Crime, Justice and Society Seminars | Edinburgh Law School

The Crime, Justice and Society seminars are co-hosted by the Criminal Law and Criminology subject areas of Edinburgh Law School and are open to all.

Decolonizing Zemiology: Outlining and Remedying the Blindness to (Post)colonialism Within the Study of Social Harm - Critical Criminology

This paper hosts the first meaningful dialogue between two important epistemic movements for criminology: zemiology and decolonisation. I identify that zemiology has a disciplinary blindness to colonialism and explain this using Gurminder K. Bhambra’s scholarship—and cognate scholarship—as a frame. Three cases—Pemberton’s Harmful Societies, Grenfell, and Border Zemiology—are selected for their critical importance within zemiology. They are used to argue that zemiology works within a standard narrative of modernity characterised by capitalist nation-states, which does not recognise the colonial foundations of both of these. Capitalist modernity is, however, a colonial formation. Recognising this allows for a better understanding for a wide range of harms. I then discuss future directions for decolonial zemiology, advocating not for expansion of repertoire, but canonical revision so that colonialism is afforded space as an explanatory frame and zemiology can better explain social harm on a global level.

CJS Seminar: Francesca Soliman and Kajsa Dinesson | Edinburgh Law School

Environmental Harms at the Border: The Case of Lampedusa - Critical Criminology

In this paper I examine authorities’ management of migrant boats on the island of Lampedusa, Italy, as an example of environmental border harm. A danger to trawlers, sunken wrecks are also hazardous to the environment, with pollutants such as oil and fuel seeping into the sea. Migrant boats that reach the island, whether independently or towed by rescuers, are left to accumulate in the harbour and eventually break up, scattering debris in bad weather. When boats are uplifted onto land, they are amassed in large dumps, leaking pollutants into the soil. Periodically, the resulting environmental crises trigger emergency tendering processes for the disposal of the boats, which allow for the environmental protections normally required in public bidding to be suspended for the sake of expediency. The disposal of migrant boats thus relies on a pattern of manufactured environmental emergencies, consistent with the intrinsically crisis-based management of the border itself.