Improper Place: A Criminological Investigation of the Problematics of Space

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

From the concentration camp to the taxi cab, from the city to the human body, the way in which space and place emerges as meaningful through myth, violence and subjectification has implications for understandings of crime in contemporary society. This panel, convened by The Centre for Criminology at the University of Greenwich in London, explores the ways in which places acquire meaning through the lenses of crime, criminality and punishment. In this session, we will consider how ‘proper’ and ‘improper’ subjectivities might be composed and appear within place. Further, we will unpack how that meaning is constituted by – and constitutive of – discourses of propriety, belonging and exclusion. As such, the themes in this panel have implications for resisting spatialized violence and promoting social justice.

Sub Unit

• Area X: Perceptions and Responses to Crime and Justice / 63: Media and the Social Construction of Crime

Individual Presentations

• A penetrated space: At the threshold of propriety, sexual practice and the public - Alexandra Fanghanel, University of Greenwich

• You Will Love in Love Camp 7: Genocidal Violence, Verisimilitude and the Poetics of Space - Stacy Banwell, University of Greenwich; Michael Fiddler, University of Greenwich

• From Hell to Whitechapel: hauntology, crime and the construction of place - Michael Fiddler, University of Greenwich