Ethnographies at the Urban Margins and Prison Studies

The projects in this research group engage with violence in its multiple forms, as productive, relational and situated phenomena. Drawing from urban, legal and political anthropology, as well as from critical criminology and prison studies, we seek to produce nuanced understandings of the ways in which people at the margins of society negotiate access to power, resources, and justice. In doing so, we engage ordering, confining and justice-seeking practices, both on part of the authorities and those targeted for control.

Participants & project titles:

Violence, governance arrangements and the role of civil society organizations at the urban margins of El Progreso, Honduras (Antonia McGrath)
Violence, insecurity and policing in urban Brazil (Kees Koonings)
Punitive politics, hybrid enforcers: Carceral expansion and contestation in Central America // Negotiating power: Prisoners and the state in Nicaragua (Julienne Weegels)

External members:

Mario Araya Perez: Confinement beyond the prison system: The everyday experiences of youth living at the urban margins of San José, Costa Rica, and San Salvador, El Salvador
Jonathan Rosen: The state and organized crime in Latin America: A comparative analysis

This research group also has a Amsterdam-based research project, titled “Het Ongelijkheidsbeginsel: Tussen Strafrecht en Stadsdeel” (The Principle of Inequality: Between City District and Criminal Justice System) led by Julienne Weegels together with Thijs Jeursen (Utrecht University), and societal partner Restorative Justice Netherlands. This project is funded by Kenniscentrum Ongelijkheid and takes the knowledge obtained in Latin/American urban and prison contexts as a starting point for critically researching Amsterdam’s realities of confinement and inequality.

Ethnographies at the Urban Margins and Prison Studies

Participants & project titles:

External members:

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