Series: Studies in Social Harm
Series Editors: Christina Pantazis, University of Bristol, UK, Simon Pemberton, University of Birmingham, UK and Steve Tombs, The Open University
Social harm is an emerging field of study which contributes to contemporary social and political debate. This exciting series moves the debate towards a holistic approach that seeks to understand the production of harm within contemporary society. The topical inter-disciplinary series offers comparative and international perspectives to understand the distribution of harm and combines new theory and empirical research.
Studies in Social Harm
The Greek island of Lesvos is frequently the subject of news reports on the refugee ‘crisis’, but they only occasionally focus on the dire living conditions of asylum seekers already present on the island. Through direct experience as an activist in Lesvos refugee camps and detention centres, Iliadou gives voice to those with lived experiences of state violence.
The author considers the escalation of EU border regime and deterrence policies seen in the past decade alongside their present impacts. Asking why the social harm and suffering border crossers experience is normalised and rendered invisible, the book highlights the collective, global responsibility for safeguarding refugees’ human rights.
As the percentage of people working in the service economy continues to rise, there is a need to examine workplace harm within low-paid, insecure, flexible and short-term forms of ‘affective labour’. This is the first book to discuss harm through an ultra-realist lens and examines the connection between individuals, their working conditions and management culture.
Using data from a long-term ethnographic study of the service economy, it investigates the reorganisation of labour markets and the shift from security to flexibility, a central function of consumer capitalism. It highlights working conditions and organisational practices which employees experience as normal and routine but within which multiple harms occur.
Challenging current thinking within sociology and policy analysis, it reconnects ideology and political economy with workplace studies and uses examples of legal and illegal activity to demonstrate the multiple harms within the service economy.
While the notion of social harm has long interested critical criminologists it is now being explored as an alternative field of study, which provides more accurate analyses of the vicissitudes of life.
However, important aspects of this notion remain undeveloped, in particular the definition of social harm, the question of responsibility and the methodologies for studying harm. This book, the first to theorise and define the social harm concept beyond criminology, seeks to address these omissions and questions why some capitalist societies appear to be more harmful than others. In doing so it provides a platform for future debates, in this series and beyond.
It will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers across criminology, sociology, social policy, socio-legal studies and geography.