The interdisciplinary.net project is pleased to announce the Second Annual Conference, "Good Sex, Bad Sex: Sex Law, Crime, and Ethics" to be held in Prague in May 2010. They particularly invite submissions of pre-formed panel proposals. Submission deadline: November 27, 2009.
"Good Sex, Bad Sex: Sex Law, Crime, and Ethics"
After the success of the inaugural conference for this project, we are pleased to announce the Second Annual Conference, to be held in Prague in May 2010. The conference is a keystone of the 'Good Sex, Bad Sex' interdisciplinary.net project that seeks to explore the nature, character and issues around the prohibition, regulation or permission of different and distinct forms of sexuality and debates around their legal, ethical and cultural status in contemporary societies.
The sorts of questions the project wishes to address are: How do we regulate and seek to deter sex crime? How do we support victims, prosecute perpetrators and encourage lawful and discourage unlawful sexual conduct? Should our strategies for perpetrators be rehabilitation, punishment or deterrence and what are the implications of elements of each? What about when the law prosecutes 'victimless crimes' or seems unjust in relation to particular sexualities? Or fails to adequately protect the innocent or regulate the guilty? How does law relate to ethics and our understanding about what good and bad sex are? What ethical grounds do we have for distinguishing good sex and bad sex?
The project seeks to explore the terrain around sex law, sexual ethics and sex crime with a critical edge that moves beyond simple disciplinary attentions to policy, laws, social conventions or values to recognise the complexities and contested questions around the way states and social institutions regulate sexual conduct in contemporary societies and on what basis of principles. The project will explore the role of law and ethics in guiding prohibitions, permissions and regulations of different sexual conduct and sexualities. It will explore the way in which law and other forms of regulation have been used to police and repress desire and pleasure, and the ways in which such prohibitions and regulations have been changed, subverted, challenged or transgressed. This project seeks to generate inter-disciplinary work that has a definite and critical engagement with both sex law and sexual values and conventions in contemporary societies, and collectively represents intellectual work for the betterment of sexual ethics in sexual conduct in society and more informed and just regulation of different sexualities.
The project welcomes papers, panels and presentations from all disciplines, professions and vocations who have an interest in sex law and sex crime and the development of a more ethical sexuality and ethical regulation of sexuality. It welcomes critical engagements that challenge convention and make us think anew about issues of sex and society within a framework of ethical beneficence and just legality.
This year papers are particularly (but by no means exclusively) sought on two oft neglected themes:
Sexual Rights, Sexual Justice?
What do we mean by sexual rights and sexual justice? How are sexual rights and justice understood in contemporary societies and how might they be Does this mean we all have a right to fulfil sexual desires, and if it does, how do we reconcile this with prohibitions/regulations on, for example, some disabled people? Can a sexual right have the same character of political, social or legal rights and how does this reflect on ideas of sexual citizenship and belonging? Has an idea like justice any place in the discussion of sexual desires? How can desire be just or unjust and what do we mean when we say desire is just or unjust?
Prohibiting Perversions or Repressing Desires?: Regulating Diverse Sexualities
How should we make sense of attempts across the Globe to progressively develop specific legal guidelines - prohibiting or defining and regulating - to deal with diverse sexual desires? How far are the legal prohibitions or regulation of a range of activities - from BDSM to fetishism, from adult incest to public sex, from bestiality to necrophilia to other diverse desires - ethically justifiable, aesthetically driven and/or political determined? What are the consequences for the ethical regulation of dangerous desires of notions for acting against public decency within heterosexual cultures? Were these sexualities always and everywhere taboo and under what conditions might they become 'mainstream' in the future? How far are their foundational bases for determining whether desires should regulated, prohibited and permitted and how far are they effective in the face of diverse sexualities.
More broadly, papers, panels and workshops are welcome on any of the following general themes - or just mail and enquire if you have a different option to present!:
1. Sex Crime and the Law
* Rape and the law against sexual coercion and violence
* Sex laws and diversity in sexual identity and conduct
* Sex laws and the regulation of sex and sexuality in comparative societies
* The relationship between sex law and notions of good or ethical sexuality
* Sex laws and sexual pathology and prejudice in contemporary societies
* Sex law and the lessons of historical legal prohibitions or regulations of sex and sexuality
2. Sex Law and Its Agencies
* Sex law and the judicial process
* Sex Law and policing sex and sexualities
* Sex Law and the selectivities of the state
* Sex Law and the role of the state in regulating and prohibiting sex and sexualities
* Sex Law and the discretion within criminal justice systems
3. Ethics and the Principles of Sexual Conduct
* What are the principles and standards of sexual ethics?
* What sex and sexualities should be prohibited, regulated or permitted?
* What forms of sexual orientations, behaviours and relationships are ethical or unethical?
* How should ethics relate to sex law and what other ideas of principles should inform sex law apart from ethics?
* Can we have ethically unsound sex that is legally permissible?
* What are the problems of talking ethically about desire and pleasure?
4. Sex Law and Regulating Desire
* Sex law and Sexual Commerce - pornography and prostitution
* Sex Law and Sex Acts - permissible and impermissible sex
* Desires, pleasures and the conceptual bases for ethical or legal forms of prohibition or regulation
* Regulation through knowledge - sex education and institutional sexual regulation
* Regulation of particular sexual agents - disability, mental illness and other regulatory discourses
* Regulation and culture - representing good and bad sex
5. Sex Crime and Its Agents
* Understanding and treating the perpetrators of sex crime
* Support and services for the victims of sex crime
* Sex crime and the impact on survivors
* Sex crime and its impact upon police and support agencies
* Justice and obligation - the legal system and its impact on sex crime perpetrators and victims
The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals.
Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 27th November 2009. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 19th March 2010.
300 word abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract.
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.
Joint Organising Chairs:
Paul Reynolds
Reader in Sociology and Social Philosophy
Edge Hill University, Lancashire
United Kingdom
E-mail: prr@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom
E-mail: gsbs2@inter-disciplinary.net
The conference is part of the 'Transformations' research hub at ID.Net. We aim to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore innovative and challenging routes of intellectual and academic exploration. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume, or for the Global Journal of Sensuality, Sexuality and the Erotic, published by the Inter-Disciplinary Press.
For further details about the project please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/transformations/good-sex-bad-sex-sex-law-crime-and-ethics/
For further details about the conference please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/transformations/good-sex-bad-sex-sex-law-crime-and-ethics/call-for-papers/
