Table Of ContentCritical Criminological Perspectives
Ignorance, Power
and Harm
Agnotology and
The Criminological Imagination
Edited by Alana Barton
and Howard Davis
Critical Criminological Perspectives
Series Editors
Reece Walters
Faculty of Law
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Deborah H. Drake
Social Policy & Criminology Department
The Open University
Milton Keynes, UK
The Palgrave Critical Criminological Perspectives book series aims to
showcase the importance of critical criminological thinking when exam-
ining problems of crime, social harm and criminal and social justice.
Critical perspectives have been instrumental in creating new research
agendas and areas of criminological interest. By challenging state defined
concepts of crime and rejecting positive analyses of criminality, critical
criminological approaches continually push the boundaries and scope of
criminology, creating new areas of focus and developing new ways of
thinking about, and responding to, issues of social concern at local,
national and global levels. Recent years have witnessed a flourishing of
critical criminological narratives and this series seeks to capture the origi-
nal and innovative ways that these discourses are engaging with contem-
porary issues of crime and justice.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14932
Alana Barton • Howard Davis
Editors
Ignorance, Power
and Harm
Agnotology and The Criminological
Imagination
Editors
Alana Barton Howard Davis
Department of Law and Criminology Department of Law and Criminology
Edge Hill University Edge Hill University
Ormskirk, UK Ormskirk, UK
Critical Criminological Perspectives
ISBN 978-3-319-97342-5 ISBN 978-3-319-97343-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97343-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018959464
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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Acknowledgements
The editors and contributors would like to thank friends and colleagues
at their respective institutions for their support in writing this book. We
would also like to express our gratitude to the editors at Palgrave, in par-
ticular Josephine Taylor and Adam Cox, for their patience and for their
helpful guidance and advice. It has been truly appreciated.
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Alana Barton and Howard Davis
2 Agnotology and the Criminological Imagination 13
Alana Barton, Howard Davis, and Holly White
3 Counterinsurgency, Empire and Ignorance 37
Mark McGovern
4 The Ideology and Mechanics of Ignorance: Child Abuse
in Ireland 1922–1973 61
Anthony Keating
5 Framing the Crisis: Private Capital to the Rescue 87
Steve Tombs
6 Managing Ignorance About Māori Imprisonment 113
Elizabeth Stanley and Riki Mihaere
vii
viii Contents
7 Border (Mis)Management, Ignorance and Denial 139
Victoria Canning
8 Climate Change Denial: ‘Making Ignorance Great Again’ 163
Reece Walters
9 Spectacular Law and Order: Photography, Social Harm,
and the Production of Ignorance 189
Alex Dymock
10 Penal Agnosis and Historical Denial: Problematising
‘Common Sense’ Understandings of Prison Officers
and Violence in Prison 213
David Scott
Index 239
Notes on Contributors
Alana Barton is Reader in Criminology at Edge Hill University. Her research
interests and publications focus around prisons and ‘prison tourism’, austerity
and ‘war on the poor’, the concept of the criminological imagination, and the
study of ‘agnosis’. She is the author of Fragile Moralities and Dangerous Sexualities
(2005) and co-editor of Expanding the Criminological Imagination (2007). Her
work has been published in a range of journals including the Howard Journal,
British Journal of Community Justice and Crime, Media, Culture. She is involved
with the Learning Together project, which is concerned with establishing educa-
tional pathways between prisons and universities.
Victoria Canning is Lecturer and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
‘Future Research Leader’ Fellow in Social Policy and Criminology at The Open
University, UK. She is co-ordinator of the ‘Prisons, Punishment and Detention’
working group, trustee at Statewatch and author of ‘Gendered Harm and Structural
Violence in the British Asylum System’ (2017). She works closely with Migrant
Artists Mutual Aid, with whom she co-edited ‘Strategies for Survival, Recipes for
Resistance’ (2017) and partners with the Danish Institute Against Torture on a
project titled ‘Gendered Experiences of Social Harm in Asylum: Exploring State
Responses to Persecuted Women in Britain, Denmark and Sweden’.
Howard Davis is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Edge Hill University. He
had a previous career as a social worker, working in the fields of child protection,
trauma and bereavement. His research and teaching interests include state-
corporate harm, criminological and victimological aspects of acute and chronic
ix
x Notes on Contributors
disasters, media and state legitimisation of ‘austerity’ and the effects of neoliber-
alism on higher education. His work has been published in a range of journals
including the British Journal of Social Work, Disasters and the British Journal of
Criminology.
Alex Dymock is Lecturer in Criminology and Law at Royal Holloway,
University of London, UK. Her interest in the politics of representation and
consumption of images stems from her campaigning work around the legal reg-
ulation of pornography. She worked for many years with the pressure group,
Backlash, and has given talks about pornography to audiences at the British
Film Institute (BFI), Curzon Cinema Soho and Southwark Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) network, as well as submitted written evi-
dence to the Home Affairs Select Committee.
Anthony Keating is Programme Leader for Edge Hill University’s BSc (Hons)
Psychosocial Analysis of Offending Behaviour. He completed his PhD at Dublin
City University in 2002, exploring the role of identity, culture and communica-
tion in the failure to protect vulnerable children in post-independence Ireland.
Latterly, as a Government of Ireland post-doctoral research fellow, he researched
sexual crime in twentieth-century Ireland, with a particular focus on the censor-
ship, formal and informal, that sought to deny or obfuscate its causation, nature
and extent.
Mark McGovern is Professor of Sociology at Edge Hill University, UK. His
work focuses on the study of political violence, conflict and post-conflict transi-
tion, particularly in Northern Ireland, and he has been involved for many years
in research with community groups and local and international NGOs and law-
yers dealing with post-conflict human rights, truth and justice issues. His
research investigates the nature and extent of British state collusion with loyalists
during the conflict in Northern Ireland and a book on this subject is forthcom-
ing. He is the co-author of Ardoyne: The Untold Truth (Beyond the Pale: 2002)
and has published in a wide range of international journals including Sociology,
Law and Society, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Race and Class, Terrorism and
Political Violence and State Crime.
Riki Mihaere (Ngāti Kahungunu) engaged ‘A kaupapa Māori analysis of the use
of Māori cultural identity in the prison system’ for his PhD thesis at Victoria
University of Wellington (VUW). From 2016–2017, he was a post-d octoral fellow
on a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship project at the Institute of Criminology, VUW.
