Victoria Canning
Biographic Data
| ID | 111817 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Victoria Canning |
| GIVEN NAMES | Victoria |
| FAMILY NAME | Canning |
| SIGNATURE | CANNING V |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bristol |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 98 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Teaching against torture
A Zemiology of Torturous Violence and the Limits of Law
Social and legislative responses to torture remain dominated by legal definitions and debates around what constitutes ‘torture’. Although narratives are progressing contemporarily, the fact remains that definitions of torture continue to be situated in the narrow confines of the United Nations Convention against Torture, or Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This article argues that the implications of this is a sidelining…
Torture and Torturous Violence
Vasja Badalic, The War Against Civilians
Towards social harm and zemiology
Here we focus upon the areas of contention between criminology, critical criminology, social harm and zemiology. It pulls together some of the key responses to the early works established in Beyond Criminology (2004) to outline criticism from various academics working in the fields of criminology and critical criminology. The chapter also considers what we know about harm, and introduces some of its characteristics.
Conclusion
In our concluding chapter, we emphasise that zemiology must be a participative and co-operative activity, operating beyond academic borders – zemiology, we argue, must be embraced as an activist as well as an academic activity.
The relations and ontologies of harm
Further focusing upon the contours and dynamics of the concept of social harm, this chapter explores various ways in which harms need to be considered in relational terms – where harm is also always linked to benefit, whether this is for identifiable agents, institutions and interests, or for maintaining or exacerbating existent, unequal power structures. Then we review efforts to determine the ontology of harm. That review traverses in particula…
A provisional typology of harm
In this chapter we develop in-depth definitions of how harm itself is defined, and how dimensions of harms might be categorised heuristically. This is based upon the development of a tentative critical typology, exploring physical harms, emotional/psychological harms, economic and financial harms, cultural harms, harms of recognition and autonomy harms. While we set our apparently discrete categories, however, we emphasise that harms are experien…
Understanding social harm
This chapter defines the term and usage of the word ‘zemiology’: its origins in the Greek xemia , or harm, and its use in studying social harm, and will briefly introduce dimensions of harm. It maps the historical use of the term as an approach to studying social problems which is alternative to – but linked with – criminology. Furthermore, as a basis for understanding the objectives of zemiology, this chapter will outline the nine fundamental cr…
Doing zemiology
Here we focus on some of the dimensions of how a zemiological approach might be operationalised. Researching social harm often involves doing at least one of two things: exposing, documenting, mapping and understanding a harm or harms as they have been experienced and how they have been produced. In this chapter we shall make some zemiological observations on these two – inter-related, of course – activities – and then consider what they imply fo…
Stealing Time
The Death of Asylum
It is not often that an academic text begins with an obituary, or that the term ‘death’ is used to connect the physical and the ontological. Yet, this is how Mountz frames the right to asylum in the increasingly globalized, increasingly violent, border enforcement archipelago. For those who have faced the sharp end of border controls, and those who research or seek to end border harms, the term and the gesture are astutely and poignantly appropri…
From Social Harm to Zemiology
This book outlines key developments in understanding social harm by setting out its historical foundations and the discussions which have proliferated since. It examines various attempts to conceptualise social harm and highlights key sites of contestation in its relationship to criminology to argue that these act as the basis for an activist zemiology, one directed towards social change for social justice. The past two decades have seen a prolif…
Managing Expectations
However, although the impacts of socio-political hostilities on migrants are well documented, little has been written about the implications of border restrictions on practitioners working with refugee populations. This article expands the focus of hostilities to consider the variable impacts of intensified bordering practices on this group. Based on qualitative research which included 74 interviews undertaken across Britain, Denmark, and Sweden …
Corrosive Control
As gendered discourses around migration proliferate, research and practitioner focus is often trained on experiences of women in interpersonal capacities, primarily in regard to subjections to predominately male violence. Drawing on research in Britain and activist participation with women seeking asylum, this article expands this focus into the realm of state-corporate harms against women. Previous research demonstrates that immigration law and …
Degradation by design
The increasingly punitive measures taken by European governments to deter people seeking asylum, including increased use of detention, internalised controls, reductions in in-country rights and procedural safeguards, have a hugely damaging impact on the lives and wellbeing of women survivors of torture, sexual and domestic violence. This article, based on a two-year research project examining Britain, Denmark and Sweden, involved more than 500 ho…
Islamophobia and Securitization
Gendered Harm and Structural Violence in the British Asylum System
Winner of the 2018 British Society of Criminology Book Prize Britain is often heralded as a country in which the rights and welfare of survivors of conflict and persecution are well embedded, and where the standard of living conditions for those seeking asylum is relatively high. Drawing on a decade of activism and research in the North West of England, this book contends that, on the contrary, conditions are often structurally violent. For survi…
Gendered Asylum
Unsilencing Sexual Torture
Debates around torture have proliferated in the past decade, placing the topic more centrally in criminological studies and research. However, the ways in which torture is recognized or responded to often pivot on narrow legalistic definitions which do not necessarily incorporate the gendered nature of torturous violence, and in particular sexual torture. In developing a regional case study focussed on Denmark, this article critically addresses t…
International conflict, sexual violence and asylum policy
This article outlines key findings from an exploration of conflict related sexual violence support for women seeking asylum in Merseyside. It highlights major international and national advances in gendered legislation and policy in terms of response to escalations in violence against women fleeing conflict, but questions the level of priority these are given or how effective they are. Drawing on interviews with local organizations, an oral histo…
Who's human? Developing sociological understandings of the rights of women raped in conflict
International approaches to human rights have, until recently, largely overlooked the experiences of women in conflict, displacement and crisis. Although women's human rights are progressing on paper, rape and sexual violence continues at mass levels in conflict and civil unrest with few consequences for perpetrators and very little emphasis on preventions. Sociology has itself been slow to engage in discourses around human rights, and even slowe…
From Social Harm to Zemiology
This book outlines key developments in understanding social harm by setting out its historical foundations and the discussions which have proliferated since. It examines various attempts to conceptualise social harm and highlights key sites of contestation in its relationship to criminology to argue that these act as the basis for an activist zemiology, one directed towards social change for social justice. The past two decades have seen a prolif…
Degradation by design
The increasingly punitive measures taken by European governments to deter people seeking asylum, including increased use of detention, internalised controls, reductions in in-country rights and procedural safeguards, have a hugely damaging impact on the lives and wellbeing of women survivors of torture, sexual and domestic violence. This article, based on a two-year research project examining Britain, Denmark and Sweden, involved more than 500 ho…
Corrosive Control
As gendered discourses around migration proliferate, research and practitioner focus is often trained on experiences of women in interpersonal capacities, primarily in regard to subjections to predominately male violence. Drawing on research in Britain and activist participation with women seeking asylum, this article expands this focus into the realm of state-corporate harms against women. Previous research demonstrates that immigration law and …
Who's human? Developing sociological understandings of the rights of women raped in conflict
International approaches to human rights have, until recently, largely overlooked the experiences of women in conflict, displacement and crisis. Although women's human rights are progressing on paper, rape and sexual violence continues at mass levels in conflict and civil unrest with few consequences for perpetrators and very little emphasis on preventions. Sociology has itself been slow to engage in discourses around human rights, and even slowe…
International conflict, sexual violence and asylum policy
This article outlines key findings from an exploration of conflict related sexual violence support for women seeking asylum in Merseyside. It highlights major international and national advances in gendered legislation and policy in terms of response to escalations in violence against women fleeing conflict, but questions the level of priority these are given or how effective they are. Drawing on interviews with local organizations, an oral histo…
Managing Expectations
However, although the impacts of socio-political hostilities on migrants are well documented, little has been written about the implications of border restrictions on practitioners working with refugee populations. This article expands the focus of hostilities to consider the variable impacts of intensified bordering practices on this group. Based on qualitative research which included 74 interviews undertaken across Britain, Denmark, and Sweden …
Unsilencing Sexual Torture
Debates around torture have proliferated in the past decade, placing the topic more centrally in criminological studies and research. However, the ways in which torture is recognized or responded to often pivot on narrow legalistic definitions which do not necessarily incorporate the gendered nature of torturous violence, and in particular sexual torture. In developing a regional case study focussed on Denmark, this article critically addresses t…
Who's human? Developing sociological understandings of the rights of women raped in conflict
International approaches to human rights have, until recently, largely overlooked the experiences of women in conflict, displacement and crisis. Although women's human rights are progressing on paper, rape and sexual violence continues at mass levels in conflict and civil unrest with few consequences for perpetrators and very little emphasis on preventions. Sociology has itself been slow to engage in discourses around human rights, and even slowe…
International conflict, sexual violence and asylum policy
This article outlines key findings from an exploration of conflict related sexual violence support for women seeking asylum in Merseyside. It highlights major international and national advances in gendered legislation and policy in terms of response to escalations in violence against women fleeing conflict, but questions the level of priority these are given or how effective they are. Drawing on interviews with local organizations, an oral histo…
Unsilencing Sexual Torture
Debates around torture have proliferated in the past decade, placing the topic more centrally in criminological studies and research. However, the ways in which torture is recognized or responded to often pivot on narrow legalistic definitions which do not necessarily incorporate the gendered nature of torturous violence, and in particular sexual torture. In developing a regional case study focussed on Denmark, this article critically addresses t…
Gendered Harm and Structural Violence in the British Asylum System
Winner of the 2018 British Society of Criminology Book Prize Britain is often heralded as a country in which the rights and welfare of survivors of conflict and persecution are well embedded, and where the standard of living conditions for those seeking asylum is relatively high. Drawing on a decade of activism and research in the North West of England, this book contends that, on the contrary, conditions are often structurally violent. For survi…
Gendered Asylum
Islamophobia and Securitization
Degradation by design
The increasingly punitive measures taken by European governments to deter people seeking asylum, including increased use of detention, internalised controls, reductions in in-country rights and procedural safeguards, have a hugely damaging impact on the lives and wellbeing of women survivors of torture, sexual and domestic violence. This article, based on a two-year research project examining Britain, Denmark and Sweden, involved more than 500 ho…
Corrosive Control
As gendered discourses around migration proliferate, research and practitioner focus is often trained on experiences of women in interpersonal capacities, primarily in regard to subjections to predominately male violence. Drawing on research in Britain and activist participation with women seeking asylum, this article expands this focus into the realm of state-corporate harms against women. Previous research demonstrates that immigration law and …
Towards social harm and zemiology
Here we focus upon the areas of contention between criminology, critical criminology, social harm and zemiology. It pulls together some of the key responses to the early works established in Beyond Criminology (2004) to outline criticism from various academics working in the fields of criminology and critical criminology. The chapter also considers what we know about harm, and introduces some of its characteristics.
Conclusion
In our concluding chapter, we emphasise that zemiology must be a participative and co-operative activity, operating beyond academic borders – zemiology, we argue, must be embraced as an activist as well as an academic activity.
The relations and ontologies of harm
Further focusing upon the contours and dynamics of the concept of social harm, this chapter explores various ways in which harms need to be considered in relational terms – where harm is also always linked to benefit, whether this is for identifiable agents, institutions and interests, or for maintaining or exacerbating existent, unequal power structures. Then we review efforts to determine the ontology of harm. That review traverses in particula…
A provisional typology of harm
In this chapter we develop in-depth definitions of how harm itself is defined, and how dimensions of harms might be categorised heuristically. This is based upon the development of a tentative critical typology, exploring physical harms, emotional/psychological harms, economic and financial harms, cultural harms, harms of recognition and autonomy harms. While we set our apparently discrete categories, however, we emphasise that harms are experien…
Understanding social harm
This chapter defines the term and usage of the word ‘zemiology’: its origins in the Greek xemia , or harm, and its use in studying social harm, and will briefly introduce dimensions of harm. It maps the historical use of the term as an approach to studying social problems which is alternative to – but linked with – criminology. Furthermore, as a basis for understanding the objectives of zemiology, this chapter will outline the nine fundamental cr…
Doing zemiology
Here we focus on some of the dimensions of how a zemiological approach might be operationalised. Researching social harm often involves doing at least one of two things: exposing, documenting, mapping and understanding a harm or harms as they have been experienced and how they have been produced. In this chapter we shall make some zemiological observations on these two – inter-related, of course – activities – and then consider what they imply fo…
Stealing Time
The Death of Asylum
It is not often that an academic text begins with an obituary, or that the term ‘death’ is used to connect the physical and the ontological. Yet, this is how Mountz frames the right to asylum in the increasingly globalized, increasingly violent, border enforcement archipelago. For those who have faced the sharp end of border controls, and those who research or seek to end border harms, the term and the gesture are astutely and poignantly appropri…
From Social Harm to Zemiology
This book outlines key developments in understanding social harm by setting out its historical foundations and the discussions which have proliferated since. It examines various attempts to conceptualise social harm and highlights key sites of contestation in its relationship to criminology to argue that these act as the basis for an activist zemiology, one directed towards social change for social justice. The past two decades have seen a prolif…
Managing Expectations
However, although the impacts of socio-political hostilities on migrants are well documented, little has been written about the implications of border restrictions on practitioners working with refugee populations. This article expands the focus of hostilities to consider the variable impacts of intensified bordering practices on this group. Based on qualitative research which included 74 interviews undertaken across Britain, Denmark, and Sweden …
Torture and Torturous Violence
Vasja Badalic, The War Against Civilians
Teaching against torture
A Zemiology of Torturous Violence and the Limits of Law
Social and legislative responses to torture remain dominated by legal definitions and debates around what constitutes ‘torture’. Although narratives are progressing contemporarily, the fact remains that definitions of torture continue to be situated in the narrow confines of the United Nations Convention against Torture, or Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This article argues that the implications of this is a sidelining…
Political science (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Criminology (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Harm (7 works) · Gender, Security, and Conflict (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Migration, Health and Trauma (6 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (6 works) · Refugee (6 works)