UCLan Postgraduate Criminal Justice Seminar Series

Calling all postgraduate students!

Beginning in the academic year 2016-2017, the Criminal Justice Partnership are starting a postgraduate criminal justice seminar series.  These events will provide a great opportunity for doctoral students to present their research in an informal setting to a varied audience (including School postgraduate students/colleagues, the wider University community and external guests) while also acting as a socialising and networking space.  The series is open to ALL students conducting research on, or of interest to, criminal justice, criminology and policing. The presentation formats and topics will vary and speakers are free to present at all stages of their research, covering any element of their research interests.  Suggestions for external speakers are always welcome and a timetable of events for the upcoming year will be produced.  Below are the details for event one:

Postgraduate Christmas Conference, Wednesday 7th December 1-4 p.m.

Are you currently doing a PhD or Masters dissertation on topics within Criminal Justice, Criminology or Policing? Fancy an opportunity to present about your research, gain some valuable feedback, and network? Submit an abstract to the Postgraduate Christmas Conference!

Presentations will be 15 minutes long.  We will be joined by Prof. Stuart Kirby to do a closing chair discussion, and there will be opportunities to ask questions of your peers and share tales about the research process.

The event will be accompanied by mulled wine and appropriately-Christmassy cakes/nibbles, and we will head for a meal (optional) in the city after the event.  Students at ALL stages of their research are welcome to submit an abstract and the event is open to all.

Please submit an abstract (250 words maximum) to Emily Cooper (ecooper2@uclan.ac.uk) by Friday 11^th November 2016

Bothered by a brothel? How sex work can improve your neighbourhood

Paul Maginn (@planographer) and I recently wrote this article in The Conversation – read the full version here – based on my doctoral research.  You can find more information about the project in this article: http://sex.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/05/27/1363460715616949.abstract

Bothered by a brothel? How sex work can improve your neighbourhood

Dr Emily Cooper (University of Central Lancashire)

Assoc. Prof. Paul Maginn (University of Western Australia)

The sex industry, specifically sex work and prostitution, has long been perceived and regulated as a “dirty and disorderly” feature of residential communities. The stereotypical, and unfair, view of sex workers is that they are vectors of disease and social contagions; it’s a moral hangover from the Victorians.

Regardless of their legal status, wider society still tends to stigmatise those who provide commercial sexual services, with street-based sex workers often most the subject of public, political and police scrutiny. This is reflected in the regulation and marginalisation of sex work by local and national government policies to dark and secluded areas of cities.

This marginalisation and stigmatisation is because many people’s knowledge and understanding of sex work is generally limited and informed by moral panics and stereotypes – particularly surrounding issues such as STI rates and trafficking. While it is important to recognise that such problems may occur in sex work, it is also important to stress that these are not experienced by the majority of those engaged in consensual sex work and should certainly not be portrayed as being the most important factor in all sex worker narratives.

Nevertheless, local councils and police forces periodically engage in “clean-up” campaigns that seek to purge local areas of sex work. The police raids in Soho during December 2013, when around 200 police targeted dozens of premises, have been one of the most high-profile examples of this strategy.

Such raids are generally justified by the media and local authorities on the basis that locals, especially women and children, need to be protected from the harmful effects of “sleaze”.

Interestingly, however, there has been little detailed or systematic research on the impacts of sex work on residential communities. Generally speaking, local authority “clean-up” strategies tend to be based not on science, but on a small number of complaints from a vocal minority who assert particular moral agendas.

The evidence that sex work is a problematic issue is rather limited, but it is clear that sex workers themselves are not considered community members and are rarely consulted about their own concerns and needs. Sex workers are just ordinary people – someone’s mother, aunt, brother, friend – trying to make a living.

Research by Phil Hubbard and colleagues, Penny Crofts, Sarah Kingston, and Emily Cooper’s own work suggests that sex work contributes to residential communities in much more complex ways than is commonly portrayed in the media.

Sarah Kingston’s research on the impact of sex work on residential communities in Leeds highlights that the presence of sex workers can actually generate positive outcomes. For example, they (and associated clients, etc) provide passive surveillance against criminal activities and will report crimes. In addition, sex workers and their clients also contribute to local economies via the renting of premises, booking hotel rooms and spending money in local shops, bars and restaurants.

The Blackpool community

Cooper’s research on massage parlours and surrounding residential communities in Blackpool, reinforces these findings. 53 in-depth interviews were conducted (often more than once) with local residents, as well as a number of sex workers, police officers and council officers. Observations were also made over an 18-month period.

Those parlours surrounded by other non-sex work businesses and residences were often referred to by nearby non-sex work business workers as a means of breaking the ice and building rapport with customers, because of questions asked about the parlours being there. Reputedly, for some residents, the parlours also brightened up the mundane routine of peoples’ daily social and work lives. This was also reinforced in Kingston’s findings.

More crucially, some residents highlighted that the parlours – and their 24-hour vibrantly neon-lit presence – engendered a feeling of security in an area that is commonly frequented by “either nobody or large groups of stag parties, which can be a bit intimidating” (quote from resident).

Such views dismantle the common narrative, which suggests that the sex industry is something that attracts criminality rather than a feeling of security.

The Blackpool Gazette often uses “dirt and disgust” rhetoric to characterise the impact of massage parlours and the subsequent “clean-up” campaigns by regulatory bodies. Despite this, plus the ongoing effects of the recent recession, the massage parlours have shown resilience and remain an integral part of the social and economic fabric of Blackpool.

The stigma and stereotyping that tends to surround sex workers (and their clients) has the effect of alienating them and diminishing their sense of safety when working.

Very few residents in the study explicitly stated that they would like to see the sex industry removed. Those that did so were coming from either a stereotypical view of sex work as being inherently harmful or criminal, or from a desire to protect sex workers, who they considered friends and neighbours, from “dodgy clients”. Many residents discussed spending time with sex workers, as they would with any other neighbour.

Despite the fact that several sex workers in my study area lived locally, the long-established presence of massage parlours in Blackpool, and the friendly relationships between sex workers and wider community members, sex workers were still excluded from certain community spaces.

One sex worker, for example, noted that although she had a good relationship with residents adjacent to her place of work, she and another worker were asked to leave a Police and Community Together meeting by other residents because the meeting was “partly about them”.

Moving forward

Such exclusionary actions merely serve to reinforce the stigma imposed on sex workers and deny them their basic democratic rights. Community-based policy and consultation processes need to be more inclusive and appreciative of the fact that sex workers are as much a part of the local community as the next person. Their presence in and near residential communities needs to be viewed through a wider lens based on evidence, rather than a narrow moral one under the control of a vocal minority.

Emerging research suggests that the role and impact of sex work on local areas is more multi-faceted and less extraordinary than is commonly portrayed in the media or television dramas. The urban mythology and regulatory fetish surrounding sex work needs to be dispelled.

A more productive policy approach to regulating commercial sex premises would be to treat them like any other business. Ultimately, sex work should be decriminalised as this regulatory approach offers what other approaches don’t – it guarantees the greater safety, health and well-being of sex workers.

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CFP: Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 2015 – (De)Sexualisation & (De)Pornification of Space: Spatialisation, Politicisation and Regulation of Sex, Sexuality, Sex Work & Pornography

I am very pleased to announce our call for papers for the AAG annual meeting 2015 (Chicago).

2015 Annual Meeting

Association of American Geographers (AAG) Chicago, April 21-25, 2015

Special Session – Call for Papers

(De)Sexualisation & (De)Pornification of Space: Spatialisation, Politicisation and Regulation of Sex, Sexuality, Sex Work & Pornography

Paul J. Maginn (The University of Western Australia, Australia), Emily Cooper (Lancaster University, UK) & Martin Zebracki (University of Leeds, UK)

This special session, which is sponsored by the Sexuality and Space Speciality Group of the AAG, invites abstracts/papers from contributors – academics, policymakers, sex workers and ‘sex industry’ advocates – conducting research focusing on the spatial, social, political, cultural, economic and regulatory contours surrounding sexuality, sex work and pornography.

Attwood et al (2013:1) have recently noted that ‘[o]ne of the key concerns within the wider anxiety about sexualization is that deviant, or abnormal, forms of sexuality and sexual practice are becoming “normalized”’. This echoes concerns about the mainstreaming of various forms of commercial sex; most notably, sex work/prostitution and pornography which can be found in a variety of physical and virtual spaces (Minichiello and Scott; 2014; McNair, 2012; Brents and Sanders, 2010; McNair 2006). Concerns about the normalization of deviant/abnormal sexual practices and commercialised forms of sex are largely a function of our social, cultural and political worlds being predominantly heteronormative in character (Hubbard, 2008; Doan, 2011). Relatedly, as Dabhiowala (2012:13) has highlighted in relation to the first sexual revolution during the 1600s, the Catholic and Protestant churches set about reforming sexual morals via ‘an intensification of Christian propaganda, and action, against fornication, adultery, prostitution, and sodomy’.

Moral panics have been an enduring facet of efforts to regulate sex, sexuality and sex work since the Victorian era (Hubbard, 2011; Weitzer 2005; Sullivan, 1997). Such moral panics have traditionally been instigated on the pretence that those directly engaged in supplying commercial sexual services (i.e. women) are in need of rescuing and that wider society needs to be protected from the supposed ‘contagious’, ‘corrupting’ and ‘criminalistic’ effects of particular sexual practices/groups.

The last decade has witnessed ‘a renewed moral panic and crusade’ (Maginn and Steinmetz, 2014) against sex work and pornography (Gira Grant, 2014; McNair, 2012). This new wave of moralism has been perpetuated by an interesting mix of actors – Christian organisations, women support groups and so-called anti-sex radical feminists – from seemingly opposing ends of the political spectrum. Resultantly, there have been concerted efforts in Scotland, Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, France, the EU and, more recently, Canada to introduce the ‘Swedish model’. This model seeks to not only regulate sex work but also prevent human trafficking, which is argued to be a major reason why so many women are engaged in sex work. However it is argued by some scholars and various sex worker organisations that this mode of regulation denies the existence of female agency; overlooks the diverse gendered, sexual and generational backgrounds of sex workers; fails to recognise sex work as a legitimate form of labour; and, effectively criminalises sex workers despite the focus on demand. Ultimately, it is claimed that the ‘Swedish model’ does more harm than good by driving sex work underground, thereby perpetuating myths, stereotypes and stigma about sex work and sex workers.

Similarly, there have been calls from within the feminist movement, political actors and NGOs for greater regulation of adult entertainment and pornography. Hubbard and Lister (2014), for example, note that. in relation to strip clubs/lap dance clubs in England, the Home Office (2010) introduced guidelines to complement the Policing and Crime Act 2009 so that local councils could exert greater regulatory authority over the number and geography of such venues. Stop Porn Culture, an international feminist anti-porn organisation, considers pornography to be ‘misogynistic both in its production and consumption’ and has set itself the goal of ‘ending industries of sexual exploitation’ (www.stoppornculture.org). And, in California, the epicenter of global porn production, LA County introduced legislation, Measure B, mandating that condoms must be worn during porn shoots. A similar bill, AB1576, with state-wide implications has recently been introduced. Various adult performers and producers have expressed concerns about these regulations arguing that they represent an attempt to eliminate the porn industry. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that rather than being killed off, the porn industry is simply relocating to other areas – e.g. Las Vegas, Miami and Arizona – with more liberal regulations.

Since the late 1980s, queer studies, inspired by feminist critiques of sexuality including pornography, have critically examined the lives and social encounters of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBTs) in the context of their everyday sexual representations and the ensuing activism and alternative, more-than-sexual displays of citizenship and belonging (Attwood, 2002; Zebracki, 2014). These studies have focused on the fluidity and situatedness of the performed and negotiated identities of ‘sexual dissidents’, and the intersectionalities inherent in understanding sexed differences. Ultimately, they serve as a fruitful angle to deconstruct and reconsider the sexual politics encapsulated in the norms, values and legislative frameworks that have come to define hegemonic landscapes of the production and consumption of sex work and pornography.

In conclusion, despite the historical efforts to regulate, contain and even eliminate particular commercial sexual spaces, (consensual) sex practices, and/or minority sexual groups, these spaces and communities have endured and become an increasingly common feature of our cities and towns and given rise to highly complex, dynamic physical and virtual ‘(sub)urban sexscapes’ (Maginn and Steinmetz, 2014). This special session is about exploring and unravelling that dynamism and complexity.

In the pursuit of academic freedom and inclusiveness, the organisers are keen to encourage abstracts/papers from a range of disciplinary and ideological standpoints. Papers may be methodological, theoretical and/or empirical in their orientation and should focus on one (or more) of the following broad, but by no means definitive, topics:

• The (de)sexualisation/(de)pornification of urban/rural/virtual spaces;
• Sex work and pornography in interface with LGBT spaces and organising;
• Kink spaces/communities involving bondage and discipline (BD), dominance and submission (DS), sadism and masochism (SM) (BDSM);
• Gender, sexual and racial diversity in sex work and pornography;
• The geography and regulation of sex work/prostitution, adult entertainment and pornography;
• The economic geography of queerness, sex work and pornography;
• Culture, meaning, symbolism, practice and performance in/of sexuality and sexual spaces;
• (De)stigmatisation and inclusion/exclusion of sexual minorities;
• Globalisation of commercial sex and sexual identities/communities;
• Human trafficking, migrant sex workers and sexual mobilities;
• Sex, sexuality and sexualisation in/of popular culture and the media;
• ‘Deviant’ sex work and pornography beyond straight male markets – from heteronormative to homonormative sex work and porn spaces;
• ‘Pro-sex’ and ‘anti-sex’ feminisms and masculinities in sex work and pornography

If you are interested in taking part in this special session, please send a 250-word abstract, including title, author(s), institutional affiliation(s), e-mail address(es) and 5 key words, to ALL special session co-organisers by 13 October 2014.

Selected contributors are asked to submit 200-word abstracts on the conference website by 5 November 2014. All presenters should settle the registration fee before they can submit abstracts.

Best wishes,

Assoc. Professor Paul J. Maginn (lead co-organiser) Paul.Maginn@uwa.edu.au

Dr Emily Cooper – E.Cooper2@lancaster.ac.uk 

Dr Martin Zebracki – M.M.Zebracki@leeds.ac.uk

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Researching Sexed Spaces: (Re)Imagining the Researcher and (Re)Discovering the ‘Other’ in Understanding Lived Experiences of Exclusion” (Sponsored by the Space, Sexualities & Queer Research Group)

I am very pleased to advertise our special session at the RGS Annual International Conference (28th August 2014).  Gemma Ahearne (@princessjack) and I are looking forward to hearing some fantastic papers.  Here is the session description:

Recent decades have produced a rapid emergence of research in geography surrounding the complex relationship between sexuality, space and society and the centrality of sexuality in the late modern world (Attwood 2006). Of particular relevance – although not exhaustively – have been: the geographies of sex work, LGBT communities, virtual sexed spaces, sex tourism (especially in reaction to large sports events) and lap dancing establishments. The role of space and place in the constitution of sexual identities – and in the control of those considered to be sexually dissident – have been understood by geographers particularly (Hubbard 2008). This dissidence and often subsequent socio-spatial marginalisation especially relates to the challenge of heteronormative ideals and spaces that is ascribed to and by stigmatised sexual identities (Binnie and Valentine 1999; Peterson 2011; Hubbard et al 2013).

It has been acknowledged, therefore, that due to the stigmatised nature of certain sexual identities, it is difficult to access these hidden populations (Shaver 2005) and to provide them with a voice (Hubbard 1999). Recently, however, there has been an increased interest in exploring methods that allow researchers to overcome and challenge the often homogeneous depictions of excluded groups (Binnie and Valentine 1999; Shaver 2005) and to explore the lived experiences of their socio-spatial spheres via the empowerment of the othered population; researching, therefore with participants rather than about them (Desyllass 2013) in the form of participatory methods, ethno-mimesis and other such approaches. This culminates in the co-production of knowledge in research. Exploring inter-disciplinarity – particularly between geography, sociology and the arts – is therefore of particular relevance.

We have papers from a range of global contexts that discuss researching sexed spaces, with fantastic speakers from a variety of backgrounds.  The theme of the conference particularly encourages the coming together of academic and non-academic worlds, and Gemma and I are keen to advocate this in our field especially.  Here are the list of papers:

http://conference.rgs.org/AC2014/235 – Speakers include: @GemVoodooChops; @skiffleharper; @Planographer; @GlasgaeLauraLee; @erinsandersmcd; @blue_stocking; @NickMaiNormal

http://conference.rgs.org/AC2014/269 – Speakers include: @aptTyler; @laura_jarvis; @TheCowThatSkis; @thefilmfemme; @uglymugsie and the fantastic @Planographer as discussant.

We really hope that you can attend, and please do advertise widely to anybody you think might be interested!  We know it will be a really engaging and thought-provoking session. We will be live tweeting from the session – hashtag to come shortly.

Contact me with any questions at e.cooper2@lancs.ac.uk or on @e_cooper2