Suchergebnisse

Arthur and Marilouise Kroker are the editors of CTHEORY, an online international journal of theory, technology, and culture. They have also authored and edited numerous articles and books, including Digital Delirium, Hacking the Future, The Possessed Individual, and Technology and the Canadian Mind. The Boston College Department of Sociology was fortunate to host the Krokers for a series of courses and lectures in the Fall of 2000 and Spring of 2001. William Wood is a graduate student in the sociology department at Boston College. This interview was conducted through several email exchanges in February and March of 2002, following the mobilization of the United States in its "war on terror."

The historical emergence of time as it relates to capitalism and labor has been well documented and theorized, particularly in the Marxist tradition. The relationship between space, spatial representation and capitalism has only more recently received significant attention. Moving through a series of extended meditations, this essay inquires into the naturalization of space and its various representations as related to capitalism, colonization and the body. As evidenced in early modern maps of Europe and the Americas, techniques of spatial representation were central to both commerce and conquest, where cartographers effectively rendered disparate lands uniform, under the rubric of an objectifying gaze. Such a gaze allowed for the representation of space as existing outside the realm of human affairs, where land lay in wait of discovery. This myth of discovery, and the techniques which accompany it, have historical parallels in the mapping of the human body, where mapping renders space both "natural" and ultimately amenable to capitalism. In these parallels, the mapping of land and of the body have moved in the twenty-first century into the realm of digitized informatics, where space is discursively reduced (through speed) and expanded (through technology) in an ever emerging global market system. Reflecting on apparently quite disparate histories of spatial representation, the essay concludes with the naturalization of space in its current logic, cybernetics and the management of information, where the discourses of health and security meet the digital gaze of the human genome and the satellite.

Nils Christie's concept of 'conflicts as property' has become axiomatic within restorative justice (RJ) as justification for victim involvement and redress, offender accountability and reintegration, and community involvement in RJ conferencing practices. In this article, we revisit the concept of conflicts as property as a theoretical premise for the use of RJ. We suggest that restorative conferencing practices used to address criminal matters in most English-speaking countries or jurisdictions evidence many of the same concerns voiced by Christie four decades ago in his critique of the 'stealing' of conflicts more rightly owned by victims, offenders and communities. We further argue that the institutionalisation of RJ has embedded its practices into highly unequal justice systems, with little evidence of how RJ may enable people or communities to 'own' conflicts in ways that do not mirror existing lines of social marginalisation and inequality.