Roundtable: Criminology Through an Affective Lens I

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract/Description

While emotion and affect have received significant scholarly attention (e.g., in the humanities, anthropology, psychoanalytic theory), they have generated comparatively less attention in criminology and sociology. This first of two roundtables on criminology and affect theory will bring together scholars interested in exploring emotion and/or affect – their presence, effects, and conceptual implications – within the criminal-legal realm. Emotion and affect, broadly, reference subjectively experienced feelings and states. As such, they encourage attention to consciousness and embodiment. Yet they simultaneously highlight the socially constructed and mediated nature of emotion and affect; they draw attention to relationality, intersubjectivity, and transmissibility. Roundtable participants have varying foci (e.g., crime, law, punishment), and the topics will span conceptual, methodological, and empirical reflections on emotion and affect. Presenters Jennifer Dawn Carlson and Justin Lucas Sola will unpack the intersections of guns and emotions in the US context, Walter DeKeseredy and Susan Dewey will discuss the affective dimensions of research on violence against women, Bradley Tripp will engage with a juvenile justice program designed to strengthen affective bonds between family members, and co-organizer Robert Werth will examine the overlooked role affect plays in penal assessment.

Sub Unit

• Area XIV. Roundtables

Chairs

• Robert Werth, University of Southern California

• Susan Dewey, University of Alabama

Discussants

• Jennifer Carlson, Arizona State University

• Justin Lucas Sola, University of California, Irvine

• Walter DeKeseredy, West Virginia University

• Bradley Tripp, Winthrop University