AccueilNorms in the Margins and Margins of the Norm

AccueilNorms in the Margins and Margins of the Norm

Norms in the Margins and Margins of the Norm

The Social Construction of Illegality

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Publié le vendredi 04 mai 2012

Résumé

The conference "Norms in the Margins and Margins of the Norm, The Social Construction of Illegality" proposes to reflect on the relations between the dynamics of criminalization and the construction of state powers, on the one hand, and on criminal strategies – legal or not –, moral economies in the illegal spheres, the ploys and tactics of “deviant” groups on the other hand.

Annonce

The conference 'Norms in the Margins and Margins of the Norm, The Social Construction of Illegality' proposes to reflect on the relations between the dynamics of criminalization and the construction of State powers, on the one hand, and on criminal strategies – legal or not –, moral economies in the illegal spheres, the ploys and tactics of “deviant” groups on the other hand. Law and the informal norms tied to its various uses are viewed as processes seized upon and retailored by actors for their own purposes and strategies, in a context where penal policies commanding conformity in collective behavior are not necessarily aimed at eliminating crime and illegalism (Foucault), but essentially broaden the areas of intersection and interaction between State coercion, criminal trajectories, and the management of norms. These considerations suggest various potential tracks for analysis. How do State and supra-national criminalization activities construct landscapes of illegality? How are the legal and illegal sides of global capitalism’s underground economies intertwined? What are the ethical justifications given for the legal and illegal constructions? How are norms inhabited, legitimized and challenged in the marginal spheres of today’s illegal and criminal worlds? How are the legality and legitimacy of the illegality-producing societal spheres maintained and perpetuated? Another area of inquiry would bear on our practice as researchers. How can we, as researchers, circulate in the spaces created by penal policies, between the analysis of state-led coercive processes and the observation of criminal trajectories? What ethical, political and epistemological issues are raised by investigation of the illegal and criminal spheres? Faced with objects of this sort, what positions and reflexive policies can research advance?

Studies will therefore pertain both to the production of the categories of illegality and to the production of ethical categories in the underworld, while stressing the intertwining and ambiguous entanglements of legal and illegal networks and creation of moral economies.

Norms and their codification are central to the organization of human societies. From its inception, sociology has construed the creation of norms and the embeddedness of law in social practices as an object of study, as illustrated by the work of Emile Durkheim.
Anthropologists, historians, and philosophers have pointed out the processes at work in the production, the implementation and the transformations of law, as well as the diverse appropriations of rules in contexts of legal pluralism.

The international conference “Norms in the Margins and Margins of the Norm” will scrutinize relations to norms and to the law as a process of negotiation in line with globalization. Within the current neoliberal configuration of the world, powerful multinational corporations and supra- and international institutions impinge on the role of States, producing blurred spaces where informal norms thrive. The intricate fabric that shapes and reshapes norms involves actors in quest for profit at the interfaces left open by legislative gaps. In contemporary societies, then, the codification of norms has reached a hitherto unknown degree of complexity and scope. Yet, never before has social and technical upheaval produced such a proliferation of norms on the fringes of legality.

Studies on the production of illegality in the social sciences are probably best known when bearing on the macroeconomics of transnational trafficking and war economies, in contexts of economic liberalization, of “criminalization of the state” and of growing synergy between politics and business through both legal and illegal networks. Most media attention focuses on drugs and arms, which are only the most visible elements in the multi-trafficking system structured around transnational hubs.

Without denying the relevance of “macro”, totalizing and generalizing approaches, the present colloquium aims at articulating these with an approach to illegality viewed “from below”. Seminal landmarks in this perspective include the Chicago school of urban sociology, which theorized the empirical approach to “deviance”, gangs, rackets, and corruption (with R. E. Park and W. F. Whyte) as well as research based on the notion of the “moral economy” (Thompson) and aimed at developing an anthropology of ethics.

Studies will therefore pertain both to the production of the categories of illegality and to the production of ethical categories in the underworld, while stressing the intertwining and ambiguous entanglements of legal and illegal networks in so many fields. Analysis will articulate the political construction of criminality by States and supra- and international agencies on the one hand, with the social and geographic organization of crime and the development of criminal habitus, as well as everyday practices and poetic heroizing (Herzfeld) in informal and illegal circles, on the other hand.

The above considerations suggest various potential tracks for analysis. How do State and supra-national criminalization activities construct landscapes of illegality? How are the legal and illegal sides of global capitalism’s underground economies intertwined? What are the ethical justifications given for the legal and illegal constructions? How are norms inhabited, legitimized and challenged in the marginal spheres of today’s illegal and criminal worlds? How are the legality and legitimacy of the illegality-producing societal spheres maintained and perpetuated?
Another area of inquiry would bear on our practice as researchers. How can we, as researchers, circulate in the spaces created by penal policies, between the analysis of state-led coercive processes and the observation of criminal trajectories? What ethical, political and epistemological issues are raised by investigation of the illegal and criminal spheres? Faced with objects of this sort, what positions and reflexive policies can research advance?

This conference therefore proposes to reflect on the relations between the dynamics of criminalization and the construction of State powers, on the one hand, and on criminal strategies – legal or not –, moral economies in the illegal spheres, the ploys and tactics of “deviant” groups on the other hand. Law and the informal norms tied to its various uses are viewed as processes seized upon and retailored by actors for their own purposes and strategies, in a context where penal policies commanding conformity in collective behavior are not necessarily aimed at eliminating crime and illegalism (Foucault), but essentially broaden the areas of intersection and interaction between State coercion, criminal trajectories, and the management of norms.

http://illegality.africamuseum.be

Preliminary programme

October 25th , 2012 - Royal Museum for Central Africa (Historical Ballroom, Colonial Palace)

Plenary session

  • 8h45-9h30: Registration and welcome buffet
  • 9h30-9h40: Welcome address by the director general of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Guido Gryseels
  • 9h45-9h55: Address by Cristiana Panella (Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium)
  • 9h55-10h40: Opening lecture:  Michael Herzfeld (Harvard University, Cambridge, USA)
  • 10h40-11h10: Coffee break
  • 11h10-11h40: Keynote address: Béatrice Hibou (Centre for International Studies and Research, Paris, France) theme: Neo-liberalism, norms and the State
  • 11h40-12h30: Debate with the two speakers
  • 12h30-14h00: Lunch
  • 14h00-14h30: Philippe Bourgois (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA) theme: Drugs networks
  • 14h30-15h00: Nancy Scheper-Hughes (University of California, Berkeley, USA) theme: International traffic of human organs
  • 15h00-15h30: Debate
  • 15h30-16h00: Coffee break
  • 16h00-16h30: Ralph Austen (University of Chicago, Chicago, USA) theme: The representation of deviance in literature
  • 16h30-17h00: Danielle de Lame (Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium) theme: Art in the City: normative representations in Nairobi
  • 17h00-17h30: Debate
  • 18h00-19h00: (Guided) tour: renovation project Royal Museum for Central Africa
  • 19h00: Walking dinner

October 26,th  2012 - Free University Brussels (Institute of Sociology)

Panels

  • 8h45-9h00: Welcome coffee and opening address by Pierre Petit (Free University Brussels, Brussels, Belgium)
  • 9h00-9h30: Opening lecture by Jean-François Bayart (Centre for International Studies and Research, Paris, France)
  • 9h30-9h45: questions
  • 9h45-10h00: Coffee break
  • 10h00-12h00: Panels

Panel 1: The Ethics of Illegality

  • Panel organizer: Kedron Thomas (Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA)
  • Panelists:
  • John Osburg (University of Rochester, USA), The Hidden Rules of Officialdom: Elite Social Networks and the Moral Economy of Corruption in Contemporary China
  • Laurens Bakker (Radboud University, The Netherlands), Illegality for the General Good? Social Responsibility among Regional Militias in Indonesia
  • Kedron Thomas (Washington University in St. Louis, USA),The Ethics of Informal Enterprise: Security, the State, and Indigenous Citizenship in Post-Conflict Guatemala
  • Dennis Rodgers (University of Manchester, UK), The Moral Economy of Murder: From ‘Bare Life’ to ‘Bare Death’ in Gangland Nicaragua
  • Yi-Chieh Jessica Lin (National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan), Somewhere Over the Rainbow: The Mediascape of Military Villages in Contemporary Taiwan
  • Discussant: Janet Roitman (New School for Social Research, USA)

Panel 2

  • Panel organizer: Mike Rowlands (University College London, UK)
  • Panel in progress

Panel 3: Extra-Legal Practices in Socialist and Postsocialist States

  • Panel organizers: Filippo Zerilli (University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy) and Alan Smart (University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada).
  • Panelists:
  • Jane Guyer (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA), Gaps, innovations and casuistic reasoning in currency dynamics in the roaring ‘90s: Nigeria, eastern Europe and their connections.
  • Ellen Hertz and Marylène Lieber (University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland), Hotline fever (rexian re): Technologies of selving and rights consciousness in transnational Chinese enterprises.
  • Alan Smart (University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada), Extralegality in China: Socialist norms, capitalist practices and the consequences of corruption.
  • Janine Wedel (George Mason University, Fairfax, USA), Financial Legerdemain: What the extra-legal practices of post-communist Russia reveal about Wall Street and crises today.
  • Filippo Zerilli (University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy), Building the rule of law through extra-legal practices: Ethnographic explorations within the international legal cooperation in post-socialist Europe.

Panel 4: Illegality and order in contemporary youth practices and mobilizations

  • Panel organizers: Armando Cutolo (University of Siena, Siena, Italy) et Stefano Boni (University of Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena & Reggio Emilia, Italy)
  • Panelists:
  • Stefano Barone (University of Siena, Siena, Italy), Revolution and constituent power in Tunisia: from informality to communitas
  • Moussa Fofana (University of Bouaké-Abidjan, Ivory Coast), Illégalité et parcours d’insertion sociale pour jeunes ex-rebelles en Côte d’Ivoire
  • Kojo Sebastian Amanor (Institute of African Studies/University of Ghana, Ghana), Legality, livelihoods and youth in the Ghanaian forest sector
  • Armando Cutolo (University of Siena, Siena, Italy), Youth, illegality and moral economies at La Sorbonne, Abidjan
  • Stefano Boni (University of Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy), Legal invasiveness and anti-legal practices in contemporary Italy
  • Discussant: M. Tarì (independent scholar, Uninomade)

12h00-13h30: Lunch

13h30-15h30: Panels

Panel 5: Legality and illegality in contemporary China

  • Panel organizer: Françoise Lauwaert (Free University Brussels, Brussels, Belgium).
  • Panelists:
  • Isabelle Thireau (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France), Légitimité et légalité à l’épreuve des « Lettres et visites ».
  • Adam Chau (University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK), Putting Religion in its Place: Spatialising Illegality in Contemporary China.
  • Eric Florence (University of Liege, Liege, Belgium), Illegalisation, visibilisation and appropriation: a few thoughts on the politics of migrant labor in South China.
  • Lisa Richaud (Free University Brussels, Brussels, Belgium), Chinese Propaganda and the Social Construction of “Disorder”.
  • Ying Xing (China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, China), Grassroots Mobilization and the Mechanism of Interest Expression of the Peasants Group: A comparative study of four cases.

Panel 6: Norms, Networks, and Informality in the Global South: Unmapping Urban Space

  • Panel organizer: Karen Tranberg Hansen (Northwestern University, Evanston, USA)
  • Panelists:
  • B. Lynne Milgram (OCAD University, Toronto, Canada), Livelihoods on the Edge: The Politics and Legality of Marketplace Redevelopment in Baguio City, Philippines.
  • Jose Maria Munoz (Emory University, Atlanta, USA), Making Contracts Public: Legal Change and Urban Renewal in Northern Cameroon.
  • Walter E. Little (University of Albany - SUNY, New York, USA), Façade to Street to Façade: Negotiating Public Urban Spatial Legality in a World Heritage City Antigua, Guatemala.
  • Jose Carlos Aguiar (University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands), Illegality Mesh: Global Circulation and the Spatial Entanglement of Criminal and Informal Activities in Urban Latin America.
  • Gordon Mathews (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong), Where the Global South Comes to Buy: Informality and Illegality in a Developed-World Paradise (Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong).
  • Discussant: A. Smart (University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada).

Panel 7: The neoliberal effect: normalization, exclusion and resistance

  • Panel organizers: Mathieu Hilgers (Free University Brussels, Belgium) & Benjamin Rubbers (University of Liege, Belgium)
  • Panelists:
  • Géraldine André (Fonds National de Recherche Scientifique – University of Liege, Belgium) & Marie Godin (Free University Brussels, Belgium), Childhood and Work at the Neoliberal Age: Ethnography of Child Work in Artisanal and Small-scale Mining in the Katanga province (DRC)
  • An Ansoms (Catholic University of Leuven, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium), The Bitter Fruit of a New Agrarian Model: Large-scale land deals and local livelihoods in Rwanda
  • Mathieu Hilgers (Free University Brussels, Belgium),Urban governance and neoliberalism in Africa
  • Benjamin Rubbers (University of Liege, Belgium), African reactions to neoliberalism. The reform of the mining sector in Katanga (D.R. Congo)
  • Discussant: Béatrice Hibou (Centre for International Studies and Research, Paris, France)

Panel 8: Blurred spaces, negotiable norms and the governmentality of crime: the case of Italy

  • Panel organizer: Bjørn Thomassen (The American University of Rome, Rome, Italy). 
  • Panelists:
  • James Walston (The American University of Rome, Rome, Italy), Clientelism, corruption, organized crime and the law: new roads to Rome?
  • Ferro Trabalzi (The American University of Rome, Rome, Italy), Illegality and Competitiveness: The Paradox of Regional Development in the Age of Globalization. The Case of Buffalo Mozzarella in Campania
  • Francesca Cantarella (Legal Office, Francesca Cantarella, Rome, Italy), The construction of crime and the criminal: Pathologies of the Italian legal system
  • Isabella Clough-Marinaro (John Cabot University/The American University of Rome, Rome, Italy), Rome's 'legal' camps for Roma: The construction of new spaces for illegality
  • Stefano Becucci (University of Florence, Florence, Italy), Chinese Migration and the Italian Labor Market. A Functional Overlapping between Formal and Informal Economy
  • Fiona Rose-Greenland (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, US), Crimes against Archaeology: Illicit cultural practices and the struggle for Italian antiquity
  • Discussant: P. Vereni: (University of Rome - Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy)

15h30-16h00: Coffee break

16h00-18h00: Panels

Panel 9: Sustainable (il)legalities. Daily life interstices of the law, chains of arrangement and gradients of 'loss'

  • Panel organizer: Cristiana Panella (Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium)
  • Panelists:
  • Bjørn Thomassen (The American University of Rome, Rome, Italy), Norms versus averages: legality and illegality in the work of Gabriel Tarde
  • Andrew Walsh (University of Western Ontario, Ontario, Canada), Lost and/or Left Behind: Compromising Responsibly in a Malagasy Mining Town
  • Cecilie Ødegaard (University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway), Sovereign loss, sovereign things: The smuggling of energy resources between Bolivia and Peru
  • Rivke Jaffe (University Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands), The Hybrid State: Crime and Citizenship in Urban Jamaica
  • Dario Gaggio (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA),Valuing Place/Placing Value: The Elusive Normativity of Landscape in Rural Tuscany
  • Discussant: Bruno Riccio (University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy)

Panel 10: The New Museum

  • Panel organizer: Ciraj Rassool (University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa)
  • Panelists:
  • Leslie Witz (University of Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa), Observing and disobeying the signs: The Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, a heritage park in Cape Town
  • Corinne A. Kratz (Emory University, Atlanta, USA), Do Boundaries and Margins Dissolve in Blurred Genres?
  • Larissa Förster (University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany), The power of bones: repatriation and the remaking of museum norms and practices
  • Gary Minkley (University of Fort Hare, Alice (Western Cape), RSA), The museum and the image: Re-looking at the visual in Eastern Cape Museums
  • Susan Legêne (VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Are the former tools of empire now just tools of the nation state?
  • Discussant: C. Rassool (University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, RSA)

Panel 11: Frontiers to shadow: borders, traffic and uncertainty

  • Panel organizer: Steven van Wolputte (Catholic University Leuven, Leuven, Belgium).
  • Panelists:
  • Katrijn Asselberg (Catholic University Leuven, Leuven, Belgium)
  • Onyanta Adama (Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden)
  • Gracia Clark (Indiana University, Indiana, USA)
  • Paul Nugent (University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK)
  • Ilda Linell (Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden)

Panel 12: Beyond corruption. Practical norms in public services delivery

  • Panel organizers: Giorgio Blundo (EHESS, Marseille, France) & Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (LASDEL, Niamey, Niger)
  • Panelists:
  • Alena Ledeneva (University College London, UK): From the Economy of Favours To the Economy of Kickbacks: the case of Russian bureaucracy
  • Richard Crook (IDS, University of Sussex): The state and the norms of local justice in Ghana: hybridity, legitimacy and popular values
  • Mohamed Mebtoul (Université Es-Sénia, Oran, Algérie): Déconstruction des normes professionnelles et discours de "victimisation" des acteurs de la santé
  • Tom De Herdt (Antwerp University, Antwerp, Belgium) & Emmanuel Kasongo (Université de Kinshasa, Kinshasa, DRC): Tuition impossible? Policy and practices of school fee abolishment in DRC
  • Thomas Cantens (World Customs Organization & Centre Norbert Elias EHESS Marseille): The Orders of Informality in the Relations Between Users and Public Services: African Customs and Transnational Circulation of Commodities
  • Discussant: Giorgio Blundo (EHESS, Marseille, France)
  • Evening event 'general public'

October 27th , 2012 - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

  • 10h00-10h45: Closing lecture by Vincenzo Ruggiero (Middlesex University, London, UK)
  • 10h45-11h45: Closing debate
  • 12h00-14h00: Closing reception
  • Afternoon: sightseeing Leuven.

Scientific Committee:

  • Michael Herzfeld (Harvard University)
  • Jean-François Bayart (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, CNRS, Paris)
  • Béatrice Hibou (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, CNRS, Paris)
  • Michael Rowlands (University College London)
  • Berardino Palumbo (Università di Messina)
  • Filippo Zerilli (Università di Cagliari)
  • Filip de Boeck (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
  • Pierre Petit (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
  • Danielle de Lame (Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren)
  • Cristiana Panella (Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren)
  • David Berliner (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
  • Mathieu Hilgers (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
  • Joël Noret (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
  • Benjamin Rubbers (Université de Liège)

Organizing Committee:

  • Cristiana Panella (Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren)
  • Pierre Petit (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
  • Filip de Boeck (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
  • Danielle de Lame (Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren)
  • Mathieu Hilgers (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
  • Joël Noret (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
  • Steven van Wolputte (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

How to register?

Fill in the registration form (Word, 30 Kb)

Proceed to payment and send the registration form before June 30th, 2012 to norms-illegality2012@africamuseum.be or to:

Valérie Herzet
Royal Museum for Central Africa
Leuvensesteenweg, 13
B-3080 Tervuren
Belgium

Practical information

Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) October 25th, 2012 - Opening plenary session

  • The event will take place at the Colonial Palace (building A on the map)
  • Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA)
  • Colonial Palace  (Historical ballroom) Paleizenlaan 3080 Tervuren
  • How to get there 
  • Where to stay (Tervuren and surroundings)
  • Contact : Valérie Herzet or  valerie.herzet [at]africamuseum.be

Université libre de Bruxelles October 26th, 2012 - Panels

  • Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
  • Institut de Sociologie (Building S)
  • Solbosch Campus Avenue Jeanne 44 1050 Bruxelles
  • How to get there
  • Where to stay (Brussels, near ULB)
  • Contact: Sandrine Levêque - tel. +32 02 650 37 98 - e-mail:  lamc [at] ulb.ac.be

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven October 27th, 2012

Lieux

  • Université libre de Bruxelles
    Bruxelles, Belgique

Dates

  • samedi 27 octobre 2012
  • jeudi 25 octobre 2012
  • vendredi 26 octobre 2012

Fichiers attachés

Mots-clés

  • normes, illégalité, état

Contacts

  • Joël Noret
    courriel : joel [dot] noret [at] ulb [dot] be
  • Cristiana Panella
    courriel : cristiana [dot] panella [at] africamuseum [dot] be

Source de l'information

  • Joël Noret
    courriel : joel [dot] noret [at] ulb [dot] be

Licence

CC0-1.0 Cette annonce est mise à disposition selon les termes de la Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universel.

Pour citer cette annonce

« Norms in the Margins and Margins of the Norm », Colloque, Calenda, Publié le vendredi 04 mai 2012, https://doi.org/10.58079/kw6

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