Mustering the Armies of Compassion in Philadelphia

The role of faith-based organizations in meeting the most pressing needs in America's poorest neighborhoods has been the subject of national debate over the past several years. However, few reports have carefully examined these organizations' performance. Mustering the Armies of Compassion in Philadelphia takes a detailed look at a group of faith-based organizations running a literacy program, Youth Education for Tomorrow (YET). Mustering examines the programs' start-up, relatively consistent classroom results, and their many reactions to partnership with a secular organization. Ultimately, the YET Center program shows that with a clear model and sufficient support and oversight, a large and diverse group of independent faith-based organizations can collectively provide a demonstrably effective service

‘All knowledge begins with the senses’ : Toward a sensory criminology

Visual criminology has established itself as a site of criminological innovation. Its ascendance, though, highlights ways in which the ‘ocularcentrism’ of the social sciences is reproduced in criminology. We respond, arguing for attention to the totality of sensorial modalities. Outlining the possible contours of a criminology concerned with smell, taste, sound, and touch—along with the visual—the paper describes moments in which the sensory intersects with various phenomena of crime, harm, justice, and power. Noting the primacy of the sensorial in understanding environmental harm, we describe an explicitly sensory green criminology while also suggesting the ways that heightened criminological attention to the nonvisual senses might uncover new sites and modes of knowledge and a more richly affective criminology

Conflicto, ambiente y transición. Colombia, ecología y turismo después de la desmovilización

In 2016, as Colombia’s left-wing guerrilla FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo) began the demobilization that had long been the goal of peace talks in the country, the group left its camps in the forests and mountains and began to relinquish its arms. While demobilization and the ensuing peace accords brought renewed hope that after decades of armed conflict, the country could imagine different political and social relations—as well as new ecological and economic conditions—multinational corporations filled the “void” left by FARC-EP forces.  While corporate interests in Colombia’s natural resources predated the demobilization, for the most part, extractive processes were restricted—and, in some cases, prevented—by the dynamics of the armed conflict. In 2016, however, immediately following the demobilization, deforestation in Colombia jumped 44%. Indeed, in the transitional demobilization period, huge swaths of the country have been and continue to be opened for economic development. Thus, while the environment is often a victim in armed conflict, in Colombia, conflict contributed to the preservation of some areas and demobilization and peacemaking—and subsequently development—have resulted in environmental degradation and despoliation. Among the forms of development that have emerged in Colombia (and, we note, in other post-conflict contexts), “ecotourism” has risen quickly to the fore.  While ecotourism—a form of tourist travel that suggests visitor immersion-in and engagement-with the natural environment and ecology—may offer some promise, it should be viewed with caution because it imposes a certain relationship between humans and nonhuman environment and serves to perpetuate the logics of capitalism.En 2016 la guerrilla colombiana de izquierda FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo) inició la desmovilización que había sido el objetivo de diálogos de paz en el país, dejando sus campamentos en los bosques y montañas para entregar sus armas. Mientras que la desmovilización y los acuerdos de paz resultantes trajeron nuevas esperanzas de que después de décadas de conflicto armado, el país podría imaginar diferentes relaciones políticas y sociales—a la vez que nuevas condiciones ecológicas y económicas—corporaciones multinacionales llenaron el “vacío” dejado por las fuerzas de las FARC-EP. Mientras que los intereses corporativos en los recursos naturales de Colombia son anteriores a la desmovilización, los procesos extractivos estaban, en cierta medida, restringidos—y en algunos casos, impedidos—por las mismas dinámicas del conflicto armado. En 2016, sin embargo, siguiendo inmediatamente la desmovilización, la deforestación en Colombia incrementó en un 44%. Efectivamente, en el periodo transicional de la desmovilización, grandes franjas del país han sido y siguen siendo abiertas para el desarrollo económico. Si bien el ambiente es a menudo una víctima en un conflicto armado, en Colombia, el conflicto contribuyó a la preservación de algunas áreas mientras que la desmovilización y construcción de paz—y subsecuente desarrollo—han resultado en degradación ambiental. Dentro de las formas de desarrollo que han surgido en Colombia (y señalamos en otros escenarios de post-conflicto), el "ecoturismo" se ha elevado rápidamente a un primer plano. Aunque el ecoturismo—una forma de viaje turístico que sugiere inmersión del visitante e involucramiento con el ambiente y ecología—puede ofrecer algunas promesas, debe ser visto con precaución ya que impone una relación específica entre humanos y ambientes no humanos, y sirve para perpetuar las lógicas del capitalismo.

Conflict, Environment and Transition: Colombia, Ecology and Tourism after Demobilisation

In 2016, Colombia’s left-wing guerrilla FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo) began demobilisation. While demobilisation and the ensuing peace accords brought renewed hope that the country could imagine different political and social relations—and new ecological and economic conditions—multinational corporations filled the ‘void’ left by FARC-EP forces. Corporate interests in Colombia’s natural resources predated the demobilisation. However, extractive processes were restricted by the dynamics of the armed conflict. In 2016, immediately following the demobilisation, deforestation in Colombia jumped 44 per cent. In the transitional demobilisation period, huge swaths of the country were opened for economic development. Thus, while the environment is often a victim in armed conflict, in Colombia, conflict contributed to the preservation of some areas. Among the forms of development that have emerged in Colombia, ‘ecotourism’ has risen quickly to the fore. While ecotourism may offer some promise, it should be viewed with caution

Visual Criminology

From fine art to popular digital culture, criminologists are increasingly engaged in the processes of the visual. In this pioneering work, Bill McClanahan provides a concise and lively overview of the origins and contemporary role of visual criminology. Detailing and employing the most prominent approaches at work in visual criminology, this book explores the visual perspective in relation to prisons, police, the environment, and drugs, while noting the complex social and ethical implications embedded in visual research. This original book broadens the horizons of criminological engagement and reveals how visual criminology offers new and critical ways to understand and theorize crime and harm.https://encompass.eku.edu/fs_books/1043/thumbnail.jp

Capturing Appalachia: Visualizing coal, culture, and ecology

Capturing Appalachia: Visualizing Coal, Culture and Ecology, draws on extensive ethnographic, archival, and ecographic research conducted across Appalachia between 2014-2016 to develop an empirically informed sociological image of the interactions between culture, geography, and industry. Of particular interest are the ways that extractive cultures in Appalachia are constructed and communicated, and so the project includes archival work researching historical images as well as fieldwork focused on the production of images. Drawing on the traditions of cultural and ‘green’ criminologies, geography, and critical ecotheory, concluding that the cultural, political, and ecological worlds of Appalachia exist in a dialectical relationship with one another, and that at the center of each is an intense cultural relationship with the region’s historic and contemporary capture (cultural, economic, and ecological) by resource extraction. These dialectical relationships are made clear in the visuality of Appalachia, with paradigms frequently challenged by the production of countervisual narratives in productions spanning photography, literature, cinema, and media. The project constitutes the first extensive empirical application of the suggestions of an emergent green-cultural criminology. This research contributes significantly to the existing theoretical literature on extractive cultures through the development and application of the concept of ‘capture’, which is employed in throughout and which constitutes a central concept the project. The concept of ‘regulatory capture’ informs much of the existing sociological literature on harmful industry. Expanding on the concept of ‘capture’, I consider the capture of Appalachian economies by a single industry (economic capture), the capture of cultural production by the dominant industry (cultural capture), the legal capture of material landscapes by industry (ecological capture), the visual-mechanical capture of images of ecology and culture (photographic capture), and finally, the capture of ecology and people by an emerging industry of incarceration (carceral capture)

Water, Crime and Security in the Twenty-First Century: Too Dirty, Too Little, Too Much

Water, Crime and Security in the Twenty-First Century represents criminology’s first book-length contribution to the study of water and water-related crimes, harms and security. The chapters cover topics such as: water pollution, access to fresh water in the Global North and Global South, water and climate change, the commodification of water and privatization, water security and pacification, and activism and resistance surrounding issues of access and pollution. With examples ranging from Rio de Janeiro to Flint, Michigan to the Thames River, this original study offers a comprehensive criminological overview of the contemporary and historical relationship between water and crime. Coinciding with the International Decade for Action, “Water for Sustainable Development,” 2018–2028, this timely volume will be of particular relevance to students and scholars of green criminology, as well as those interested in critical geography, environmental anthropology, environmental sociology, political ecology, and the study of corporate crime and state crime.https://encompass.eku.edu/fs_books/1064/thumbnail.jp

Darkness on the Edge of Town: Visual Criminology and the Black Sites of the Rural

Black has long been employed to inspire or communicate horror, isolation and dread. Employed the state and capital, from the CIA and municipal police departments to corporations, the black site is a geography that conceals the knowledge of its own existence and boundaries. Rurality is a spatial concept characterized by the unknown and the blurred edges of its own temporal and material existence. Taking the common rural prison and Contained Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) as examples of rural black sites , we contend that efforts to render them visible can be enhanced by the lessons of paranormal/spirit photography