https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie en-us 2020-09-28 09:17:53 UTC 2024-08-14 08:38:13 UTC hello@padlet.com B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/797194190 Mcvie, S (2009) Criminal Careers and Young People, In: Barry, M & McNeill, F. Youth Offending and Youth Justice, London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd
The age-crime curve, which peaks at around 18 years old for males and females, is described as one of the brute facts of criminology. There is a debate about whether the curve is due to an increase in frequency in offending or prevalence. But I think when looking at this with Fassin’s argument in mind this curve perhaps shows who the police are targeting instead of a trend in offending behaviour. Facts like this puts stigma onto a certain population group which gives police a target to focus on. This can then lead to 18 year olds ‘anticipating police action’ which is described in Han’s (2017) article. Furthermore, by stigmatising young people it gives individuals a higher chance of being ‘sucked into’ the criminal justice system and having a longer ‘criminal career’ compared to if the stigma was put on a higher age group.]]> 2020-10-02 10:31:36 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/797194190 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/797578660 This TV show (based on a book) is about Jacob, a teenage boy, who is charged with first degree murder of his classmate. The show follows the family and the effects the murder has on them. Jacob’s Dad, Andy is a lawyer and Andy’s dad is a convicted murderer. As the show goes on Jacob’s mother loses faith in him and goes crazy with the torment of not knowing if he committed the murder or not, which we never find out. The story opens with Jacob’s father saying he believes in the system and just wants the truth to come out but the show illustrates how the system does not get to the truth. The same can be said for Sarah Koenig’s podcast, where the justice system did not get to the truth of Anna’s case.]]> 2020-10-02 13:38:01 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/797578660 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/802519465 Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist and activist. This documentary captures the migration crisis across many different countries. One key moment that I remember is when Ai Weiwei Is having a conversation with a refugee and switches passports with them. It is quite striking how this would change someone’s life and the power attached to some passports over others. And then when reading Khosravi’s paper, he talks about his ‘second-grade’ passport because it was photocopied, rather than a ‘look-alike’ passport sold by backpackers. He was worried about his passport not being believable but his smuggler said his passport would be overlooked with a bribe. So whilst passports hold a lot of power, money can override any weaknesses a passport may have.]]> 2020-10-05 10:42:53 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/802519465 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/804396131 “The message from the visceral scenes [wild fires] unfolding in the western US is clear: climate displacement isn’t something that happens only outside of our borders.” I think this is interesting to take into account when thinking about compassion, like in Ticktin’s paper she asks “what conditions evoke compassion and why and what hierarchies are reproduced by it?” (P44) With medical humanitarianism compassion is easily evoked because of the physical and visible nature of sickness. With climate displacement the bodily suffering is not as visible so compassion might be harder to evoke for these migrants, and so are placed further down the moral hierarchy. However, the migrants in the news article are from within the borders so perhaps they will evoke more compassion regardless compared to any kind of migrant outside of the border.]]> 2020-10-05 18:47:24 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/804396131 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/828120211 Blackout Tuesday was a very prominent part of the Black Lives Matter movement this year and I think it is interesting to think about protest and resistance on social media. Khalid Abdalla in ‘The Square’ documentary filmed parts of the revolution in Egypt and posted it on youtube and he spoke to news stations in the US to try to get people’s attention outside of Egypt. So I think social media has drastically changed how protests function, because of its instant nature and how easily and far information can spread. It’s partly why BLM has gained so much traction this year compared to other years. But at the same time there is a slight danger in social media because blackout Tuesday then got a lot of criticism because it flooded the hashtags on instagram meaning information about live protests could not reach as many people. So social media can be self-sabotaging, but perhaps that is more to do with the nature of protests in that overcoming power is messy; as the documentary showed when Mubarak resigned it was not the end of the revolution and the protestors then became fragmented because of religion.]]> 2020-10-14 10:19:54 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/828120211 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/847884041 Similarly, over the summer during lockdown there was a lot of protests about the climate emergency by Extinction Rebellion activists. Instead of sit-ins like in ‘The Square’ they have been staging ‘die-ins’ among other actions like preventing distribution of newspapers for inaccurate reporting and meditating outside banks that lend money to fossil fuel companies. By looking at these acts of resistance as a diagnostic of power (Abu-Lughod 1990) one can see the power in newspapers and the information they are spreading as well as banks and how they ‘give power’ to environmentally damaging companies by investing in them. Or as one activist says, “I realised anything I was going to do in my personal life wasn’t going to cut it, the system is the greatest problem”, which shows her personal acts of resistance are futile given the power of ‘the system’.
On another note, crime and protests is an interesting overlap. The Egyptian revolution saw a lot of police brutality against civilians and rebels, and in the first week of September “Hundreds of XR supporters have been arrested - believed to be significantly fewer than in previous ‘rebellions’” (the Guardian). This supports Durkheim’s argument that “we do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it” (as cited in Fassin 2018:2) and so this shows the logic behind Chidi Oti-Obihara’s speech calling for ecocide to be made a crime (the Guardian). And reiterates where power lies; if ecocide is made a crime then change is more likely to happen.]]> 2020-10-21 08:13:56 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/847884041 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/861440404 I think disability and disabilism encapsulates many of the themes from this week’s readings. 
There has been a shift from the medical model of disability (which places the problem with the individual) to the social model of disability (which places the problem with the environment). This relates to Paul Farmer’s work on structural violence particularly because of how discrimination towards people with disabilities relates to much larger (structural) problems and its ‘two-way link to poverty’ (linked article). 
The huge growth in prenatal testing and selective abortion in recent decades has increasingly put the choice of who should and should not be born in the hands of the parents. This relates to the idea of sovereignty in Mbembe’s ‘necropolitics’ as well as Foucault’s work on biopower because of the division of people into who must live or die. However, with the social model of disability in mind we can see how everyday struggles of people with disabilities is similar to the ‘death-worlds’ Mbembe talks about as unique forms of social existence and living conditions. ]]> 2020-10-26 12:48:07 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/861440404 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/861509330 “Abortions carried out when the foetus is malformed, which accounted for 98% of legal terminations last year, have now been outlawed”
Leading on from disability and disabilism, abortion is one example that shows how violence is symbolically at the heart of politics:
Women’s rights activists argue for women’s autonomy and freedom and their right to choice, whereas disability rights activists are against selective abortion because of an impairment to the foetus(previous linked article). On the one hand denying women’s rights is structurally oppressive and violent. On the other hand abortion is a physically violent act upon the foetus and contributes to disabilism which is structurally and sometimes physically violent. There’s many different layers of violence evident here and it affects political decisions and political reason differently.
This news article also encapsulates many other week’s topics such as protest and resistance. Citizenship because of who is or is not allowed to be born which reflects desired citizenry values, but also whose rights are favoured; women’s rights or disabled people’s rights. Abortion and this news article also relates to week 2 about crime because most of previously legal terminations are now illegal which shows how criminalisation is used as a tool to mould citizenship. ]]> 2020-10-26 13:06:55 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/861509330 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/879976043 2020-11-01 14:18:21 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/879976043 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/882939366 In Bringa and Christie’s film they do not show any of the physical acts of violence from the civil war in Bosnia, instead they focus on the affects this violence has on the everyday lives of those in a village. This film portrays the importance of showing and understanding the consequences of violence and I think Covid-19 demonstrates this as well. With Covid-19, like the film not showing the physical violence, this virus is not visible to the naked eye and its cellular violence can not be seen, however, the consequences of this ‘invisible’ virus have impacted the everyday lives of nearly the whole population. And some of these consequences lead to more violence, for example, the increased reports of domestic violence during the first lockdown in March. It is important not to focus on just the physical acts of violence but also its consequences and its impact on the ‘everyday’.]]> 2020-11-02 16:25:49 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/882939366 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/903468544 2020-11-09 09:31:28 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/903468544 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/903484467  The father of the terrorist explains how his son “had slipped away from them gradually, becoming withdrawn. By his early 20s, he had fallen into the influence of radicals who he followed on the Internet. He began setting his alarm for 4am to go to the mosque, stopped wearing ‘European’ clothes, and eventually dropped out of a law degree.” But this process of radicalisation is not always the case as Devji (2020) shows.
Interestingly, the father of one of the victims of the terrorist, Salines, believes he has absolutely no reason to blame the father for his son’s crimes and says that “what we are, above all else, is two fathers who have both lost a child.”  This shows how he was able to recognise the similarity in social conditions they both found themselves in, and thus a similar or common humanity among them.

]]> 2020-11-09 09:37:58 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/903484467 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/905618050 “Liberalism’s wilful limitation on our imagination, combined with the chronic suffering of working people under capitalism, provides the causal backdrop for the diverse and often contradictory populism of our time.” This supports Kalb’s (2009) advocation for the “need to uncover the hidden histories of subalternity that free the particular alienation’s of the resenting classes in their volatile dialectic with the histories of neoliberal transnationalization by which they are shaped” (p.208).]]> 2020-11-09 18:54:10 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/905618050 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/905694495 This supports how the “Manichaeans distinctions between friend and foe ... are the hallmarks of populism” (Samet 2019:2) because populism remains undefeated after the 2020 US election did not see a landslide win by Biden.

]]> 2020-11-09 19:08:56 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/905694495 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/905737885 This article talks about how “the last refuge of the populist - the politics of fear” is being deployed by both Priti Patel and Boris Johnson. And shows how “spreading fear is the politics of denial ... a manipulative project to immobilise public debate. It has long lain at the origins of populism.” This relates to the political ontology of threat and how fear can legitimate facts and subsequent actions.

]]> 2020-11-09 19:17:33 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/905737885 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/1013950530 This helps to understand how violence is legitimated. By choosing to act violently because of a perceived fearful threat, the danger of this threat is  “legitimated by the affective fact of fear” (p.54). This is particularly poignant with the events of September 11 as Massumi argues that it was an “excess-threat-generating actual event that has perhaps done more than any other threat-o-genic source to legitimate preemptive politics” (p.50). ]]> 2020-12-13 18:15:18 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/1013950530 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/1018309115 This article supports Stavrakakis’s (2014) paper where he talks about the struggle between alternative narratives to unpopular policies can trigger popular mobilisations that are then denounced as populist (p.505). As such this article argues that “The kind of ‘anti-populism’ put forward by Biden does not represent a lasting response to right wing populism ... the phenomenon by which opponents of populism are drawn together in a temporary alliance to ‘defeat’ populism.” .]]> 2020-12-15 00:08:53 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/1018309115 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/1018321032 Populism is not a recent phenomenon but “the appearance of populist movements and leaders has multiplied since the moment social networks really took off in the late 90s.” This article argues that this is because of its “simplistic structure of social networks, they reaffirm our beliefs and become an echo chamber, a bubble that filters what we read” that gives ‘to the point’ messages as opposed to long detailed explanatory articles. This means that important details are missed and can gravely misinform people’s understanding. However, Anthropology, with its long ethnographies and thick description can help to rectify this as an alternative.]]> 2020-12-15 00:15:28 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/1018321032 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/1018331933 Whilst a previous padlet criticised social media and it’s role in populism and increasing polarisation, this article shows how social media can be beneficial in politics by contributing to voter-turn out.
Patricia Funk, political economist, posits “that one of the reasons people vote is to be seen by neighbours as they perform their civic duty; by contrast, mail-in voting “renders the voting act unobservable,” thereby taking away this social incentive. ... social media gave america a socially distanced opportunity to make voting observable again. And voters could influence their friends to vote too]]> 2020-12-15 00:20:57 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/1018331933 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/1018354579 One of the consequences of violence is more violence. After George Floyd’s death there were many riots and protests in outrage. This article asks, “how do acts of violence call attention to the wrong perpetrated on George Floyd?” And concludes that resorting to violence does not achieve a sustainable and helpful outcome and that only Love can drive out Hate and break “the chain reaction of evil”. This is interesting when thinking about the cyclical nature of violence and preempting violence.]]> 2020-12-15 00:31:40 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/1018354579 B110088 https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/1025026944 This article supports Walley’s (2017) paper about how class demographics Can be hugely reductionist. Walley shows how the “news media’s descriptions of Trump supporters involved a continual slippage from white ‘non-college degree holders’ to ‘working class’.” (P.232). And this article argues that “America’s real working class is increasingly the opposite of Trump’s base - struggling, female and diverse.”]]> 2020-12-16 17:52:09 UTC https://padlet.com/b110088/toxzz63n0q0vbyie/wish/1025026944