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We would like to inform the members of the the ESC, the BSC, the ASC and all academics and social scientists about the creation of the ERCES ( European and International research group on crime, Social Philosophy and Ethics.)
Who we are?
A group of social scientists and criminologists teaching and / or performing research in Universities and Scientific Institutes in different counties of Europe and Russia and USA. We joined each to dicuss finalise and realise a research project which was instigated by Dr. Thomas Gilly.
Our targets
A real international research with its own institutional frame and organisation. This structure might be thought as of as a satellite of the ESC. The ERCES ( European and International Research Group on Crime, Ethics and Social Philosophy) attepts to realise the following general target:
Provide excellent empirical and theoretical research in a particular domain of social sciences. This should be done with respect to two postulates : First, our research attempts to contribute to the fundamental theoretical debates in contemporary Ethics, Morals and Social Philosophy. Second, our research can be defined as a part of applied social sciences insofar it attempts to work out results that might help the actors and decision makers of the governments to develop and implement strategies which are aimed to the management and / solution of the fundamental problems which emerge in our contemporary societies. In the literature of contemporary social sciences, these problems are analysed as of figures of social change.
The question that lies at the heart of our project
Can common morals and common consciousness, can supra - individual values still be thought as of the fundaments of social cohesion and social control? In other words/: Are those common and supra - individual values, which go back to the philosophie of enlightenment and belong to the tradition of social and political modernity, still efficacious in a multi - cultural and multi - ethical ( post - modern ) society which shows the following characteristics: Ztre universals and laity still relevant in societies which show an increase of auto-referential culture? War against universalism, celebration of the particular as social and political category, increase of archaic forms of social organisation, affirmation of social identity via ethnically connoted difference ( Robert Antonio 2001), increase of exclusion and extension of inclusion within and by virtue of exclusion ( Luhmann 1995, 1996 ) anomie as a permanent and normal situation ( Stratton 1996,. Sack 1995 ), crisis of the criminal justice and the whole society ( Chambliss 1995 ) with its traditional plitical institutions and finally the blow up of legitimacy as a basis of political action ( Habermas 1977, 1988 )?
Whats the core - proposal of our project?
In a society which is characterised by the loss of common morals and supra - individual values and as a result of this by anomie as a normal, permanent and ordinary situation, crime can no longer be defined as it was since the pioneers years of criminology and during the hole 19 th and 20 th century, that is to say as an offence that hurts common consciousness and therefore an indicator of the nature or quality of social cohesion and control.