This week we looked at youth and age, with a bit of help from Jo Brand. (If you missed the seminar, you missed a good one. Short, too.)
Age is an interesting area for victimology. Few people would say that children or elderly people are an oppressed or disadvantaged group in society: we find it easy to think about social power and privilege in terms of class, ethnicity, gender and so on, but less so in terms of age. Nevertheless, the insights of radical victimology seem to apply quite well to both the old and the young ends of the age spectrum. Old people and young people are excluded from 'mainstream' society, both through actual segregation and by pervasive social norms. This exclusion makes them more vulnerable to actual victimisation: children in schools and children's homes are at risk of violence from one another and abuse from responsible adults; elderly people suffer from fearful isolation at home and from degrading loss of individuality and dignity in 'total institutions' such as nursing homes, to say nothing of their vulnerability to crime in both settings. Exclusion from the mainstream also makes it more difficult for both children and old people to make a credible claim to victimhood: old people claiming to have been mistreated may simply be cantankerous and confused; getting beaten up and robbed is just one of those things that happens, when the victim is a child and the offender is the 'school bully'. Neither young people nor old people are generally seen as victims worth our attention, albeit for different reasons: old people are so completely powerless that they tend to be ignored and drop off the 'victimhood' radar altogether, while young people are routinely assumed to be offenders rather than victims.
In both cases, the structural power in society of people like us - adults of working age - does an injustice to the minority defined as 'too young' or 'too old': it is this pervasive injustice that finds expression in greater vulnerability to crime, and in reduced visibility as a victim. That's what a radical victimologist might say, anyway.
Friday, 2 December 2011
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Week 9
This week we looked at the experience of victimisation. There were two main points here. One was that this is an area where there is enormous variation: in the ways that people experience being a victim; in the way they respond to it; in the range of experiences which make people feel like a victim in the first place; and in the resources they're able to use to deal with the situation. The crime itself may be serious or trivial; its effects may be more or less traumatic; the victim may be physically vulnerable or resilient, well-connected or isolated, on good terms with the police or socially excluded; the coping strategies the victim adopts may be positive or self-destructive; and so on. This makes it very hard to generalise about what "victimisation" is like or how "victims" feel.
The second point, which qualifies the first one, is that the experience of victimisation does have some common properties, which define what it means to be - or feel like - a victim. The effect of all the factors listed above isn't to create different experiences of victimisation, but to make the experience of victimisation more or less serious, harder or easier to deal with. To understand what this experience is and how different victims cope with it, we looked at two psychological models. Rotter's "locus of control" theory predicts that downtrodden fatalists (external locus of control) will be relatively untroubled by being a victim of crime ("s*** happens"), whereas confident self-starters (internal locus of control) will find it devastating ("how could this happen to me?") This is believable but also rather surprising - even shocking: it suggests that psychologically healthy habits of thought are actually a liability when it comes to coping with being a victim of crime.
The "ordered world" model, put forward by Janoff-Bulman and Friese, suggests why this should be. According to this model, we all (to a greater or lesser extent) carry around three guiding assumptions. In colloquial terms, they can be summed up as: "I'm going to be all right", "Things happen for a reason" and "I'm a good person". The experience of being a victim is a direct challenge to all of these, the first two most obviously but also the third - why should bad things happen to a good person? We can see how someone with a strong internal locus of control would have particularly well-developed "ordered world" beliefs, and would consequently find victimisation extremely challenging to their world-view. J.-B. and F. suggested that we cope with victimisation by addressing all three of these challenges: we move on from being a victim of crime, in effect, by telling ourselves "I'm going to be all right (the crime wasn't such a big deal)", "Things happen for a reason (I shouldn't have gone down that street/had that drink/etc)" and "I'm a good person (all the more so now that I'm taking more care)".
We discussed last week's film in the seminars. While it's not directly related to the "ordered world" model, it does relate quite strongly to the idea of rebuilding one's emotional and symbolic world; all four of the stories involved somebody who was "stuck" in the state of being a victim of crime (the murder of a loved one) and who eventually managed to move on by emotionally reframing what had happened.
(There's another film next week, but it's a short one so we'll have the discussion straight after.)
The second point, which qualifies the first one, is that the experience of victimisation does have some common properties, which define what it means to be - or feel like - a victim. The effect of all the factors listed above isn't to create different experiences of victimisation, but to make the experience of victimisation more or less serious, harder or easier to deal with. To understand what this experience is and how different victims cope with it, we looked at two psychological models. Rotter's "locus of control" theory predicts that downtrodden fatalists (external locus of control) will be relatively untroubled by being a victim of crime ("s*** happens"), whereas confident self-starters (internal locus of control) will find it devastating ("how could this happen to me?") This is believable but also rather surprising - even shocking: it suggests that psychologically healthy habits of thought are actually a liability when it comes to coping with being a victim of crime.
The "ordered world" model, put forward by Janoff-Bulman and Friese, suggests why this should be. According to this model, we all (to a greater or lesser extent) carry around three guiding assumptions. In colloquial terms, they can be summed up as: "I'm going to be all right", "Things happen for a reason" and "I'm a good person". The experience of being a victim is a direct challenge to all of these, the first two most obviously but also the third - why should bad things happen to a good person? We can see how someone with a strong internal locus of control would have particularly well-developed "ordered world" beliefs, and would consequently find victimisation extremely challenging to their world-view. J.-B. and F. suggested that we cope with victimisation by addressing all three of these challenges: we move on from being a victim of crime, in effect, by telling ourselves "I'm going to be all right (the crime wasn't such a big deal)", "Things happen for a reason (I shouldn't have gone down that street/had that drink/etc)" and "I'm a good person (all the more so now that I'm taking more care)".
We discussed last week's film in the seminars. While it's not directly related to the "ordered world" model, it does relate quite strongly to the idea of rebuilding one's emotional and symbolic world; all four of the stories involved somebody who was "stuck" in the state of being a victim of crime (the murder of a loved one) and who eventually managed to move on by emotionally reframing what had happened.
(There's another film next week, but it's a short one so we'll have the discussion straight after.)
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Week 8
So, classical victimology tended to blame the victim and treat victims as part of the problem of crime; the image of the "ideal victim" represented those few people who were entitled to be considered as 'true' victims, and it was a very limited and disempowering role to occupy (not real, and not really an ideal either). Feminist and radical victimology suggested that we should sympathise with victims, and that a lot of victims were going unseen: women and other oppressed or excluded groups were victims of systematic injustices within society, and suffering from crime was just part of this situation.
So far, so theoretical. We left theory behind this week and looked at some data: which groups of people are really victims of crime? (And how do we know? There are big question marks over the data from even the British Crime Survey, but it's the best we have - it's certainly much more reliable and valid than police figures.) The results were, perhaps, not very surprising: as far as the British Crime Survey can tell, people in poor neighbourhoods are the main victims of property crime; young men, and in particularly young Black men, are the main victims of street violence; and older, White, women are the 'safest' group in society.
Which theoretical perspective, if any, do you think the figures support?
So far, so theoretical. We left theory behind this week and looked at some data: which groups of people are really victims of crime? (And how do we know? There are big question marks over the data from even the British Crime Survey, but it's the best we have - it's certainly much more reliable and valid than police figures.) The results were, perhaps, not very surprising: as far as the British Crime Survey can tell, people in poor neighbourhoods are the main victims of property crime; young men, and in particularly young Black men, are the main victims of street violence; and older, White, women are the 'safest' group in society.
Which theoretical perspective, if any, do you think the figures support?
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Week 7
Radical victimology this week. As an approach, it's not a million miles from feminist victimology; in fact it's indebted to it. To demonstrate this I'm going to cheat slightly and borrow half of the previous blog post, with a few words changed:
We should sympathise with victims of crime (a radical victimologist might argue), even in cases where they seem to have brought the crime on themselves: in many cases they had no choice, no power, no alternative. Not only that, but we should also sympathise with many people who are not recognised as victims of crime: because the crime doesn't lead to a conviction (e.g. racist attacks), because it's not reported to the police (e.g. elder abuse), because it's not even recognised as being a crime (e.g. white-collar crime). The image of the "ideal victim", seen in this light, is just an excuse for refusing to sympathise with the great majority of real victims, or to take their problems seriously.Makes sense? It can get a bit ranty, as I said in the lecture, but I think it's a useful way of looking at victimisation and victimhood.
Radical victimology, in other words, doesn't just focus on the specific needs of oppressed, excluded and disempowered groups as crime victims; that would be valid and useful, but would leave the wider field of victimology unchanged. What radical victimologists did was to suggest that the problem of victims of crime is much worse - and much more political - than classical victimologists had thought. They did this by looking at crime victimisation in terms of power and injustice, and then applying the same analysis to the process of gaining recognition as a victim. In other words, to a radical victimologist a victim of workplace injury or gay-bashing is a victim of an unjust power structure, of which the actual crime is just the 'sharp end' - and a victim who cannot gain recognition is a victim of the same structural injustice, operating through the criminal justice system.
Friday, 28 October 2011
Week 5
This week we did feminist victimology, which will lead into radical victimology after ReadingEmployability Week. (Incidentally, there are no classes or lectures next week, which will leave you free to hit the Employability Fair on Monday and Tuesday.)
Feminist victimology is, for me, the point where victimology gets really interesting. Feminists were the first people to suggest that the problem of victims of crime might actually represent a problem in society as a whole. In other words, classical victimologists tended to suggest that if someone became a victim of crime it was because he was a victim ('victim-proneness') or because she had made herself a victim ('victim precipitation'). Seen in this light, victims were a problem in much the same way that beggars or drug addicts are a problem: a dysfunctional minority needing to be controlled. We might feel that someone who has been a victim of crime deserves our sympathy, but (a classical victimologist would argue) in most cases that would be mistaken: we should save our sympathy for the rare cases where a victim is genuinely innocent, genuinely virtuous, genuinely defenceless. In other words, for the "ideal victim".
Feminist victimology turns this way of looking at victims on its head. We should sympathise with victims of crime (a feminist victimologist might argue), even in cases where they seem to have brought the crime on themselves: in many cases they had no choice, no power, no alternative. Not only that, but we should also sympathise with many women who are not recognised as victims of crime: because the crime doesn't lead to a conviction, because it's not reported to the police, because it's not even recognised as being a crime. The image of the "ideal victim", seen in this light, is just an excuse for refusing to sympathise with the great majority of real victims, or to take their problems seriously.
Feminist victimology, in other words, doesn't just focus on the specific needs of women as crime victims; that would be valid and useful, but would leave the wider field of victimology unchanged. What feminist victimologists did was to suggest that the problem of victims of crime is much worse - and much more political - than classical victimologists had thought. They did this by looking at crime victimisation in terms of power and injustice, and then applying the same analysis to the process of gaining recognition as a victim. In other words, to a feminist a victim of domestic violence or spousal rape is a victim of unjust male power - and a victim who cannot gain recognition is a victim of the same gender-based injustice, operating through the criminal justice system.
Can this way of looking at crime and criminal justice be extended to other social power structures (based on class, ethnicity, sexuality...?) What do you think?
I'm not running my standard office hours next week, but I'm contactable by email any time - if you want to meet up, drop me a line on p.j.edwards at em em yoo dot ac dot uk.
Feminist victimology is, for me, the point where victimology gets really interesting. Feminists were the first people to suggest that the problem of victims of crime might actually represent a problem in society as a whole. In other words, classical victimologists tended to suggest that if someone became a victim of crime it was because he was a victim ('victim-proneness') or because she had made herself a victim ('victim precipitation'). Seen in this light, victims were a problem in much the same way that beggars or drug addicts are a problem: a dysfunctional minority needing to be controlled. We might feel that someone who has been a victim of crime deserves our sympathy, but (a classical victimologist would argue) in most cases that would be mistaken: we should save our sympathy for the rare cases where a victim is genuinely innocent, genuinely virtuous, genuinely defenceless. In other words, for the "ideal victim".
Feminist victimology turns this way of looking at victims on its head. We should sympathise with victims of crime (a feminist victimologist might argue), even in cases where they seem to have brought the crime on themselves: in many cases they had no choice, no power, no alternative. Not only that, but we should also sympathise with many women who are not recognised as victims of crime: because the crime doesn't lead to a conviction, because it's not reported to the police, because it's not even recognised as being a crime. The image of the "ideal victim", seen in this light, is just an excuse for refusing to sympathise with the great majority of real victims, or to take their problems seriously.
Feminist victimology, in other words, doesn't just focus on the specific needs of women as crime victims; that would be valid and useful, but would leave the wider field of victimology unchanged. What feminist victimologists did was to suggest that the problem of victims of crime is much worse - and much more political - than classical victimologists had thought. They did this by looking at crime victimisation in terms of power and injustice, and then applying the same analysis to the process of gaining recognition as a victim. In other words, to a feminist a victim of domestic violence or spousal rape is a victim of unjust male power - and a victim who cannot gain recognition is a victim of the same gender-based injustice, operating through the criminal justice system.
Can this way of looking at crime and criminal justice be extended to other social power structures (based on class, ethnicity, sexuality...?) What do you think?
I'm not running my standard office hours next week, but I'm contactable by email any time - if you want to meet up, drop me a line on p.j.edwards at em em yoo dot ac dot uk.
Thursday, 20 October 2011
Week 4
This week we looked at old-school victimology and asked whether it had any insights for us now. The key point I drew from classical victimology was that victims (i.e. most victims) were seen as different from 'us', and as being part of the problem of crime. Specifically, victims were seen as involved with 'their' offender (the 'victim-offender dyad'); as provoking the offence ('victim precipitation'); as pathological ('victim-proneness'); and as marginal (the 'subculture of violence').
We don't believe any of this any more. Or do we?
What came out when I went on to look at 'lifestyle' and 'routine activities' approaches to victimology is that ideas of victim-proneness and violent subcultures haven't entirely gone away. The difference is that victimologists don't regard anyone as pathologically 'victim-prone' any more - but some victimologists do argue that victims make themselves 'victim-prone' by behaviour that exposes them to criminal groups and dangerous situations. There is a big difference between the two: classical victimologists would say that 'victim-prone' individuals and members of a 'subculture of violence' need to be treated as a problem in their own right; 'lifestyle' victimologists would say that those people need to take greater care and stop getting into risky situations. The key assumption they share - unlike the feminist and radical schools, which we'll look at next - is that crime is a marginal problem in a functional society: society is basically OK apart from this problem of crime at the margins.
In the seminar we focused on victim precipitation and came to the conclusion that it's not very useful as a way of thinking about crime: the victim may have said or done some bad or stupid things, but the offender chose to commit the offence and is still entirely to blame for it. This is even true where the offender was previously the victim and is retaliating against years of abuse.
(Or is it? Tough one.)
We don't believe any of this any more. Or do we?
What came out when I went on to look at 'lifestyle' and 'routine activities' approaches to victimology is that ideas of victim-proneness and violent subcultures haven't entirely gone away. The difference is that victimologists don't regard anyone as pathologically 'victim-prone' any more - but some victimologists do argue that victims make themselves 'victim-prone' by behaviour that exposes them to criminal groups and dangerous situations. There is a big difference between the two: classical victimologists would say that 'victim-prone' individuals and members of a 'subculture of violence' need to be treated as a problem in their own right; 'lifestyle' victimologists would say that those people need to take greater care and stop getting into risky situations. The key assumption they share - unlike the feminist and radical schools, which we'll look at next - is that crime is a marginal problem in a functional society: society is basically OK apart from this problem of crime at the margins.
In the seminar we focused on victim precipitation and came to the conclusion that it's not very useful as a way of thinking about crime: the victim may have said or done some bad or stupid things, but the offender chose to commit the offence and is still entirely to blame for it. This is even true where the offender was previously the victim and is retaliating against years of abuse.
(Or is it? Tough one.)
Friday, 14 October 2011
Week 3
This week's lecture was all about the "Ideal Victim", Nils Christie's eccentric but hugely influential essay looking at what it takes to be recognised as a victim. (If you haven't read it yet, please read it now. It's short, it's well-written, it's thought-provoking and it's going to be relevant to most of the unit.) Although it's a short essay, there was quite a lot to get through - from mugging to marital rape to witchcraft to industrial accidents to restorative justice... - so I didn't have as much time to talk around particular topics as I would have liked. The seminar looked at the slightly different concept of the deserving victim; the reason for this was to encourage people to use their gut feelings about whether a particular victim seemed deserving or not, rather than working out the right answer from the definitions I'd given in the lecture. There were good discussions in both groups, although (once again) numbers for the 3.00 session were light-ish; if you want to transfer to that group, don't hold back.
Friday, 7 October 2011
Week 2
This week's lecture was mainly devoted to unpacking the idea of "victim of crime", showing that lots of people we sympathise with as 'victims' haven't actually been the victim of crime, and that lots of crimes take place without anyone being identifiable as a victim. The point of all this, other than sheer pedantry, is that "victim" isn't a simple concept (like 'voter' or 'student'); it's actually a heavily-loaded symbolic status, like 'traitor' or 'hero'.
So this was a ground-clearing lecture - a whole series of arguments about what a victim isn't - in preparation for the positive arguments about who we think is a victim and why, starting next week. Because it was so negative, I suspect some people may have found it a bit of a frustrating or confusing experience - I'll try and flag up what I'm doing in the lecture a bit more clearly in future. As for the seminars, there's a big difference in the size of the two groups, so anyone who wants to move from 2.00 to 3.00 can feel free to do so - although, if you want to move the other way, I'd really rather you didn't! Both sessions seemed to work OK, though, and I think they were reasonably well integrated with the lecture.
Please read "The Ideal Victim" before next Tuesday's lecture; it's on Moodle, in the Library section, under 'Essential'. Wider reading isn't vital at this stage - both the Walklate collection & the Davies & co anthology are very good, but they're background reading rather than resources for keeping up with the lectures.
One last thing - I have no idea why we've ended up with a lecture in a classroom followed by two seminar groups in lecture theatres! For group work it really isn't ideal (for lecture slides with font sizes below about 30 it isn't ideal either). On the other hand, it will be handy for those seminars when we spend most of the time watching a film (there's something to look forward to).
So this was a ground-clearing lecture - a whole series of arguments about what a victim isn't - in preparation for the positive arguments about who we think is a victim and why, starting next week. Because it was so negative, I suspect some people may have found it a bit of a frustrating or confusing experience - I'll try and flag up what I'm doing in the lecture a bit more clearly in future. As for the seminars, there's a big difference in the size of the two groups, so anyone who wants to move from 2.00 to 3.00 can feel free to do so - although, if you want to move the other way, I'd really rather you didn't! Both sessions seemed to work OK, though, and I think they were reasonably well integrated with the lecture.
Please read "The Ideal Victim" before next Tuesday's lecture; it's on Moodle, in the Library section, under 'Essential'. Wider reading isn't vital at this stage - both the Walklate collection & the Davies & co anthology are very good, but they're background reading rather than resources for keeping up with the lectures.
One last thing - I have no idea why we've ended up with a lecture in a classroom followed by two seminar groups in lecture theatres! For group work it really isn't ideal (for lecture slides with font sizes below about 30 it isn't ideal either). On the other hand, it will be handy for those seminars when we spend most of the time watching a film (there's something to look forward to).
Monday, 26 September 2011
Week 1
Hello World!
This is the first post on the Victims and Victimology 2011/12 blog. I'll be using this space to put up general thoughts about the unit, and more specifically to say a few words about lectures, seminars and assessments. Comments will always be open, so you can use the blog to feed back any queries, comments and issues you may have. Announcements won't be made here - they will continue to appear on Moodle.
There's not much to say about week 1 - first lecture, introduction to the unit, that's about it. Unless you've got any thoughts...
This is the first post on the Victims and Victimology 2011/12 blog. I'll be using this space to put up general thoughts about the unit, and more specifically to say a few words about lectures, seminars and assessments. Comments will always be open, so you can use the blog to feed back any queries, comments and issues you may have. Announcements won't be made here - they will continue to appear on Moodle.
There's not much to say about week 1 - first lecture, introduction to the unit, that's about it. Unless you've got any thoughts...
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