Contemporary Rep of Punishment
Punishing the Poor
Required readings;
– Chunn, Dorothy E., and Shelley A.M. Gavigan. 2014. “Welfare Fraud to Welfare as Fraud: The Criminalization of Poverty”. In Gillian Balfour and Elizabeth Comack (eds.). Criminalizing Women: Gender and (in)Justice in Neo-Liberal Times, Black Point, Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, pp. 197-214.
– Pollack, Shoshana. 2010. “Labelling Clients ‘Risky’: Social Work and the Neo-liberal Welfare State.” British Journal of Social Work 40: 1263–1278.
Additional resources
– Pivot Legal Society. 2018. “Testifying against harmful laws before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights”. https://www.pivotlegal.org/testifying_against_harmful_laws_before_the_house_of_commons_committee_on_justice_and_human_rights
Your final essay will provide an analysis of contemporary representations of punishment in everyday life and/or popular culture from western culture. Representations can include institutional productions and regulations of punishment and penalty (e.g., courts, corrections, policing, psychiatric institutions, long-term care, etc.), official governmental or non-governmental reports, media (such as news stories, TV series, movies, podcasts), and/or artistic or other cultural renditions related to contemporary representations of punishment. You may choose to focus on a particular theme or to include a variety of representations. This assignment is intended to provide you with the opportunity to engage with the course material in the present context, including in the communities in which we live.
