I was delighted to be invited by TerrFerme to join the scientific committee of their conference “Mechanisms of confinement. A territorial approach to contemporary social and political control“, to be held in Pessac, Bordeaux, France, 17-19 October 2013.
The Call for Papers for the conference is now out, with a February 1st 2013 deadline for submissions.
This symposium sets out to study the value, for analysis, of putting different types of custodial space into perspective. What does this comparison of analytical visions of confinement produce, what awareness does it develop? What facets of confinement can it highlight that have received little attention from specialized fields? These questions can be broken down into several major fields of investigation, an exploration of which would seem to benefit from the dialogue between research into the various custodial institutions: briefly;
Space and power relations: Power relations inside establishments that deprive people of their freedom are one of the central themes of research into confinement…
Control operators and institutions: private vs. public: Custodial institutions have often been apprehended by existing research as the expression of the sovereign power of the state over its subjects…
Routes, circulation, mobility: Since the 1960s American prison sociology has highlighted the necessity of considering custodial establishments in their relations with the exterior, with their environment…
Custodial institutions and inequality: Although different research trends in the social sciences have recently questioned the relationship between public institutions and inequality, particularly ethnic and religious inequality, this question seems to have received little attention in the literature on confinement…
Civil society and confinement: governing facilities, production and the circulation of knowledge: For several decades, associations and NGOs have played an essential role in a considerable number of custodial establishments…
The working languages of the symposium will be French and English (with simultaneous translation services provided).
Carceral Geography 