Assemblages of care: Criminological pathways to addressing everyday climate harmscapes

This presentation considers the criminological pathways needed to address the prevalence of everyday climate ‘harmscapes’ (characterised by intersecting socio-material harms). As more and more populations are faced with frequent and sustained exposure to climate-related crisis and/or the threat thereof – particularly (but not exclusively) in Global South contexts – crisis has become an everyday reality, an additional form of daily insecurity. Given this ‘normalised’ crisis, the presentation will argue for an ‘assemblages of care’ approach to mitigating everyday climate harmscapes. This governance approach is underpinned by several (both new and established) ontological shifts within criminology related to, for instance, the harmscapes framing, human-nonhuman entanglements (associated with posthumanism), and decolonial and postcolonial movements. In other words, to engage with the empirical realities of everyday climate harmscapes in both Southern and Northern spaces and to imagine ways to mitigate these harms, it is argued that criminological engagement must seek to shift from its current, dominant framings.

Dr Julie Berg is a senior lecturer in Criminology at the School of Social and Political Sciences, and the director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR), at the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include a focus on the impacts of new and emerging global harmscapes on security institutions, collaborative arrangements and democratic safety governance. Her work focuses on the impacts of these new harmscapes and associated responses on the evolution of criminology as a field of inquiry and, related to this, the nature and implications of a decolonised criminology given the impact and governance of new harms in the Global South and the need for an adaptive criminology. She, with others, has introduced concepts and theoretical framings such as ‘harmscapes’ and ‘governing-through-harm’ in recognition of the need to govern new global harms in innovative harm-focussed ways.

Julie Berg, University of Glasgow