cfp.english.upenn.edu

1st Global Conference
Reframing Punishment

Monday 3rd September – Wednesday 5th September 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford

Call for Papers:
The concept of punishment has a long history and diverse cultural, social and criminological meanings. Research and debate is often focused on the offender, the offence, the state and legal codification. In contrast, this project seeks to re-frame these debates in order to combine the insights they produce with broader cultural meanings, social representations and ritualistic or other activities. Therefore, the aim of the project is to develop different ways of understanding the penetration and complexity of shared understandings of punishment from a variety of perspectives, approaches and practitioner experiences. Reframing the debate might be done through papers aimed the personal or social levels. We encourage unique approaches to punishment in terms of boundary control, whether it is control of evil, the politically subversive, the economically disruptive, or punishment in pursuit of system stability or marginalisation of liminality. Papers might also cover punishment issues relating to defining the contours of disgust, desire, dread, or the abject. They may even consider the operation and consequences of both wrongdoing and various forms of societal/social punishment. Accordingly the project welcomes papers, work-in-progress and pre-formed panels from diverse areas of study such as the humanities, social sciences, business, science, law schools and the arts, as well as practitioners.

Papers, presentations, reports and workshops are invited on issues broadly related to any of the following themes:

* Cultural (including cross-/inter-cultural) notions of what constitutes punishment
* Religious/spiritual punishment, asceticism, whether self-inflicted or externally imposed
* Pain, fear and corporal punishment
* Punishment, public services and performance measurement
* Punishment and child development/child rearing
* Punishment rituals
* Punishing the body for pleasure (modification, BDSM, smoking, etc)
* Punishing the body in the name of beauty and fashion
* Representations of punishment in contemporary times and across historical periods
* Theories of punishment and deviants: What is punishment’s purpose? Ideal methods? Is punishment limited to humans? What about animals or nature, and in some societies, why is imprisonment such a key form of punishment?
* Proportionality, materiality and other concepts used to administer punishment(s)
* Shame, forgiveness, vengeance, retribution and punishment
* The limits of punishment: whether controlled by the state, institutions or groups, including sports groups, cults, gangs, the military, etc.
* Shifting social attitudes toward punishment
* Self-harm, abuse and control
* Space and its role in enhancing or ameliorating punishment
* The relationship(s) between discipline and punishment

Papers on any other topic related to the theme will also be considered.

This project will run concurrently with our project on Space and Place– we welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues on Reframing Punishment and Space and Place for a cross-over panel. We also welcome pre-formed panels on any aspect of Reframing Punishment or in relation to crossover panel(s).

This project will run concurrently with our project on Space and Place– we welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues on Reframing Punishment and Space and Place for a cross-over panel. The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday22nd June 2012. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to all Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 key words
E-mails should be entitled: PUNISH Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Joint Organising Chairs:

Shona Hill & Shilinka Smith
Conference Leaders
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
New Zealand
E-mail: shs@inter-disciplinary.net

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom
Email: punish@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the Probing the Boundaries programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.All papers accepted for and presented at this conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers maybe invited for development for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s)

For further details of the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/reframi...

For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/reframi...

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.