Zemiology

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Zemiology, or the study of social harms, is a new version of radical criminology.

Treating the category ‘crime’ as problematic, zemiologists focus on harms whether or not they are officially regarded as crimes.[1] Zemiology as an academic discipline was launched in 1999 at a conference in Devon, England entitled “Zemiology: Beyond Criminology?” featuring leading figures in critical scholarship,[2] while the most complete statement of the zemiological project is contained in a 2004 collection committed to ‘taking harm seriously’.[3] Zemiology gets its name from the Greek word zemia, meaning harm.

Professor Paddy Hillyard, who has been involved with the development of zemiology since 1999, explains that the discipline focuses “on the study of the range of the social harms which people experience from the cradle to the grave, only a small proportion of which are captured by the criminal law.” [4] As there is a movement in ‘non-speciesist criminology’,[5] [6] there is also an example of ‘non-speciesist zemiology’,[7] both of which find expression in another emerging discipline, Green Criminology.[8]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Newburn, T. (2007) Criminology, Willan.
  2. ^ ZEMIOLOGY: BEYOND CRIMINOLOGY? Conference at Dartington, Totnes, Devon, 12th and 13th February 1999
  3. ^ Hillyard, P. (with C. Pantazis, S. Tombs and D. Gordon) (2004) Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously, Pluto Press
  4. ^ QUB
  5. ^ Beirne, P. (1999) ‘For a Nonspeciesist Criminology: Animal Abuse as an Object of Study’, Criminology, 38(1): 117-148.
  6. ^ Cazaux, G. (1999) ‘Beauty and the beast: Animal abuse from a non-speciesist criminological perspective’, Crime, Law & Social Change, 31, 105-26.
  7. ^ Roger
  8. ^ Beirne, P. & South, N. (2007) Issues in Green Criminology: Confronting Harms Against Environments, Humanity and Other Animals, Willan.