7th Global Conference
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Monday 5th May - Wednesday 7th May 2008
Budapest, Hungary
Conference Programme, Abstracts & Papers
Session 9b: Movements Against Violence
Chair: Zuzana Luckay
‘Domesticating’ Violence in Interwar Romania
Corina-Maria Palasan
School of History, University of Bucharest, Romania
Having in mind the importance that penal codifications hold in the configuration of any social project, tracing the influences of medicalization in the field of criminology appears as a very provoking case. At the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century a new model of causal explanation and scientific reasoning gained more and more adepts and practical influence in the domain of Western European criminology.
What I called the model of “violence as ‘disease’” gives to those in charge the opportunity to ‘domesticate’ the violence. Its conditions of appearance and manifestation are discussed within the epistemological paradigm offered by clinical medicine with its specific vocabulary. As it implies that man’s inclination to violence is discernible in the form of his body, this model involves a rethinking of the significance that the individual body holds in the economy of the subject and in the configuration of its relationship with society. One of the practical consequences is that of taking specific measures in order to eradicate, prevent and isolate the violence, by analogy with the measures taken in case of epidemics.
The paper depicts the features of “violence as ‘disease,’” establishing its intellectual sources and some of the institutional developments it originated in Western Europe throughout the first decades of the 20th century. As a case study, the ‘peripheral’ case of interwar Romania is proposed. In a country engaged in a full process of accelerated ‘Westernization,’ the elements of the model of “violence as ‘disease’” are articulated, the Western model of clinical medicine being diffusely insinuated in Romania’s criminal system. By questioning through means of discourse-analysis the institutional framework of the medical model of violence, in terms of both language and practices, the case-study follows the echoes of this paradigm in the interwar Romanian penal system.
Günter Grass: His Commitment Against Violence
Cornelia Caseau
Groupe ESC Dijon Bourgogne, Dijon, France
In a speech delivered before the parliamentary group of the SPD on 11th January 2008, Günter Grass, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1999, summarized a number of points that make up his social and political commitments spanning his entire literary career. The speech reveals that the majority of these themes reflect a lasting commitment against violence. These will constitute the subject of my paper.Grass evokes the current problem of violence among young foreigners in German cities which the leader of the regional government of Hesse, Roland Koch, wanted to fight using racist measures proposed during his election campaign in 2007/08.The author is equally worried about the growing number of regions in crisis and at war in the world today, particularly the Near East and Africa. At the same time he accuses western democracies for their hesitations when confronted with these troubles. Let’s not forget his commitment towards the Kurds in Turkey and the right of asylum to the politically persecuted. Grass recommends us to read a report on the North-South dialogue composed by his spiritual father, the social democrat Willy Brandt, for the UN in the mid 70s to combat the roots of violence which constitute poverty, hunger and humiliation. In effect, for Brandt, world hunger is only another form of war.Grass similarly shows his commitment against the exclusion of the most disadvantaged, a commitment which he carries on in his fight for minorities in Germany and throughout Europe, and for the integration of the Romany and Sinti peoples who were systematically exterminated during World War II.Consequently, the subject of my paper will be to study to what degree the commitment of Grass was and still is able to join in the struggle against violence and exclusion in all of its contemporary forms.
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Changing Legislation on Violence Against Women in Slovenia
Irena Selišnik and Sara Rožman
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana
In our paper we would like to present the process of changing legislation on violence against women in Slovenia. Special emphasize will be on political actors that have helped to change the legislation and the impact of the EU enlargement process.
The violence against women has been put on political agenda in the 80ies, when the first NGO’s engaged in violence against women have been established. Mainly since 1991 the legislation on violence against women has been changed according to foreign good practices and recommendations. However, the important political actors which were the protagonists of changes are now found elsewhere not any more in civil society. State institutions and national mechanisms have been established to improve the legislation and state policy.
The paper will discuss how the preparation for the fifth enlargement of the EU has influenced the policy on violence against women. Furthermore, evaluation of the impact of EU standards, written in resolutions and recommendations, on changing Slovenian legislation will be presented. We will analyze when the most important changes in legislation were taking place and which type of violence against women (trafficking, domestic violence) was the most exposed to those changes.
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