Anthropology of Crime and Security EASA Conference 2022 – Call for Papers

Joint conference of the Anthropology of Crime and Criminalisation (AnthroCrime) and the Anthropology of Security (ASN) EASA networks. 17-19 May 2022.

When: 17-19 May 2022

Where: the University of Bologna, Department of History and Cultures (DISCI) – Bologna (Italy). https://disci.unibo.it/en/index.html 

Official website: https://eventi.unibo.it/anthro-crime-security-easa-2022

Download the PDF call for papers.

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PRE-REGISTRATIONS

As a result of current social, political and economic trends, anthropologists are increasingly interested in security, crime, and criminalisation. The first jointly organised conference between the Anthropology of Crime and Criminalisation (AnthroCrime) and the Anthropology of Security (ASN) EASA networks aims to explore crime and security, developing novel methodological and theoretical approaches to their analysis.

In addition to several panels (see the full list here) related to the anthropology of crime and security, the conference will hold a workshop, a laboratory and a book presentation session. The laboratory will be dedicated to the challenges of doing ethnography in the field of security and crime, while the workshop aims to facilitate future publications based on conference papers.

Deadline for papers submission and pre-registrations: 5 March 2022.

HOW TO SEND YOUR PAPER (AND PRE-REGISTER)
If you are interested in participating in this conference, please fill in the following form with your paper proposal, of approximately 200 words, and a short biography:

https://forms.gle/AtWNqKxuVt4K3XaJ9

We can host about 100 participants live, including speakers and audience.

You have the option of submitting your paper to one of the already proposed panels (find the full list here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LepbiKUu7XU0znrOV6FU27D-UjKHCXHX/view?usp=sharing ) or submitting your paper in a mixed session dedicated to the anthropology of crime and criminalisation or the anthropology of security. In this latter case, please note that if we receive way more papers than the maximum number of panellists (eight), we may have to refuse your submission.

Listed further below is the general theme of this year’s conference, which is designed to address a wide range of topics from crime to security, from anthropology to other disciplines.

The size of panels can range from four to eight speakers for every session of 4 hours (240 minutes), including the chairs. We suggest not exceeding three chairs.

The chairs are in charge of managing the time of the presentations based on the number of participants (for example, 240 minutes per session: 20 minutes per person, plus 10 minutes extra time for questions would make room for eight persons).

Please note that all paper presentations are face-to-face/live only.

The paper submission is also a pre-registration request. No further action is required. Participation in the conference includes printed program materials and catering during breaks. There are a number of restaurants within a few minutes walking distance of the event venue where you can enjoy lunch. Based on the different needs of participants, we have compiled a list of possible locations and prices for you to choose from on the following page:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14P7t1aL6f-IxWwb1zst6hVdanHSR9n0B/view?usp=sharing

As part of the application process, you will be requested to indicate whether you wish to attend a joint dinner – with a fixed price menu to be determined, but not exceeding 30 euros – which will probably take place during May 18.

As part of the pre-registration process, you will also be asked if you plan to participate in a workshop on possible publications from the conference proceedings and in a laboratory on research methodologies.

PRE-REGISTRATIONS FOR THE AUDIENCE

If you are interested in attending the event as an audience member without submitting papers, please complete the following form:

https://forms.gle/HYfpC3cGAc27GCfj8

You may only participate as an audience member face-to-face/live, joining panels and book presentations.

Participation in the conference includes printed program materials and catering during breaks. However, there are a number of restaurants within a few minutes walking distance of the event venue where you can enjoy lunch. Based on the different needs of participants, we have compiled a list of possible locations and prices for you to choose from on the following page:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14P7t1aL6f-IxWwb1zst6hVdanHSR9n0B/view?usp=sharing

During the pre-registration process, you will be asked if you intend to participate in a laboratory on research methodologies. A few weeks before the conference, we will send you an additional email to confirm your registration.

BOOK PRESENTATIONS

A session will be devoted to the presentation of novel books related to the conference topics. Book presenters should be live. However, discussants and audience members may be hybrid (live and online). Please complete the following form if you would like to present a book at our event:

https://forms.gle/P9nJcFXw8ZL9r3ec6

You are welcome to participate in the entire event with your paper or as a member of the audience by completing the relevant forms already listed above. An individual’s registration for the book presentation does not include participation as a speaker or as a member of the audience. A few weeks before the conference, we will send you an additional email to confirm your request.

CONFERENCE GENERAL THEME
Inextricably connected in current governmental regimes across the globe, crime and security have attained new characteristics under neo-liberal global conditions. Since the 1980s, globalisation has created new flows of goods, capital, and people, often blurring the line between legitimate entrepreneurs and criminals. Nevertheless, not much has changed since the early days of criminal anthropology, as the public talk of crime today rarely stigmatises white-collar workers or affluent entrepreneurs. Often, people pushed to the margins of society (physically and symbolically) are blamed for their own exclusion. Their presence is abused to construct new moral and societal boundaries, enabling repressive policies at the expense of social interventions. A security apparatus that challenges the boundaries between the public and the private, the local and the international, affects everyone, whether victims of criminalisation or consumers of old and new safety forms and technologies. However, despite widespread alarmism, relatively little is known about these local and interconnected forms of crime and their actual lived experiences and trajectories. Statistical data tend to combine completely different social phenomena (such as mafia, organised crime, traffickers, or street gangs) and their political, economic and historical roots in an indistinct moral panic. Yet, claiming objectivity and neutrality, security experts develop intricate technologies used to prevent, pre-empt, and predict crime, moving towards an acclaimed ‘pre-crime society’ where safety and crime risks are brought to negligible levels. Such technologies, already used by police in many urban contexts, give birth to a plethora of ethical and political issues. Through their integration into “smart” lifestyles, security and surveillance systems permeate and colonise the most intimate realms of everyday life, eventually exposed to cybercrime.

Different public and academic sectors call for new methodological approaches (transnational, multi-sited, ethnographic) that offer ways to follow, chart and analyse movements of people, capital and goods that are often represented in superficial ways in media and political circles. In exploring and analysing the lived experiences of actors otherwise described as perverse criminals or passive enforcers of the state’s will, social and cultural anthropology have much to offer. However, there is also a solid need to reinvigorate anthropology’s theoretical perspectives on crime and security and to address the challenges that ethnographic methodology faces when working on these issues (for instance, by integrating criminology, STS, or other disciplines into an interdisciplinary framework).

CONFERENCE PANELS:

P1. Complex Crimes in Borderland: organised crime, corruption and trafficking in border areas and communities.
P2. Critical Resistance, Contentious Reforms: Global Perspectives on Policing, Securitization, and Mobilization.
P3. Security and policing beyond the human.
P4. Race and Confinement in the Post-Colony.
P5. History of the present: Figurations of crime and criminals.
P6. Negotiated criminality: control, agency, and moral ambivalences in criminalised markets.
P7. Navigating Criminalisation.
P8. Immigrant Communities and Crime: Challenging Populistic Responses.
P9. Crimes of the powerful: state and corporate crimes, patrimonialism, clientelism, corruption and white-collar crimes / LUXCORE panel.
P10. Gangs, Gangsters & Ganglands (GANGS): Towards a Global Comparative Ethnography.
P11. Intersecting Crime and Security: Exploring Vigilantism beyond the State.
P12. Mixed panel on crime and criminalization.
P13. Mixed panel on security.

Panels detailed list: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LepbiKUu7XU0znrOV6FU27D-UjKHCXHX/view?usp=sharing

CONFERENCE MODALITY & COVID PRECAUTIONS
Panels, the workshop and the laboratory will be organised offline/locally, while keynotes (names to be confirmed) and book presentations will be hybrid (addressing a local audience and broadcasted online).

Attendees are required to have a COVID-19 free certificate in order to participate in the live conference, which is obtained via a COVID-19 test, a vaccine, or after recovering.

Please find below more information about the covid-free certificate in Italy, the “Green Pass”, as well as how you can convert different certificates to it:

https://italygreenpass.com/faq/

The following link provides information on the entry requirements into Italy from your home country: 

https://infocovid.viaggiaresicuri.it/returningtoitaly.html

However, we advise you to check the rules again around May 2022, as these guidelines may change closer to the conference due to public policy revisions.

For any further questions, please email: bologna.conferences@gmail.com