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).