Contact programme coordinator: Andrew M.
Jefferson
Confinement, violence and reform are linked in ways that we have
yet to fully understand. This programme operates with a notion of
confinement which is broader than prison or detention but which
nevertheless functions to limit the programme's object of study to
practices that circumscribe people's possibilities, physically or
existentially and where torture or violence are implicated.
Examples of sites of confinement might be: prisons, military
facilities, re-education camps, asylum centres, and ghettos. These
sites are compelling examples of what Agamben has generically
classified as 'camps', sites where the fractured relationship
between states and citizen-subjects is constituted and
reconstituted (Agamben 2008, Wacquant 2001).
Confining institutions can be understood as sites where social
power is a central dynamic and where practices of power and
knowledge, discipline and resocialisation are key features.
(Casella 2007, Foucault 1979, Strange and Bashford 2003, Dikotter
and Brown 2007, Butler 2006).
Recognising that at stake within confining practices are issues
of autonomy, ontological (in)security, social power and the
individuals relation to the state the programme seeks to move
beyond classic theoretical understandings of confinement - both
criminology's focus on retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation
but also those studies which focus on social control and the
reproduction of relations of domination and resistance.
Following Casella (6) we seek to illuminate the ways in which
'multiple forms of subjectivity (are) created under confinement'.
Over time we hope to facilitate empirical studies that will examine
the relations between confinement, violence and reform as played
out in the practices and lives of institutions, reformers and
victims with potential focus being on both the logics of
confinement and intervention and people's embodied experiences of
confinement, violence and reform.
Projects:
Preventing torture and organised violence: a study of detention and
violence in Sierra Leone
Understanding prison reform - a study of entangled practices in
Sierra Leone, Kosovo and the Philippines.
Contact programme coordinator: Andrew M.
Jefferson