The spring Common Session of 2022 will take place in Rotterdam at the Faculty of Law of Erasmus University Rotterdam, EUR (Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.) Monday 20 June till Wednesday 22 June. (Arrival date Sunday 19 June). Registration only for students and staff from the members of the Common study programme in critical criminology.
Theme: Globalisation and its adversaries
Global trade is among us at least since the days of Marco Polo and indeed of colonialism, but as a process of worldwide economic and cultural interconnectedness and dependency, globalisation has become a dominant political development by the late 1980s. Due to mutual economic interests, (wo)mankind was thought to live happily together in a ‘global village’. Since this was seen to be a dominantly neoliberal idea, critics of globalisation initially came from the political Left: this form of globalisation would further increase the inequality between the global North and the global South, it would lead to new forms of social exclusion and to a new precariat, and indeed to an increased exploitation of natural resources.
This changed in the 2000s, when adversaries of globalisation started to come more often from the political Right. Allegedly uncontrollable flows of migration and a decay of national identity were the arguments behind a neonationalist shift in many countries: away from globalism.
Around 2020, the picture has become messier, with adversaries coming from different directions, with different rationales and motives. A ‘globalisation from below’ can be observed, with Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, and a grown ‘wokeness’ about the ‘dark sides’ of colonial times. We can also see a grown awareness that global problems cannot be tackled by individual countries (global warming being the most alarming one); but we can also observe conspiracy beliefs about e.g. the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’.
The criminological implications of these developments that reflect the complexities and dilemmas of globalisation are numerous. The efficiency of ports and airports is increasingly waged against security issues; the dependency of let us say gas and oil from Russia or steel and electronic devices from China is questioned, as is the provision of financial and legal services to businesses with dubious affiliations; the ‘openness’ of the internet is challenged by autocratic regimes, as well as by ‘liberals’ concerned about fake news; and migratory flows are by some seen as a threat yet have also been argued to be inevitable, economically necessary for (Western) countries with an aging population, and a humanitarian obligation.
These and other topical criminological themes related to globalisation will surely form an excellent basis for discussion at the June 2022 Common Session in Rotterdam
