The Museum on the Edge of Forever

This article argues that understanding any space or site relies on a knowledge of its fourth dimension - the timescape. It will explore this by situating the investigation in the museum - a place of heightened contrivance which could easily be shallowly interpreted as "mere style". It will defend a new method of investigating museum temporality which combines both phenomenology and literary theory, and will replace the idea of geo-epistemology with geochronic epistemology: an understanding of context and situation which takes on time as well as spatial location. In so doing, it moves on from notions of the museum as a place out of time, situating it in the networks of meaning, power and politics in which we have lived and are living. Thus, "the whole space of the exhibition" as Lyotard said, "becomes the remains of all time": the Museum on the Edge of Forever

"Forgettings that want to be remembered" : Museums and Hauntings

Open Access via the Taylor and Francis/JISC Open Select agreementPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Whither Criminology: Its Global Futures?

This paper takes as its starting point the recent interventions of Jock Young (2011) on the contemporary state of criminology. In adding to these observations those made by Connell (2007) and Aas (2012), the case will be made, following de Sousa Santos (2014), for a criminology of absences. In endeavouring to uncover these absences, the paper will consider how the ‘bogus of positivism’ (Young 2011, chapter 4), its associated presumptions and related conceptual thinking, manifest themselves in two substantive areas of contemporary concern: violence against women and violent extremism. With the first of these issues I shall consider the ongoing controversies in which the bogus of positivism is most apparent: the powerful influence of the criminal victimisation survey as the data gathering instrument about such violence. In the second area of concern, this bogus of positivism is most apparent in its ‘nomothetic impulse’ (ibid: 73). Both of these discussions will expose different, but connected absences within criminology. In the final and concluding part of this paper, I shall return to the questions posed by the title of this paper: whither criminology, and in the light of this discussion, offer some thoughts on the place of Asian criminology within criminology’s global future(s)

Real Lives and Lost Lives: Making Sense of ‘Locked in’ Responses to Intimate Partner Homicide

© 2019, The Author(s). The problem of intimate partner homicide is featuring increasingly on national and international policy agendas. Over the last 40 years, responses to this issue have been characterised by preventive strategies (including ‘positive’ policing; the proliferation of risk assessment tools, and multi-agency working) and post-event analyses (including police inquiries and domestic homicide reviews). In different ways, each of these responses has become ‘locked in’ to policies. Drawing on an analysis of police inquiries into domestic homicides in England and Wales over a 10-year period, this paper will explore the nature of these ‘locked in’ responses and will suggest that complexity theory offers a useful lens through which to make sense of them and the ongoing consistent patterning of intimate partner homicide more generally. The paper will suggest this lens in embracing what is known and unknown affords a different way of thinking about and responding to this problem

Gendered Objects and Gendered Spaces: The Invisibilities of ‘Knife’ Crime

The knife is a relatively mundane, domestic and easily accessible household item. At the same time, it is the most commonly used weapon in intimate partner homicide. Recently however the knife has become an object of fear and panic in England and Wales when used in public by mostly young men on other young men. This aim of this article is to offer some reflections on the conundrums posed by these two observations. Here the ‘knife’ is considered through the integrated lenses of space, gender and materiality. Situated in this way the contemporary preoccupation with ‘knife’ crime illustrates the ongoing and deeply held assumptions surrounding debates on public and private violence. Whilst criminology has much to say on gender and violence the gendered, spatialized, and material presence of the knife remains poorly understood. In prioritising ‘knife’ crime as a ‘public’ problem over its manifestation as an ongoing ‘private’ one, its gendered and spatialized features remain hidden thus adding to the failure of policy to tackle ‘knife’ crime in the round

Fractured Lives, Splintered Knowledge: Making Criminological Sense of the January, 2015 Terrorist Attacks in Paris

Cottee (Br J Criminol 54(6):981–1001, 2014) makes the case that criminology has much to contribute to an understanding of theistic violence. However the ‘hubris of positivism’ (Young in The criminological imagination, Polity, Cambridge, 2011) curtails the criminological imagination and this is particularly evident in the debates that permeate contemporary understandings of religious extremism and radicalisation. Using the terrorist attacks in France 2015 as a touchstone, this paper explores the current state of criminological engagement with these issues. First a synopsis of orthodox current criminological talk about religious extremism and violent crime is considered. Next a critical analysis of the events in Paris based around what is ‘known’ about them is offered in the light of this knowledge. Finally, drawing on the work of Young (2011) the implications of this analysis for criminology are considered resulting in a refinement of the biases identified by Cottee (2014)

Not Knowing, Emancipatory Catastrophe and Metamorphosis: Embracing the Spirit of Ulrich Beck

Embracing the spirit of his observation that ‘what was ruled out beforehand as inconceivable is taking place’, this article urges a re-engagement with Ulrich Beck’s work within security studies. In so doing, the article falls into three parts. First, we provide necessary contextual orientation, discussing the magnitude of Beck’s contribution to understandings of risk and security in the social sciences. Second, we discuss the importance of comprehending Beck’s unique methodological approach in order to appreciate the more specific resonances of his work. Third, we endorse the theoretical novelty of Beck’s work, demonstrating the ways in which the tools that he devised might be put to use and extended in future. To this end, we focus on three interconnected conceptual devices developed by Beck in the latter stages of his career: nichtwissen, emancipatory catastrophism and metamorphosis. We conclude by emphasizing the vital need to grasp the practical as well as the academic ambitions that underpinned Beck’s projective style of social theory

The Criminalisation of Coercive Control: The Power of Law?

Making sense of intimate partner violence has long been seen through the lens of coercive control. However, despite the longstanding presence of this concept, it is only in recent years that efforts have been made to recognise coercive control within the legal context. This article examines the extent to which the law per se has the power, or indeed the capacity, to respond to what is known about coercive control. To do so, it charts the varied ways in which coercive control has entered legal discourse in different jurisdictions and maps these efforts onto what is evidenced about the nature and extent of coercive control in everyday life. This article then places the legal and the everyday side by side and considers the unintended consequences of ‘coercive control creep’. In conclusion, it is suggested that the criminalisation of coercive control only serves to fail those it is intended to protect