Australia's Role in the Southernizing Criminology Movement

What Is The Role That Australia And Other Developed Countries Has In The Southernizing Criminology Movement? Presented by: Prof. Carrington Date: 21 April 2021 Northern Metropolitans Thinking - The bulk of the world's academics, journals, resources and universities reside in the English speaking countries in the Global North (Connell et al. 2017: 21). - Social science has succeeded in representing itself as universal, timeless and placeless (Connell, 2007). Yet it is not. - Northern theories that make universal knowledge claims, based on northern specificities - are Anglocentric - northern-centric – western-centric & terra-centric - Peripheral worlds, if investigated, are investigated from the lens of the cities from the global north. - Criminology shares these northern/metropolitan biases. Connell (2007) on Conceptualizing The Global South as a Metaphor for Power - To direct attention to periphery-center relations of power - not to divide the world up into geographic categories. Metaphor for power relations - The "south" refers to the peripheral voices located anywhere in the world, rather than in any particular geographical location. - To highlight that social theory can be developed by & from the periphery - not just the centers of power. - That social thought is positioned, fluid, historical not universal, fixed or timeless In Southern Criminology (2019), The South Is Conceptualized A Metaphor For Power. - For us 'the South' is a social construct that serves a number of purposes. It highlights and encourages autonomous knowledge-making in the Global South and advances claims for a more inclusive criminology. It provides a conceptual frame for resisting Northern hegemony in the production of knowledge and encouraging its on-going democratization. Just as importantly, it seeks to explore and analyses global processes that shaped the worlds of both South and North and provides a vehicle for ensuring the events and relations of empire are inserted back into history and contemporary analysis and understanding. (Carrington et al. 2019:8) Skulls Taken From Australia, New Zealand And Asia For Lombroso's Collection As 'Evidence' Of Atavism - The global south was harvested as a data mine - as evidence of evolution from the uncivilized (largely southern) to the civilized (largely northern) world - The concept of Atavism coincided with Darwinism, racial 'science' and Eugenics Academic Institutionalization Of Criminology As A Northern/Metropolitan Enterprise, Simply Assumes A Transnational Generalizability - "Peace-time criminology ignores the historical role of state violence, empire, war and colonization in nation-building. - Assumes a domestic focus-and that crime occurs with a nation state - Narrows the criminological gaze to the study of minor transgressions of the major metropoles of the global north & their measurement - Terra-centric - Urban-centric - Male-centric Criminologist Of The Global South Have Tended To: - Accept their subordinate role in the global hierarchy of knowledge - Transfer concepts and theories from the North to the South and West to East. - Reproduce the hegemony of Northern metropolitan thinking. - See the south as a data mine for testing northern-centric theories - Examples • Strain theory applied in China • Penalty Thesis • Assumes punishment patterns follow the US • Bio-Social Life-course Criminology neo-Lombroso Conceptualizing Southern as a metaphor & Salve for the biases of metropolitan thinking in criminology (Hughs, 2020:194) - There are enclaves of the south in the north (i.e. catastrophic rates of homicide of African Americans in the southern states of US-cities where African slaves were sold in millions) - Lingering impact of British colonization of Ireland and Scotland - And enclaves of the north in the south (i.e. lingering effects of settler colonialism in across Pacific Islands. Australia and India - Colonizers not all anglophone [mainly British & American, but also French, Spanish and Portuguese], - Calls for a more sophisticated understanding of the legacies of colonization in criminology. What Are Southern Criminologies? - Southern criminologist challenge the hierarchy of knowledge that privileges the Anglophone metropolitan centers of the global north as sites for the production of theory and knowledge. - Aims not to denounce but to re-orient, not to oppose but to modify, not to displace but to augment - Aims to bridge and democratize the toolbox of criminological concepts, theories and methods - Is a theoretical, empirical and political project of retrieval - A new way of harnessing and expanding the experiences and knowledges with multiple voices from the periphery - Southern criminology expands the repertoire of criminologist (including critical, green, queer, Latino, and feminist criminology) beyond their heavily laden northern gaze - Southernizing projects reinsert empire & the violence of colonialism back into the analysis of historical and contemporary problems of crime Southern Criminology Shares Concerns With Post- Colonist Theories - Southern criminology shares with post-colonist theory a number of common concerns about the hegemony of a global hierarchy of knowledge • Based on knowledge specific to largely English speaking countries of the north Atlantic world that 'Orientalizes' the other • Both theoretical perspectives question the false universalism of social science, and seek to root out the gaps, the blind spots, the biases of dominant knowledge systems. • Empire, imperialism and colonization are marked absences in much of social science. Both perspectives aim to reinsert historical legacies of colonialism and empire back into discourse and social science • Mainstream criminology with its focus on the metropolis - deploys disorganization theory, strain theory, & other theories to demonize 'problem' populations - white washing the historical stains of colonialism, slavery, structured inequality which neutralizes the racialization of crime. Both perspectives see this as deeply problematic. What Differentiates Southern Criminology From De- Colonial/Post- Colonial Criminologist? - Explicit rejection of orientalism, binary categories of thought that pit East against West (i.e. Said 1979 On Orientalism) reproduces futile binaries in the same way as metropolitan thought - Eschews oppositionist (i.e. As embedded in concepts of 'toxic rectification') that condemns most of the world's academics as 'ethnocentric' - Sidesteps the romanticization of "the other" based on religious identity, indigeneity or ethnicity (Cain 2000). - Adopts a conceptual pragmatism and realism that accepts that colonialist thought is so embedded in social science it is not possible to completely disentangle it (Chakrabarty 2007). - Abandons the search for a pure post-colonial knowledge system as a utopian quest - Border epistemology aspires for cognitive justice (de Sousa Santos 2014) - The projects of southern crime are pragmatic, multifarious, aim to decenter, democratize and pluralize knowledge by injecting it with innovation, research and theory - The projects of southernizing criminology do not set out to denigrate the contribution of northern criminology but to re-focus it in a more useful way - Seeks to build epistemological bridges across global divides - encourage meaningful global collaborations but on a level playing field - challenges the unequal epistemological grid Southernizing Criminology: - Southernizing of criminology is not a new narrative, criminological brand, or destination - Rather a journey toward cognitive justice (de Sousa) a way of harnessing and expanding the experiences, biographies and knowledges from the periphery, - By pluralizing, democratizing and de-centering knowledge production by injecting it with theory and innovation from the periphery - An open-ended journey inclusive of multiple subaltern voices including Indigenous, ethnic, marginalized and gendered voices, that seek to recover the historical violence of colonization and its on-going legacies - Encourages new collaborations across the Global South and those of the Global North who share a vision for democratizing knowledge - The journey emancipates scholars from deference to, imported concepts, theories and methods that underpin dominant anglophone criminological paradigms - A journey with unknown destinations & open invitation to all regardless of gender, language, race, ethnicity, class, geo- location, religion etc. - Hybridized concept of subjectivity as fluid (opposite to identity politics and fixed identities tied to ethnicity or race)