The aim of this seminar is to gain insight into the historical and contemporary contest between parties for gaining control over the interpretation of violence, i.e. the portrayal of actors, motives, events, ideologies, and places in discourses on violence.

The seminar examines – both empirically and conceptually – the ways in which images are constructed and framed, but also intends to gain insight in the functions of portrayal.

Drawing on structurationism, we emphasise the need to examine the conditions of possibility for, and the constraints upon the politics of portrayal in particular cases. How do certain representations of violence contribute to (re)producing or contesting the established social order? Why and how are images contested and fought over? What is at stake for hegemonic and non-hegemonic actors in these contestations?

We conjecture that the politics of portrayal fulfill at least three functions:

1. to recruit supporters for a state or non-state cause by propagating a discourse of othering and belonging;
2. to legitimise action in light of that cause;
3. to gain or continue to hold power over political, economic, juridical, and social measures that support the cause.

Methodologically, the social dynamics involved can be accounted for with the help of a multidisciplinary approach that combines elements from frame analysis, critical discourse analysis, and ethnographies of violence. More specifically, we would like to explore questions on discourse formation (how does a ‘hegemonic accord’ arise, how and why are people resistant or receptive to certain repertoires?); legitimisation (how and why do audiences come to accept and support, or resist and oppose the course of action as proposed by protagonists as legitimate and justified?), and institutionalisation (how does this contest translate into political and judicial measures and instruments, e.g. terrorist lists, neoliberal reforms, penal codes, decrees, resolutions, military interventions, detentions, as well as conventions and social rules)?

We recognise that the power to portray local incidents of violence, to position them in specific contexts of knowledge, has often been removed from the local societies in which they occur. From colonial racism to the Cold War ideological stand-off, the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, different systems of “knowledge” have all produced “authorities” who define and interpret local incidents but also, and importantly, act upon these interpretations.

The very tendency to place particular incidents of violence into a particular frame often involves reframing, which in turn may contribute to the distribution and persistence of those events in space and time. The portrayal of a bar room brawl as an ‘ethnic clash’, car-burnings in French suburbs as a ‘new intifada’, and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as ‘a weapon of war’ are all examples of how violent acts are increasingly framed in terms that are removed from – but certainly feed into -the local settings in which they occur.

We are interested in these framing processes taking place in contexts of violence as well as on how local actors might contest and resist them. It is the dialectics of discourse, in which a variety of actors fight a discursive battle over image and self-image, the justification of violence, blame and accountability, which is at the core of the study of the politics of portrayal.

Full programme (pdf)

Organisation: Centre for Conflict Studies (Utrecht University), in collaboration with the EU Marie Curie SPBUILD Training Network

Attendance: free

Registration: please complete the registration form

More information: http://news.hum.uu.nl/events/the-politics-of-portrayal/

Prof. John Pratt, Universidad de Wellington (Nueva Zelanda)

John Pratt es profesor de criminología de la Universidad de Wellington en Nueva Zelanda. Ha sido Fellow del Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice de la Universidad de Nueva York (2010-2011) y Royal Society of New Zealand James Cook Research Fellow (2009-2012). Pratt es uno de los sociólogos del castigo más destacado del mundo de habla inglesa. Ha publicado profusamente en las más importantes revistas académicas de lengua inglesa.Es editor del Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology. Entre sus libros se destacan: Governing the dangerous (1997); Dangerous Offenders: Punishment and Social Order (compilado con M. Brown, 2000); Castigo y Civilización. Una lectura crítica sobre las prisiones y los regímenes carcelarios (2002 en inglés y 2006 en español); The New Punitivensess (compilado con M. Brown, S. Hallsworth, D. Brown y W. Morrison, 2005); Penal Populism (2007). En enero de 2013 aparecerá su nuevo libro: Contrasts in Punishment: An Explanation of Anglophone Excess and Nordic Exceptionalism, resultado de una investigación comparativa de las políticas penales entre Escandinavia y el mundo de lengua inglesa en las que ha venido trabajando en los últimos años.

 Programa

1. Castigo legal y civilización. Del carnaval de la ejecución a las transformaciones de la prisión. La cuestión de los impulsos descivilizatorios.

2. Populismo penal. ¿De qué se trata?: características y manifestaciones. Sus causas fundamentales. El rol de los medios de comunicación.

3. Sociedades con bajo nivel de encarcelamiento. El ejemplo escandinavo. Aportes comparativos.

Dias y Horarios

Viernes 14 de Septiembre, de 16 a 21 hs

Sabado  15 de Septiembre, de 8.30 a 13.30 hs.

Lugar

Consejo Directivo, Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales, UNL, Candido Pujato 2751 – Santa Fe

Destinatarios

Graduados en derecho, sociología, ciencia política, psicología, antropología, comunicación social, historia y filosofía

Informes e Inscripción

Secretaria de Posgrado y Servicios a Terceros  – Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales  – Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Candido Pujato 2751 – Primer Piso – Santa Fe

TE: 0342-4571204/4571206

Email: posgrado@fcjs.unl.edu.ar

Matricula: 300 pesos