina, 2011; Cunnen, 2008; 2010; 2011;; Moosavi, 2018; Blagg and Anthony, 2019). Strong levels of intersection and possibilities of fertilization. - Other recent precedents that anticipated some points raised in our own work (Aas, 2012; Zaffaroni and Codino, 2015). - My own participation is related to my previous research on the travels of ideas about the 'criminal question' from the Global North to Latin America, in the academic and policy fields, both in the past and the present (Sozzo, 2006; 2011; 2014; Melossi, Sozzo and Sparks, 2011), that has been crucially enrich through this involvement (Sozzo, 2017; 2020a; 2020b; 2021). Debate - Relevant engagement and discussions of these ideas, both in its political and scientific dimensions, in the last few years. (Brown, 2018; Cunnen, 2018; Fonseca, 2018; Travers, 2019; Moosavi, 2019; Rodriguez Goyes, 2018, 2019; Cavalcanti, 2020; Burke, 2020) The South: Meanings And Possibilities - The long history of binaries that divide the world and establish a term as <> -the Global North as a normative benchmark for the Global South. The material element of limitations of opportunities and resources to do research. (Sozzo, 2006; 2014; 2021) - Beyond the academic field: the strong role of transfers of institutions and practices of crime control between the Global North and South, both in the past and in the present -from the prison to the plea bargaining, from the police to the neighborhoods watch (Sozzo, 2011 2020a; 2020b; Melossi, Sparks and Sozzo, 2011; Newburn and Jones, 2019; Newburn, Jones and Blaustein, 2017; 2019) Challenges And Resistances Throughout The History Of Criminology In The Global South - Throughout the history of criminology in the South, however, it is possible to find moments of theoretical invention by local intellectuals born out of exploring local problems and contexts, as well as adaptations of imported elements which result in real 'metamorphoses' of vocabularies from the North with the aim of making them fit the problems and contexts in the South. (Sozzo, 2006; 2011; 2017; Carrington et al. 2019, 20, 189-192) - The example of the discussion of dependency and subordination in this field of knowledge during the birth of critical criminology in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. The work by Eugenio R. Zaffaroni (1988; 1989; 1993) and his proposal of a "marginal criminological realism". - There are also examples of South-South or even South- North diffusion which should be identified and explored though recognizing they are relatively exceptional and weak in comparison with North-South fluxes. - An important task for 'southernizing' criminology is the in-depth exploration of these stories in the remote and recent past in order to unearth moments of inventiveness and innovation, identifying its conditions and dynamics as source of inspiration for contemporary research. Southernizing' Criminology - Southern criminology' as an expression that seem to be proposing opening up a new branch within the already highly fragmented field of criminology (Ericson and Carriere, 1994; Ericson, 2003; Sparks and Loader, 2011). We have explicitly opposed this possibility, as we believed to be counterproductive in several ways. (Carrington et al., 2016, 1, 15; 2018, 11; 2019, 25, 181, 188). - However, it is worth recognizing that it is the expression in itself that encourage this type of interpretation, which therefore makes it necessary to find other ways of presenting these arguments in order to avoid this kind of reception. We have actually moved forward in this direction by elaborating on the idea of 'southernizing criminology' (Carrington et al. 2019, 181-193). - Both, researchers working in the South and in the North, should turn each of the ways of thinking and acting that produces and reproduces hierarchy, dependency and subordination in the production of criminological knowledge into an object of exploration and critical reflection. - In order to avoid reproducing these ways of thinking and acting, Southern researchers should build their own research agenda, based on a deep encounter with their own context, past and present, by different means, identifying their own problems and constructing their own perspectives - Strong coincidences with 'decolonial', 'postcolonial', 'counter-colonial' perspectives: the aim of situating at the center of our gaze the history and present of imperialism and colonization and its multiple effects in the ways of thinking in the field of criminology as well as in the institutions and practices of crime control in contemporary societies. - Some corners of contemporary post- colonial/decolonial/counter-colonial approaches appeal to a sort of purification of our gaze from traces of Northern theories and methodologies, falling into a sort of dualism that includes an evocation of a local tradition of thought that could be 'reconstructed' beyond the processes and legacies of colonization and neo colonization. This local tradition would be the source for building in the South our own agenda and perspectives. - This could be reasonably possible in relation to some problems and questions, as has been recently pursued in important works in relation to 'indigenous criminology' (Cunneen and Tauri, 2016; Cunnen, 2018). - However, there are constantly the risks of 'romanticization', of reproducing binary categories of thought that has been created by metropolitan thinking and generating oppositionist that produces a closure and translates into a form of 'evangelism' (Carlen, 2011; Loader and Sparks, 2011). - In relation to other problems and questions this seems much more problematic. The example of contemporary prison governance dynamics in Latin America (Sozzo, 2020a; Sozzo and Navarro, 2020; Avila and Sozzo, 2020). - In relation to these problems and questions, the southernizing perspective incarnates a less ambitious and radical attitude. - To discuss problems, arguments and concepts produced in the Global North taking into consideration their 'embeddedness'/'situatedness' in past and present contexts and processes and to de-center its use in order to understand local problems and contexts in the South. 'Provincializing Europe' and 'conceptual pragmatism', departing from a thick 'encounter with the empirical moment' in the South as a source of inventiveness and innovation. (Chackarabarty, 2000; Melossi, 2001; Nelken, 2011; Aas, 2012; Brown, 2018) - Southernizing criminology and the objective of the construction of a balanced and horizontal dialogue between knowledge producers in the Global North and South, in pursuit of