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Farewell
After much deliberation and careful consideration I have decided to leave the University. I have, for the most part, enjoyed my time here and have learned a great deal from my colleagues who are never short of advice and a willingness to share it. Their patience, enthusiasm, understanding and commitment have been greatly appreciated and are something I shall strive to emulate. Much is often made of the importance of the ‘student experience’ without commensurate attention afforded to the staff experience. Whilst I do not wish to enter into discussion about the institutional factors that prompted my decision to leave, I would like to acknowledge some positive elements of my ‘staff experience’.
I taught across all three years of the criminology degree programme and have met some very interesting students. Of course not all shared my passion for the discipline or enthusiasm for studying but a number of students made the lecturing experience incredibly thought provoking and enjoyable. Those to which I refer were never short of challenging questions, views, opinions and the drive to seek out answers to complex questions if only to be in a position to ponder more searching questions; in short every lecturer’s dream. What I found most remarkable was their willingness to listen, to consider and perhaps even accept new ideas that not only challenged their existing world view but elements of the very discipline they were studying. This receptiveness allowed me to pitch ideas and content, at what was considered a high level, which was not only understood and owned but utilised in seminar discussions, social media commentary and assessments. If I could take you with me I most certainly would.
As I move to another university, and since I cannot take you with me, I would like to offer some last bits of advice which you may take or leave as you like.
- Maintain your intellectual curiosity and continue to develop your critical faculties. Remember success in your studies is built from perseverance rather than some innate intellectualism you think you may or may not have. Persevere with what may appear as ‘long and boring’ readings, do not become disheartened if you do not understand; more sticks than you might think and besides seminars are the ideal place to explore what you understood and what you did not.
- Resist the temptation to view yourself as a customer, granted the issues around fees make this difficult, but ultimately it does more harm than good. As a customer you expect the commodity (a degree) for which you are in the process of paying to be given to you. Yet as a student you earn through determined perseverance a qualification that is infinitely more valuable.
- Lastly, make the most of the opportunity. Work hard and attain the best degree that you are capable of achieving. Remember that, whilst there are people around to support you throughout your studies, it is ultimately up to you.
It has been a pleasure, good luck for the future.
Justin Kotzé, August 2017
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Fighting the Tide or Following the Current?
This week’s blog is a reflective piece that will, I think, resonate with some of my ‘Outsiders’ students and perhaps with criminologists more broadly. It concerns the nagging tension between being a reluctant capitalist subject and a critical criminologist, more specifically between the roles of consumer and critic. Whilst criminology undoubtedly possesses transformative potential, particularly in its critical and ultra-realist forms, some sections of the discipline and arguably some, but certainly not all, of its proponents sit comfortably within the very structures subject to criticism during the ‘working day’. Indeed, we (and I include myself in this) hold the world to rights from 9-5 Monday to Friday then disavow the many harms we so vehemently lecture/write about whilst indulging in conspicuous consumption on weekends; fitting neatly into the circuitry of consumer capitalism.
Whilst I resolutely resist the drive to mask the fallout of free-market capitalism by not giving to charity, which is, as Žižek (2009:19) notes, the quintessential “humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation”, I am guilty of indulging a range of consumer impulses. It would be nice if this dilemma was as simple as being a hypocrite, something I could rectify by having a strong word with myself. Unfortunately, the reality is that this reflects a tension that emerges from occupying a social terrain that requires a dual identity and one within which the risks of protesting too ardently are severe.
Yet rather than serving as a vestigial port from which to take critical aim at pressing issues the university sector, as an industry, compounds this tension further. For criminology in particular the irony is painful. We occupy positions in what is now a heavily marketised sector; one that dictates the state of play based on the logic of the market, on catering for elusive customers rather than educating students. The irony of course is that, as criminologists, we are employed to research, write and lecture about criminalised and un-criminalised harms that pervade the social world by a sector whose neoliberal institutions have no qualms about inflicting severe harm on those who work and study within them. Universities seem to have become marketised, profit seeking institutions that pay lip service to helping communities whilst adopting the very structures that cause severe harm to society.
Perhaps the university can no longer be seen as a place from which to do some good. Or perhaps there is still a great deal of good that can be done from under the neoliberals’ nose. Either way, we cannot retain a blind and baseless optimism that refuses to acknowledge and tackle the many harms of neoliberalism, including those inflicted by the university sector. Rather, we should maintain an ultra-realist commitment to “explaining the world as it is, warts and all” (Winlow and Hall 2013:175).
Justin Kotzé, July 2017
References
Winlow, S. and Hall, S. (2013) Rethinking Social Exclusion: The End of the Social? London: Sage Publications Ltd.
Žižek, S. (2009) Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. London: Profile Books Ltd.
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What’s That Got to do With Criminology?
When discussing pressing social issues I am often asked ‘what’s that got to do with criminology?’ Perhaps unsurprisingly this question normally comes from people who are unfamiliar with the discipline and possibly expect that anything not commonly associated with things like policing or punishment falls outside of its orbit of inquiry. Yet criminology concerns itself with many facets of the social world and makes use of a number of related fields of study in order to explore and explain crime and criminality. Criminology is therefore what we would call an interdisciplinary subject that, whilst may be described in a number of different ways, could be understood as the social scientific investigation of the causes of crime and criminality and of society’s reaction to criminal and deviant acts.
Because of this broad remit criminology is a complex subject and criminologists certainly have their work cut out for them. To adequately explore the complexity of crime and its causes those who study criminology must look beyond common sense notions, administrative pandering and official discourse. We must explore wider social, political, economic and cultural issues because crime cannot be viewed in isolation from these factors. Therefore, far from being confined to issues of policing, punishment, and other mechanisms of criminal justice, criminology tackles a whole range of other pressing social issues that have the potential to cause harm. Rather than functioning as a telescope fixed on one single element, criminology could perhaps be described as being more like a kaleidoscope in that it views a number of different elements together and considers how they interact and potentially influence crime.
Whilst the picture may be less than clear it is the job of the criminologist to try and make some sense of it, to try and put crime into perspective. This requires us to analyse the wider social, economic, political and cultural context within which crime occurs, society reacts and criminal justice operates. What may appear at first glance to have very little to do with criminology may, upon closer inspection, turn out to be of considerable criminological concern. For example, do zero-hour contracts not have the potential to push people into criminality because of their instability? Does the societal drive to both stand out and fit in by having the latest fashion not have similar potential? Do rapid resource depletion and the enforced mass migration that follows not have the potential to fuel trafficking networks? As social scientists criminologists must maintain a broad contextual view of the social world in order to explore not only acts officially defined as crime but also things that may cause harm. What do consumerism, fashion, social competition and the X Factor have to do with criminology? Probably a lot more than you might think.
Justin Kotzé, May 2017
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A Useful Degree of Debt?
In 2012 Steve Hall noted that “more than 100,000 of young unemployed people have degrees” (Hall 2012:62). Five years on there is little to suggest that this frightening situation has improved. Worse still, due to changes in the financial organisation of the university sector, the next cohort of undergraduate students could be expected to pay over £9,000 a year in tuition fees. The current situation often throws up a very important question: ‘Is having a degree actually worth the accumulation of all that debt?’ Like everything in social science, the answer is by no means a straightforward one; there are a number of things that need to be considered. Firstly, oversaturation is a crucial factor. With more and more people finding their way to university, perhaps in part because of increased societal pressure and limited employment opportunities, it has been suggested that an undergraduate degree has simply become the ‘next A level’. Something to do after college that does not mean ‘signing on’ or accepting the most tenuous scraps of unsuitable work for minimum wage.
Alongside this potential relegation of the undergraduate degree, the reality of almost relentless pressure sustained over a three year period needs to be considered. Whilst all universities across the country enrol scores of interested students, many of these institutions also attract those simply, and understandably, looking for something to do. Students are often not prepared for the amount of work that obtaining a degree requires. Indeed, many lecturers can relate to Fisher’s (2009) recollection of students protesting about being asked to read for more than a few sentences, or that anything that intends to remove students from the sensations of texting, Facebook or Snap Chat often gets chastised as constituting the boring denial of something more immediately gratifying. The reality is that students who simply ‘find’ themselves at university often struggle to realise their potential or avail themselves of the opportunity.
Nevertheless, the experience can be immensely rewarding and the achievement of a degree may serve to reveal occupational avenues that might not otherwise have been considered possible. Studying for a degree at university not only allows you to acquire a unique knowledge base and skill set but provides the space for ideas and concepts to be approached in novel ways, perspectives to be changed and horizons broadened. Ultimately a degree can be a worthwhile endeavour if maximum effort is put into achieving the best degree one is capable of. Sadly, that is certainly not to say that it will provide an infallible passport to a future of financial stability. That permit may only be granted in a more equitable society, one that can only be brought about by the radical transformation of existing social, economic and political arrangements.
Justin Kotzé, April 2017
References
Hall, S. (2012) Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective. London: Sage Publications Ltd.
Fisher, M. (2009) Capitalist Realism: Is There no Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books.
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The Commodification of Abstinence
The inspiration for this short blog post comes from an incredibly stimulating discussion with some of my second year students studying the criminology module ‘Outsiders’. In class we were discussing how rather than constituting active forms of rebellion that resist the mainstream, various ‘trendy’ acts of so-called deviance, such as graffiti, parkour and ‘rooftopping’, have actually become absorbed into the mainstream consumer culture. Following this we began to discuss ‘new’ ways of resisting. Amongst the ideas offered was the notion of somehow disconnecting ourselves from the now ever-present network of social media and its frequent and avid advertisement of consumer items. Interestingly, having already discussed the tendency for social media’s ‘revolutionary potential’ to be integrated within rather than threaten capitalism (Crary 2013), this proposed disconnect would also require avoiding the latest online driven micro-revolution. The result of this discussion was the idea of ‘going mobile free for a week’.
The problem with this proposed ‘period of abstinence’ is that it becomes another micro-revolution that simply represents a new opportunity for commodification. This is because capitalism has the uncanny ability “to incorporate every attack by integrating the attack into the system” (McGowan 2016:12). It does this by taking the seemingly revolutionary practice and transforming it into a marketable commodity. With this in mind, we started to consider how such periods of abstinence would be integrated and commodified. It was suggested that a number of high-street retailers such as Game and HMV would perhaps have preparatory sales the week before to help us cope with the inevitable upset of ‘going mobile free for a week’. Similar offers would no doubt be made by a range of other providers; why not get into cycling, mountain climbing, or Zumba? That is after buying all the essential gear and merchandise of course. Then, once this period of abstinence is over, what better way to show how ‘resistant’ you were than by posting pictures of, or tweeting about, all the things you got up to during this ‘rebellious’ period; thereby further contributing to the marketing of consumer items.
Rather than representing some form of resistance then, this period of abstinence becomes commodified and successfully integrated into contemporary consumer capitalism. This does not mean that there is no alternative to capitalism, it simply means that if we wish to make a genuine attempt at resistance we should avoid being absorbed or forced into the next ‘trendy’ micro-revolution or simulated rebellion (Hall et al. 2008). Precisely how we do this is of course another matter entirely.
Justin Kotzé, March 2017
References
Crary, J. (2013) 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. London: Verso.
Hall, S., Winlow, S. and Ancrum, C. (2008) Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture: Crime, Exclusion and the New Culture of Narcissism. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
McGowan, T. (2016) Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets. New York: Columbia University Press.
Thoughts from the criminology team 