University of Essex/Sociological Review Foundation, Nov 4, 2020
This is the end-of-project report of the project 'Law in Action: Local-level and collabor... more This is the end-of-project report of the project 'Law in Action: Local-level and collaborative governance of prostitution in two European cities -Antwerp (Belgium) and Catania (Italy)'. The project was funded by the Sociological Review Foundation - Kick Start Grant. It comparatively analysed city-based prostitution policies and practices and their effects on sex workers in the cities of Antwerp (Belgium) and Catania (Italy).
In this short article, I highlight the main methodological contributions of our recent research o... more In this short article, I highlight the main methodological contributions of our recent research on the uses of Twitter by the criminalised environmental movement NOTAP in Italy and the intersections between online and offline representations of their protesting. As I illustrate in this piece, when studying activist technosocial practice, innovative computational tools – such as the ones we used in our studies – can facilitate the collection and sorting of important social media material related to activist practice online, which can go a long way into uncovering unrecognized sources of harm and suffering, often obscured by mainstream media. As our research demonstrates, however, to be able to comprehensively capture activist practice and, specifically, activists’ lived experiences of social control, social media research should always be combined with on-the-ground qualitative ethnographic research. To assist to the latter end, critical criminologists can also rely on a recent and quite innovative repertoire of sensory and participative (itinerant) methodologies, which I address in the final part of the article.
Editors: Nina Peršak and Anna Di Ronco Bringing together an international group of authors, this ... more Editors: Nina Peršak and Anna Di Ronco Bringing together an international group of authors, this book addresses the important issues lying at the intersection between urban space, on the one hand, and incivilities and urban harm, on the other. Progressive urbanisation not only influences people’s living conditions, their well-being and health but may also generate social conflict and consequently fuel disorder and crime. Rooted in interdisciplinary scholarship, this book considers a range of urban issues, focussing specifically on their sensory, emotive, power and structural dimensions. The visual, audio and olfactory components that offend or harm are inspected, including how urban social control agencies respond to violations of imposed sensory regimes. Emotive dimensions examined include the consideration of people emotions and sensibilities in the perception of incivilities, in the shaping of social control to deviant phenomena, and their role in activating or suppressing people’s resistance towards otherwise harmful everyday practices. Power and structural dimensions examine the agents who decide and define what anti-social and harmful is and the wider socio-economic and cultural setting in which urbanites and social control agents operate. Connecting with sensory and affective turns in other disciplines, the book offers an original, distinctive and nuanced approach to understanding the harms, disorder and social control in the city. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to those engaged with criminology, sociology, human geography, psychology, urban studies, socio-legal studies and all those interested in the relationship between urban space and urban harm.
trasformazione tangibile e simbolica. Iniziamo l’articolo percorrendo gli eventi che hanno maggio... more trasformazione tangibile e simbolica. Iniziamo l’articolo percorrendo gli eventi che hanno maggiormente inciso sul sex work a San Berillo, facendo particolare riferimento alle modificazioni legislative intervenute in Italia in materia di prostituzione e alle trasformazioni urbanistiche che hanno interessato il quartiere. Analizziamo poi il materiale raccolto sulla base di categorie tematiche che sono emerse dal materiale stesso; esse si concentrano sulle presenze, relazioni e resistenze che si sono articolate nel quartiere Vecchio San Berillo dopo la retata della polizia dell’anno 2000. Nell’ultima sezione dell’articolo, analizziamo le pratiche spaziali dei/delle sex worker, nonche gli spazi di rappresentazione emersi nel quartiere. Concludiamo evidenziando come le pratiche spaziali dei/delle sex worker a Vecchio San Berillo – le quali manifestano la loro volonta di contribuire attivamente a pensare e fare la citta – aprano a degli immaginari inediti sul futuro del vivere urbano. ...
This article advances knowledge on activist technosocial practice by studying the realities and r... more This article advances knowledge on activist technosocial practice by studying the realities and representations of on-the-ground environmental resistance and their intersections with visual representations of protest on Twitter. It does so by focusing on the case of resistance to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, commonly known as TAP, in southern Italy, and on mixed methods for data collection, including ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews and an AIassisted visual ethnography of a large collection of computationally collected and categorised images posted on Twitter. By comparing online and offline representations of protest, the study demonstrated that only a partial overlapping existed between them, thus adding a nuance to the digital criminological literature premised on the existence of blurred boundaries between online and offline experiences of injustice. Themes overlapped in their representations of protest, with images of on-theground visual resistance being us...
Medical approaches and treatments developed outside science-based medicine are often the object o... more Medical approaches and treatments developed outside science-based medicine are often the object of highly polarised debates, with "believers" and "sceptics" presenting arguments for or against their legitimacy and effectiveness. While some complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) might be beneficial to individuals’ physical, psychological and spiritual needs, many forms of non-science-based treatments and approaches can be dangerous and greatly harmful to people’s health. With very few exceptions, relative little attention has been paid in the social sciences to the topic of misleading medical information and specifically of CAM-adjacent health scams and their harms to people. Criminology in particular should be very concerned with the study of these practices and be at the forefront of the interdisciplinary scientific debate, as some of these approaches are leading to great social harms, with serious repercussions both on the health of people and on their confidence in the medical profession and the scientific method. This book brings together contributions of international academics from criminology, digital sociology, health psychology, medicine, law, physics, and journalism. It is the first book to reconcile different scientific understandings of these practices, exploring the challenges, implications and potential remedies to the spread of dangerous fraudulent information. It covers a range of topics, including the history of fraudulent "alternative" health practices and the public understanding of science, case studies on specific frauds and their harms, offenders’ behaviours, media studies, web science analyses on the role of cyberspace as a facilitator of the spread of potentially dangerous information, and debunking practices. It is essential reading for scholars across criminology, sociology and health studies.
Complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs), here broadly intended as all those healthcare app... more Complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs), here broadly intended as all those healthcare approaches developed outside standard science-based medicine, are increasingly the object of highly polarized public debates. Some CAMs can cause great social harm, with serious repercussions both on the health of people and on their confidence in the medical profession and the scientific method. This notwithstanding, criminologists have so far overlooked this issue. Based on the awareness that people’s perceptions of CAMs often depend on what they learn about them through the media, this exploratory study presents a longitudinal systematic analysis of media representations of CAMs in the Italian press. The results indicate that media have conveyed confused and ambivalent messages on the topic of CAMs, partly because of the lack of preparation of journalists on this subject and partly because of the insubstantial presence of the voices of experts and medical organizations in the press disco...
This research explores a new methodological path for doing green cultural criminological research... more This research explores a new methodological path for doing green cultural criminological research via social media. It provides original case-study data and aims to stimulate further empirical and theoretical debate. In particular, the study explores how Twitter users have represented the harms related to an ongoing pipeline project in Italy (referred to as TAP), and the resistance to those harms. To these ends, it offers a virtual and visual ethnography of Twitter posts and posted images.
This article analyses the representations of regulated nuisance in a section of Flemish newspaper... more This article analyses the representations of regulated nuisance in a section of Flemish newspapers over time. It identifies the groups of people who have been successful in conveying messages in and through Flemish press news, and explores the way they have represented problems of, and suggested solutions to, regulated incivilities over the years. Furthermore, against the backdrop of newsmaking criminology, it considers whether and how crime and justice experts have contributed to shaping the Flemish media discourse on regulated incivilities over time. Overall the analysis of press news has found that the press, by giving coverage to the voices of local institutional actors, has promoted the criminalization of nuisance and, especially, of physical incivilities. The views of criminological experts, by contrast, have remained marginal. The article concludes by suggesting how such findings present a new set of empirical and conceptual challenges for newsmaking criminology, and more gen...
This article comparatively analyses city-based prostitution policies and practices and their effe... more This article comparatively analyses city-based prostitution policies and practices and their effects on sex workers in countries that have adopted a partial criminalization model of intervention towards prostitution – Belgium and Italy. The two case studies selected for this research – the cities of Antwerp (Belgium) and Catania (Italy) – were chosen for their adopted local approach towards prostitution in designated red-light districts (RLDs): whereas prostitution has been collaboratively governed in Antwerp, it has simply been tolerated in Catania. By considering the factors that have led to the development of prostitution policies and practices in these two cities, and their characteristics both within and outside the two cities’ RLDs, this article compares and analyses the effects produced on sex workers across city areas. The study revealed a number of similarities between the two local cases considered: local practices towards sex work in both cities have been shaped by urban ...
University of Essex/Sociological Review Foundation, Nov 4, 2020
This is the end-of-project report of the project 'Law in Action: Local-level and collabor... more This is the end-of-project report of the project 'Law in Action: Local-level and collaborative governance of prostitution in two European cities -Antwerp (Belgium) and Catania (Italy)'. The project was funded by the Sociological Review Foundation - Kick Start Grant. It comparatively analysed city-based prostitution policies and practices and their effects on sex workers in the cities of Antwerp (Belgium) and Catania (Italy).
In this short article, I highlight the main methodological contributions of our recent research o... more In this short article, I highlight the main methodological contributions of our recent research on the uses of Twitter by the criminalised environmental movement NOTAP in Italy and the intersections between online and offline representations of their protesting. As I illustrate in this piece, when studying activist technosocial practice, innovative computational tools – such as the ones we used in our studies – can facilitate the collection and sorting of important social media material related to activist practice online, which can go a long way into uncovering unrecognized sources of harm and suffering, often obscured by mainstream media. As our research demonstrates, however, to be able to comprehensively capture activist practice and, specifically, activists’ lived experiences of social control, social media research should always be combined with on-the-ground qualitative ethnographic research. To assist to the latter end, critical criminologists can also rely on a recent and quite innovative repertoire of sensory and participative (itinerant) methodologies, which I address in the final part of the article.
Editors: Nina Peršak and Anna Di Ronco Bringing together an international group of authors, this ... more Editors: Nina Peršak and Anna Di Ronco Bringing together an international group of authors, this book addresses the important issues lying at the intersection between urban space, on the one hand, and incivilities and urban harm, on the other. Progressive urbanisation not only influences people’s living conditions, their well-being and health but may also generate social conflict and consequently fuel disorder and crime. Rooted in interdisciplinary scholarship, this book considers a range of urban issues, focussing specifically on their sensory, emotive, power and structural dimensions. The visual, audio and olfactory components that offend or harm are inspected, including how urban social control agencies respond to violations of imposed sensory regimes. Emotive dimensions examined include the consideration of people emotions and sensibilities in the perception of incivilities, in the shaping of social control to deviant phenomena, and their role in activating or suppressing people’s resistance towards otherwise harmful everyday practices. Power and structural dimensions examine the agents who decide and define what anti-social and harmful is and the wider socio-economic and cultural setting in which urbanites and social control agents operate. Connecting with sensory and affective turns in other disciplines, the book offers an original, distinctive and nuanced approach to understanding the harms, disorder and social control in the city. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to those engaged with criminology, sociology, human geography, psychology, urban studies, socio-legal studies and all those interested in the relationship between urban space and urban harm.
trasformazione tangibile e simbolica. Iniziamo l’articolo percorrendo gli eventi che hanno maggio... more trasformazione tangibile e simbolica. Iniziamo l’articolo percorrendo gli eventi che hanno maggiormente inciso sul sex work a San Berillo, facendo particolare riferimento alle modificazioni legislative intervenute in Italia in materia di prostituzione e alle trasformazioni urbanistiche che hanno interessato il quartiere. Analizziamo poi il materiale raccolto sulla base di categorie tematiche che sono emerse dal materiale stesso; esse si concentrano sulle presenze, relazioni e resistenze che si sono articolate nel quartiere Vecchio San Berillo dopo la retata della polizia dell’anno 2000. Nell’ultima sezione dell’articolo, analizziamo le pratiche spaziali dei/delle sex worker, nonche gli spazi di rappresentazione emersi nel quartiere. Concludiamo evidenziando come le pratiche spaziali dei/delle sex worker a Vecchio San Berillo – le quali manifestano la loro volonta di contribuire attivamente a pensare e fare la citta – aprano a degli immaginari inediti sul futuro del vivere urbano. ...
This article advances knowledge on activist technosocial practice by studying the realities and r... more This article advances knowledge on activist technosocial practice by studying the realities and representations of on-the-ground environmental resistance and their intersections with visual representations of protest on Twitter. It does so by focusing on the case of resistance to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, commonly known as TAP, in southern Italy, and on mixed methods for data collection, including ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews and an AIassisted visual ethnography of a large collection of computationally collected and categorised images posted on Twitter. By comparing online and offline representations of protest, the study demonstrated that only a partial overlapping existed between them, thus adding a nuance to the digital criminological literature premised on the existence of blurred boundaries between online and offline experiences of injustice. Themes overlapped in their representations of protest, with images of on-theground visual resistance being us...
Medical approaches and treatments developed outside science-based medicine are often the object o... more Medical approaches and treatments developed outside science-based medicine are often the object of highly polarised debates, with "believers" and "sceptics" presenting arguments for or against their legitimacy and effectiveness. While some complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) might be beneficial to individuals’ physical, psychological and spiritual needs, many forms of non-science-based treatments and approaches can be dangerous and greatly harmful to people’s health. With very few exceptions, relative little attention has been paid in the social sciences to the topic of misleading medical information and specifically of CAM-adjacent health scams and their harms to people. Criminology in particular should be very concerned with the study of these practices and be at the forefront of the interdisciplinary scientific debate, as some of these approaches are leading to great social harms, with serious repercussions both on the health of people and on their confidence in the medical profession and the scientific method. This book brings together contributions of international academics from criminology, digital sociology, health psychology, medicine, law, physics, and journalism. It is the first book to reconcile different scientific understandings of these practices, exploring the challenges, implications and potential remedies to the spread of dangerous fraudulent information. It covers a range of topics, including the history of fraudulent "alternative" health practices and the public understanding of science, case studies on specific frauds and their harms, offenders’ behaviours, media studies, web science analyses on the role of cyberspace as a facilitator of the spread of potentially dangerous information, and debunking practices. It is essential reading for scholars across criminology, sociology and health studies.
Complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs), here broadly intended as all those healthcare app... more Complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs), here broadly intended as all those healthcare approaches developed outside standard science-based medicine, are increasingly the object of highly polarized public debates. Some CAMs can cause great social harm, with serious repercussions both on the health of people and on their confidence in the medical profession and the scientific method. This notwithstanding, criminologists have so far overlooked this issue. Based on the awareness that people’s perceptions of CAMs often depend on what they learn about them through the media, this exploratory study presents a longitudinal systematic analysis of media representations of CAMs in the Italian press. The results indicate that media have conveyed confused and ambivalent messages on the topic of CAMs, partly because of the lack of preparation of journalists on this subject and partly because of the insubstantial presence of the voices of experts and medical organizations in the press disco...
This research explores a new methodological path for doing green cultural criminological research... more This research explores a new methodological path for doing green cultural criminological research via social media. It provides original case-study data and aims to stimulate further empirical and theoretical debate. In particular, the study explores how Twitter users have represented the harms related to an ongoing pipeline project in Italy (referred to as TAP), and the resistance to those harms. To these ends, it offers a virtual and visual ethnography of Twitter posts and posted images.
This article analyses the representations of regulated nuisance in a section of Flemish newspaper... more This article analyses the representations of regulated nuisance in a section of Flemish newspapers over time. It identifies the groups of people who have been successful in conveying messages in and through Flemish press news, and explores the way they have represented problems of, and suggested solutions to, regulated incivilities over the years. Furthermore, against the backdrop of newsmaking criminology, it considers whether and how crime and justice experts have contributed to shaping the Flemish media discourse on regulated incivilities over time. Overall the analysis of press news has found that the press, by giving coverage to the voices of local institutional actors, has promoted the criminalization of nuisance and, especially, of physical incivilities. The views of criminological experts, by contrast, have remained marginal. The article concludes by suggesting how such findings present a new set of empirical and conceptual challenges for newsmaking criminology, and more gen...
This article comparatively analyses city-based prostitution policies and practices and their effe... more This article comparatively analyses city-based prostitution policies and practices and their effects on sex workers in countries that have adopted a partial criminalization model of intervention towards prostitution – Belgium and Italy. The two case studies selected for this research – the cities of Antwerp (Belgium) and Catania (Italy) – were chosen for their adopted local approach towards prostitution in designated red-light districts (RLDs): whereas prostitution has been collaboratively governed in Antwerp, it has simply been tolerated in Catania. By considering the factors that have led to the development of prostitution policies and practices in these two cities, and their characteristics both within and outside the two cities’ RLDs, this article compares and analyses the effects produced on sex workers across city areas. The study revealed a number of similarities between the two local cases considered: local practices towards sex work in both cities have been shaped by urban ...
Social media are often used by supporters of unofficial, fraudulent, and potentially harmful medi... more Social media are often used by supporters of unofficial, fraudulent, and potentially harmful medical practices or beliefs to channel messages that assert their validity while undermining the credibility of established and scientific medical approaches. These messages may lead people to distrust the medical establishment or even refuse important medical treatments, including vaccines. This chapter focuses on Twitter activism against childhood vaccines in Italy. Particularly, by drawing on a variety of digital methods including virtual and visual ethnographies of Twitter posts and social network analysis, this chapter explores and criticaly analyses the interactions between ‘no-vaxxers’ and ‘pro-vaxxers’ (people supporting immunisation practices) and the content of their messages.
The EU has a limited competence in criminal matters. Since the Lisbon
Treaty, however, it can app... more The EU has a limited competence in criminal matters. Since the Lisbon Treaty, however, it can approximate definitions of criminal offences, particularly for the so-called ‘Euro Crimes’, which have a cross-border dimension (art. 83 TFEU). The EU focus on crime prevention, however, is not only limited to cross-border crimes like (often) organised crime (OC). From early 2000s, EU bodies have defined crime as (and set the focus of crime prevention on) behaviour that, without necessarily being a criminal offence, engenders fear of crime and insecurities – in the idea that disorder at the local level is interconnected with more serious forms of transnational crime and should therefore be fought against (Crawford, 2002). Drawing on the crime prevention and OC literature, relevant EU policy documents, and examples taken from the authors’ previous research, this paper will discuss the implications of an EU expanded realm of crime prevention to behaviour that is not necessarily serious or harmful – albeit considered as conducive to further transnational (organised) criminality (as in the case of incivilities) and/or committed by an organised crime group. It will also question whether a more harm-based approach ought to inform the EU crime prevention strategy and whether EU bodies should aim at influencing, at least – given their limited competence in criminal matters – through soft law mechanisms including the circulation of best practices, national ways of doing crime prevention.
In recent years Italy, among other European countries, has witnessed an increasing penalisation o... more In recent years Italy, among other European countries, has witnessed an increasing penalisation of uncivil (anti-social or sub-criminal) behaviour, which has involved the use of administrative measures, in lieu of (or, in some cases, in addition to) the criminal law proper. Since 2008, local authorities in Italy have sanctioned administratively a broad range of behaviour that has been deemed to undermine “public safety” and “urban security”. Many municipalities seem to have used these sanctions also to penalise street prostitutes (and their clients), with the result of banning them from public spaces. The aim of this paper is to inspect how the Italian press has represented the local regulation of street prostitution overtime. Particularly, it will investigate what has been described as the “problem” posed by prostitution in towns and cities, and what have been identified as the main solutions to it over the years. Preliminary results indicate that the press has tended to support the local sanctioning of street prostitutes, particularly when they are present in certain city areas (e.g., the city centre) and because of their aesthetics. The paper will provide an analysis of the main press narratives against the backdrop of relevant criminological perspectives, including cultural criminology, and will conclude with a discussion of the implications of this for the regulation and spatial distribution of street prostitution in the city.
The rising commercialisation of medical products through the Internet and the increasing dissemin... more The rising commercialisation of medical products through the Internet and the increasing dissemination of (medical or pseudo-medical) information through the online social media have started to provide a whole new range of crime opportunities for health fraudsters. For example, new opportunities have been formed for fraudsters who present themselves as wellness and health gurus, while being in fact moved by the search for profit and social prestige. In several countries, including Italy, a number of court trials and journalistic reports have provided evidence of the social dangerousness of these types of frauds (among others, for the health of people). This notwithstanding, this issue has so far been overlooked in criminological research. In our exploratory study we aim at providing a first analysis of this emerging, but rather understudied, phenomenon. By relying on a virtual ethnography carried out in Italian Internet forums and online social media, we aim to describe through criminological lenses the participants of these online fora, and to understand their representation and self- representation as victims and/or accomplices in the frauds (which may derive from the support they provide to those they perceive as “gurus”). The study will also critically consider the main regulatory loopholes and challenges that allow these frauds to take place.
The central aim of this paper is to examine how urban space mediates the social control in the ar... more The central aim of this paper is to examine how urban space mediates the social control in the area of incivilities. To this end, we first inspect the existing literature, particularly within the group of the socio-spatial studies which emphasize the importance of culture and values in the interaction with the social control (Bottoms 2012). Partly drawing on examples from our previous studies, we suggest that people’s perceptions of urban space (which are influenced by cultural symbols and values) affect their perceptions of incivilities, while the latter often determine or at least contribute to the shaping of the social control of incivilities. The paper concludes by discussing implications of this for the possible future, more integrated criminological research on the social control of incivilities in the city.
This presentation is based on the author’s PhD thesis, which provides comparative empirical data ... more This presentation is based on the author’s PhD thesis, which provides comparative empirical data on the regulation, representation and enforcement of nuisance. With respect to the regulation of nuisance, the study investigated whether courts in some selected European countries have examined the legality of nuisance regulations through fundamental principles of criminal law and whether (when needed) they have provided correctives to safeguard individual’s freedoms. The doctoral study has also addressed the representation of nuisance and its enforcement by comparatively examining the societal attitudes towards uncivil behaviour, and how nuisance is seen and tackled by the authorities, in different cities and cities’ areas. Additionally, the conducted research has examined the representations of regulated nuisance in the Flemish press and, specifically, how the press has represented it overtime, through the voices of whom, and whether criminologists have played any role in shaping such representations. The presentation will focus on illustrating the results of this doctoral study, on highlighting their impact on academic research, and on sketching directions for future research in the field.
La green criminology – o, potremmo tradurre, criminologia verde – emerge negli anni ’90 con pensa... more La green criminology – o, potremmo tradurre, criminologia verde – emerge negli anni ’90 con pensatori come Nigel South e alcuni suoi colleghi in altre parti del mondo (come Lynch, White, Stretesky e tanti altri). Essa studia il danno ambientale, i crimini ambientali, la resistenza da parte di eco-justice movements e gli impatti che danni e crimini ambientali hanno su umani e non-umani (animali non-umani, piante, ecosistemi e biomi). Quindi ha un focus molto ampio.
In this short article, I highlight the main methodological contributions of our recent research o... more In this short article, I highlight the main methodological contributions of our recent research on the uses of Twitter by the criminalised environmental movement NOTAP in Italy and the intersections between online and offline representations of their protesting. As I illustrate in this piece, when studying activist technosocial practice, innovative computational tools – such as the ones we used in our studies – can facilitate the collection and sorting of important social media material related to activist practice online, which can go a long way into uncovering unrecognized sources of harm and suffering, often obscured by mainstream media. As our research demonstrates, however, to be able to comprehensively capture activist practice and, specifically, activists’ lived experiences of social control, social media research should always be combined with on-the-ground qualitative ethnographic research. To assist to the latter end, critical criminologists can also rely on a recent and quite innovative repertoire of sensory and participative (itinerant) methodologies, which I address in the final part of the article.
This article advances knowledge on activist technosocial practice by studying the realities and
r... more This article advances knowledge on activist technosocial practice by studying the realities and representations of on-the-ground environmental resistance and their intersections with visual representations of protest on Twitter. It does so by focusing on the case of resistance to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, commonly known as TAP, in southern Italy, and on mixed methods for data collection, including ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews and an AI-assisted visual ethnography of a large collection of computationally collected and categorised images posted on Twitter. By comparing online and offline representations of protest, the study demonstrated that only a partial overlapping existed between them, thus adding a nuance to the digital criminological literature premised on the existence of blurred boundaries between online and offline experiences of injustice. Themes overlapped in their representations of protest, with images of on-theground visual resistance being used on Twitter to extend and amplify the contestation of everyday spaces and to support offline and online initiatives to stop the pipeline. Differences in the recurring themes were instead reconnected to the inherent secrecy of some of the protest’s strategies and to the typical ways in which Twitter tends to be used by social movements.
This article comparatively analyses city-based prostitution policies and practices and their effe... more This article comparatively analyses city-based prostitution policies and practices and their effects on sex workers in countries that have adopted a partial criminalization model of intervention towards prostitution – Belgium and Italy. The two case studies selected for this research – the cities of Antwerp (Belgium) and Catania (Italy) – were chosen for their adopted local approach towards prostitution in designated red-light districts (RLDs): whereas prostitution has been collaboratively governed in Antwerp, it has simply been tolerated in Catania. By considering the factors that have led to the development of prostitution policies and practices in these two cities, and their characteristics both within and outside the two cities’ RLDs, this article compares and analyses the effects produced on sex workers across city areas. The study revealed a number of similarities between the two local cases considered: local practices towards sex work in both cities have been shaped by urban regeneration in RLDs, and by concerns about nuisance and crime across city areas (irregular immigration and trafficking, in particular); in all instances, they have had similar exclusionary effects on sex workers – and especially on the migrant women among them. The study also identified two key differences in the practices towards prostitution adopted in these two cities: they differed in the level of access to support services offered to sex workers and in the pervasiveness of proactive police control. The article concludes by arguing that all these local practices – including the ones that are seemingly different – ultimately converge in their ethos: they reinforce the socially constructed status of migrant sex workers as either law-breakers or trafficked victims to be subject to control and, in the latter case, also protection.
Bringing together an international group of authors, this book addresses the important issues lyi... more Bringing together an international group of authors, this book addresses the important issues lying at the intersection between urban space, on the one hand, and incivilities and urban harm, on the other. Progressive urbanisation not only influences people’s living conditions, their well-being and health but may also generate social conflict and consequently fuel disorder and crime.
Rooted in interdisciplinary scholarship, this book considers a range of urban issues, focussing specifically on their sensory, emotive, power and structural dimensions. The visual, audio and olfactory components that offend or harm are inspected, including how urban social control agencies respond to violations of imposed sensory regimes. Emotive dimensions examined include the consideration of people emotions and sensibilities in the perception of incivilities, in the shaping of social control to deviant phenomena, and their role in activating or suppressing people’s resistance towards otherwise harmful everyday practices. Power and structural dimensions examine the agents who decide and define what anti-social and harmful is and the wider socio-economic and cultural setting in which urbanites and social control agents operate. Connecting with sensory and affective turns in other disciplines, the book offers an original, distinctive and nuanced approach to understanding the harms, disorder and social control in the city.
An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to those engaged with criminology, sociology, human geography, psychology, urban studies, socio-legal studies and all those interested in the relationship between urban space and urban harm.
Medical approaches and treatments developed outside science-based medicine are often the object o... more Medical approaches and treatments developed outside science-based medicine are often the object of highly polarised debates, with "believers" and "sceptics" presenting arguments for or against their legitimacy and effectiveness. While some complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) might be beneficial to individuals’ physical, psychological and spiritual needs, many forms of non-science-based treatments and approaches can be dangerous and greatly harmful to people’s health. With very few exceptions, relative little attention has been paid in the social sciences to the topic of misleading medical information and specifically of CAM-adjacent health scams and their harms to people. Criminology in particular should be very concerned with the study of these practices and be at the forefront of the interdisciplinary scientific debate, as some of these approaches are leading to great social harms, with serious repercussions both on the health of people and on their confidence in the medical profession and the scientific method.
This book brings together contributions of international academics from criminology, digital sociology, health psychology, medicine, law, physics, and journalism. It is the first book to reconcile different scientific understandings of these practices, exploring the challenges, implications and potential remedies to the spread of dangerous fraudulent information. It covers a range of topics, including the history of fraudulent "alternative" health practices and the public understanding of science, case studies on specific frauds and their harms, offenders’ behaviours, media studies, web science analyses on the role of cyberspace as a facilitator of the spread of potentially dangerous information, and debunking practices. It is essential reading for scholars across criminology, sociology and health studies.
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Treaty, however, it can approximate definitions of criminal offences,
particularly for the so-called ‘Euro Crimes’, which have a cross-border
dimension (art. 83 TFEU). The EU focus on crime prevention, however, is
not only limited to cross-border crimes like (often) organised crime (OC).
From early 2000s, EU bodies have defined crime as (and set the focus of
crime prevention on) behaviour that, without necessarily being a criminal
offence, engenders fear of crime and insecurities – in the idea that disorder
at the local level is interconnected with more serious forms of transnational
crime and should therefore be fought against (Crawford, 2002).
Drawing on the crime prevention and OC literature, relevant EU policy
documents, and examples taken from the authors’ previous research, this
paper will discuss the implications of an EU expanded realm of crime
prevention to behaviour that is not necessarily serious or harmful – albeit
considered as conducive to further transnational (organised) criminality (as
in the case of incivilities) and/or committed by an organised crime group.
It will also question whether a more harm-based approach ought to inform
the EU crime prevention strategy and whether EU bodies should aim at
influencing, at least – given their limited competence in criminal matters
– through soft law mechanisms including the circulation of best practices,
national ways of doing crime prevention.
In our exploratory study we aim at providing a first analysis of this emerging, but rather understudied, phenomenon. By relying on a virtual ethnography carried out in Italian Internet forums and online social media, we aim to describe through criminological lenses the participants of these online fora, and to understand their representation and self- representation as victims and/or accomplices in the frauds (which may derive from the support they provide to those they perceive as “gurus”). The study will also critically consider the main regulatory loopholes and challenges that allow these frauds to take place.
representations of on-the-ground environmental resistance and their intersections with visual
representations of protest on Twitter. It does so by focusing on the case of resistance to the Trans
Adriatic Pipeline, commonly known as TAP, in southern Italy, and on mixed methods for data
collection, including ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews and an AI-assisted visual
ethnography of a large collection of computationally collected and categorised images posted on
Twitter. By comparing online and offline representations of protest, the study demonstrated that
only a partial overlapping existed between them, thus adding a nuance to the digital criminological
literature premised on the existence of blurred boundaries between online and offline experiences
of injustice. Themes overlapped in their representations of protest, with images of on-theground
visual resistance being used on Twitter to extend and amplify the contestation of everyday spaces
and to support offline and online initiatives to stop the pipeline. Differences in the recurring themes
were instead reconnected to the inherent secrecy of some of the protest’s strategies and to the
typical ways in which Twitter tends to be used by social movements.
Rooted in interdisciplinary scholarship, this book considers a range of urban issues, focussing specifically on their sensory, emotive, power and structural dimensions. The visual, audio and olfactory components that offend or harm are inspected, including how urban social control agencies respond to violations of imposed sensory regimes. Emotive dimensions examined include the consideration of people emotions and sensibilities in the perception of incivilities, in the shaping of social control to deviant phenomena, and their role in activating or suppressing people’s resistance towards otherwise harmful everyday practices. Power and structural dimensions examine the agents who decide and define what anti-social and harmful is and the wider socio-economic and cultural setting in which urbanites and social control agents operate. Connecting with sensory and affective turns in other disciplines, the book offers an original, distinctive and nuanced approach to understanding the harms, disorder and social control in the city.
An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to those engaged with criminology, sociology, human geography, psychology, urban studies, socio-legal studies and all those interested in the relationship between urban space and urban harm.
This book brings together contributions of international academics from criminology, digital sociology, health psychology, medicine, law, physics, and journalism. It is the first book to reconcile different scientific understandings of these practices, exploring the challenges, implications and potential remedies to the spread of dangerous fraudulent information. It covers a range of topics, including the history of fraudulent "alternative" health practices and the public understanding of science, case studies on specific frauds and their harms, offenders’ behaviours, media studies, web science analyses on the role of cyberspace as a facilitator of the spread of potentially dangerous information, and debunking practices. It is essential reading for scholars across criminology, sociology and health studies.