Lucas MelgaçoVrije Universiteit Brussel | VUB · Crime and Society (CRIS)
Lucas Melgaço
Professor
About
67
Publications
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191
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Introduction
I am a Professor in the Department of Criminology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) where I teach courses on urban criminology, policing, and surveillance to master students in criminology and in urban studies. My main scientific interests are in the domains of public (dis)order, public spaces, social movements and protests, and the relationships between information and communication technologies, space and security. I am editor-in-chief of the journal Criminological Encounters.
Publications
Publications (67)
Brazilian geographer Milton Santos is one of the most quoted, celebrated, and controversial social scientists of the so-called “global South”. His body of work employs a rich vocabulary including reinterpretations of concepts such as “totality”, as well as original concepts like “used territory”. These and other concepts have formed the basis of wh...
Information and communication technologies have transformed the dynamics of contention in contemporary society. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and devices such as smartphones have increasingly played a central role in facilitating and mobilizing social movements throughout different parts of the world. Concurrently, the same technolo...
Sexualized graffiti has emerged on walls in Brussels since the beginning of 2013, generating fierce debates. Perceived as street art and a welcome challenge to heteropatriarchy by some and as obscenity and vulgarity by others, these pieces highlight the inherently contested character of public spaces. The controversies around the presence of these...
In this opinion piece, we challenge the dominating view that surveillance in smart cities is driven by surveillance capitalism alone. Whilst this literature unpicks important factors and trends, we argue that a focus on surveillance capitalism as a sole driver risks ignoring the more intricate realities of surveillance assemblages. They are often p...
Volinz, L., Steenhout, I., Beyens, K., & Melgaço, L. (2021). FixMyStreet! Een criminologisch-theoretisch perspectief op de afhandeling van overlast via mobiele applicaties. Panopticon, 42(6), 527.
Talı́ria Petrone is a federal deputy in Brazil (2019–2022) who has undertaken remarkable work on
the defence of human rights, on gender and LGBTQIA+ agendas and on support for Brazil’s poor Black
population. She has also become closely involved with topics related to security and police brutality
in Brazil. In this interview, among other topics, sh...
Talı́ria Petrone é deputada federal (2019–2022) e tem realizado um trabalho notável na defesa dos direitos humanos, nas agendas de gênero e LGBTQIA+ e no apoio à população negra pobre do Brasil. Ela tem também se envolvido com tópicos relacionados à segurança e à brutalidade policial no Brasil. Nesta entrevista, entre outros assuntos, ela fala sobr...
This study explores how residents govern security in two middle-class neighborhoods in Londrina, the fourth largest city in southern Brazil. Utilizing nodal governance theory, it analyses a security program called Solidary Neighbor (Vizinho Solidário, in Portuguese) in both neighborhoods, in place since the early 2010s. Document analysis, direct ob...
It is clear that the pandemic has had much harsher effects on vulnerable urban groups such as migrant youth, refugees, asylum-seekers, undocumented migrants and the homeless. For many of these groups public space is a quintessential realm, not only for leisure and social contact but also for shelter and income. This chapter presents early findings...
COVID-19 is an invisible threat that has hugely impacted cities and their inhabitants. Yet its impact is very visible, perhaps most so in urban public spaces and spaces of mobility. This international volume explores the transformations of public space and public transport in response to COVID-19 across the world, both those resulting from official...
We live in a super-diverse society. However, the police do not seem to pick up on the attention for these social developments towards a super-diverse society, which puts them at risk of inefficiency and loss of legitimacy. In an exploratory mixed method study, we examined the situation regarding diversity (policy) among the police in Belgium. The r...
This commentary discusses the relatively limited presence of the two Anglophone geographical classics Geography and Geographers and Political Geography in the academic teaching of the discipline in the Global South. It does so by contrasting the books with the works of Brazilian geographer Milton Santos and by highlighting convergences and differen...
It is our great pleasure to introduce the second issue of Criminological Encounters Before e introduce the content of this issue e ould like to first restate to our readers the journal's mission statement Criminological Encounters is a radicall free independent and open-access journal We belie e that scien tific information should not hide behind e...
The Internet and digital technologies have become indispensable in academia. A world without email, search engines, and online databases is practically unthinkable. Yet, in this time of digital dependence, the academy barely demonstrates an appetite to reflect upon the new challenges that digital technologies have brought to the scholarly professio...
This article analyses control of the Internet from a spatial perspective, on the intersection of social and political geography, and law. Inspired by the story of WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange, who is presently confined in a room of a diplomatic mission, this article examines such control through a spatial perspective, using the example o...
It is our great pleasure to introduce the inaugural issue of Criminological Encounters, a new international, interdisciplinary, double blind peer-reviewed, digital, and open-access journal in the field of criminology. With this new venue for discussion, we aim to facilitate critical dialogue between scholars of criminology and interlocutors from re...
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A partir do campo da Ciência, Tecnologia e Sociedade (CTS) e dos fundamentos da Teoria Ator-Rede (TAR), o presente artigo busca abordar a associação entre videomonitoramento, produção de segurança e políticas públicas, mediante a descrição de práticas contemporâneas de vigilância articuladas aos processos de constr...
This chapter introduces Brazilian Geographer Milton Santos to English-speaking academia. The text places Santos’s theorizations in conversation with recent calls to expand, postcolonialize and decolonize knowledge production in urban studies: to say that Santos is a geographer from the Global South and of the periphery is to indicate the marginaliz...
For decades, Milton Santos (1926-2001) has been considered one of the most influential thinkers in Brazilian and Latin American social sciences and geography. Yet his writings, most of which have not been translated into English, are largely unknown to European and North American audiences. This book introduces English-speaking scholars to Professo...
Introduction to the book Santos, Milton (2017) Toward an Other Globalization: From the Single Thought to Universal Conscience. Translated and Edited by L. Melgaço and T. Clarke, London: Springer.
This book presents an alternative theory of globalization that derives not from the dominant perspective of the West, from which this process emerged, but from the critical vantage point of the Third World, which has borne the heaviest burdens of globalization. It offers a critical and uniquely first-hand perspective that is lacking not only from t...
So-called “smart” solutions are changing the way we experience and talk about security in urban environments. The shifting relations between new technologies of information and security therefore deserve increased academic interests. It is in this vein that Lucas Melgaço is skeptical about the positive impact of technophile surveillance policies in...
Ao mesmo tempo que as tecnologias da informação e comunicação têm impulsionado a ocorrência de grandes manifestações públicas no atual período técnico-científico e informacional, elas têm também sido utilizadas para o monitoramento de ativistas e, por vezes, para verdadeiramente coibir a ação de alguns cidadãos. Esse cenário de intensa vigilância t...
Which public and whose space? The understanding of public space as an arena where individuals can claim full use and access hides a reality of constant negotiation, conflict and surveillance. This collection uses case studies concerning the management, use, and transgression of public space to invite reflection on the way in which everyday social i...
http://www.enargywebzine.eu/spip.php?article434
De complexiteit van massabetogingen is voor de autoriteiten die de openbare orde handhaven een uitdaging. In dit artikel worden twee protestacties geanalyseerd, die werden geoganiseerd door Belgische vakbonden in het najaar van 2014 en 2015. een groep protestvoerders trad in direct conflict met de politie, waarbij bepaalde. Brusselse straten werden...
This paper examines the rise of digital surveillance in educational spaces. More specifically, it demonstrates how numerous the agents, practices and technologies involved in the surveillance of a university campus are. The agents watching and being watched on a campus include: students, faculty, staff, visitors, neighbours, and the police, etc. Am...
Almost fifty years ago, Brazil suffered a coup d’état led by military officers with the support of conservative groups of the civil society. The dictatorial regime brought along a surveillance structure never before seen in the Brazilian history. Individuals and groups considered to be “subversive” were closely monitored. Data was constantly gather...
De Certeau’s distinction of ‘strategies’ and ‘tactics’ is valuable to understand certain phenomena in public spaces, particularly the tensions between strategies of surveillance and tactics of appropriation. On the one hand there is a top-down process of rationalization of public spaces through surveillance practices, as in the use of surveillance...
This deliverable contributes to the SIAM project by complementing the reports based on empirical research in work package 3 (impact analysis on criminal actions). The results of this report will contribute to the SIAM database and the Assessment Support Tool.
The main objective of this deliverable is to present and discuss the complexities involved...
Brazilian geographer Milton Santos is among the most influential theorists in Brazil and in the rest of Latin America yet his work has not until now been popularized in Anglo-American scholarship. Santos created a solid theoretical framework composed by a set of articulated concepts, some of which are discussed in this paper: technical-scientific a...
O presente artigo discute a tendência de privatização do espaço e de produção de novas fragmentações intraurbanas através da criação dos chamados condomínios fechados. Nele são descritos diferentes tipos de enclausuramento urbano e é questionada a legalidade de alguns desses empreendimentos. O tênue limite entre legalidade e ilegalidade fica eviden...
As câmeras de segurança têm sido vistas no Brasil como verdadeiras panaceias para os problemas de segurança urbana. Acredita-se que elas seriam capazes de afas-tar os medos ao transformarem o espaço em algo racional e previsível. Porém, a racionalidade em excesso pode se transformar em irracionalidade, fazendo com que a busca por segurança resulte...
Large metropolises, particularly in Latin America, have gone through deep transformations due to fear of violence. New urban forms -such as gated communities, deterrent architecture and security cameras -have answered the increasing demand for security. With no real prior consideration, towns such as Campinas-SP, in Brazil, have opted for a policy...
Uma das maiores vantagens em se adotar o método dialético nos estudos de Geografia está justamente em considerar a realidade em sua complexidade: não uma realidade fragmentada, mas uma realidade dialética, dinâmica, mutante. Boa parte dos geógrafos que tentaram estabelecer esse diálogo entre Geografia e Violência acabou esbarrando nas limitações do...
This article intends to start a geographical reflection about the uses of the territory by the violence in Campinas-SP, using for that the Information technologies (Remote Sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS) and Digital Cartography) and concepts from the Geography as geographic space or used territory, an indivisible system of objects and...
This paper aims to discuss the limits of the Geotechnologies as a way of representing complex reality. Geotechnologies are understood here as the sum of four technologies: Remote Sensing, Digital Cartography, Geographic Information System (GIS) and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Each of them has its own limitations which are individuall...
The aim of this paper is to compare the quality and accuracy of Digital Elevation Models (DEM) generated from different sources. Three different DEMs, covering the same geographic area (region of Uberaba, MG), are tentatively evaluated in this work. The first is a DEM derived from radar interferometry, through the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission...
One of the challenges in the detecting of ore bodies in tropical environments is the discrimination between iron-rich surfaces, originated from the supergenic alteration of the sulphides (gossans), and generic lateritic crusts, also rich in iron, however, unrelated to metallic ores. This paper aims to integrate plan-altimetric, magnetometric and mu...
Questions
Questions (2)
I am putting together a playlist for my course Policing and Surveillance which I teach to students of the master in Criminology. The idea is just to offer them something fun to scape a bit the heaviness of the current period. Do you have songs to suggest? The collaborative playlist can be found at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaKTXrOCnMbBFN6cDrT_JZ3p-N38fft-K.
Do you take the RG score into account when assessing the work of a scholar? Do you know how it is calculated? Do you have any criticism about the way it is calculated? Would you prefer ResearchGate to get rid of it? How does your own RG score impact your self-assessment of your own performance? Do you think it can lead to unnecessary competition and unfair comparison or do you see positive aspects related to this type of metrics? Have you ever taken any specific measure to boost your RG score? Could you recommend any interesting reference related to this discussion?
Projects
Projects (6)
The main objective of the research project carried out in collaboration with the Law, Science, Technology & Society research group is is to analyse the discourses that surround the implementation of 'smart' video surveillance technologies, and their affordances in 'smart cities'. It intends to identify the main promises and drivers behind official discourses of smart city programmes in three Belgian cities: Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent. Two hypotheses from the literature will be tested: 1) 'Surveillance theatre': that the concept of smart cities and the implementation of surveillance programmes have a 'performative' role; 2) Surveillance capitalism: that the main driver behind the implementation of the surveillance programmes is not security of citizens or reducing crime but is economic. The hypotheses will be tested for the three cities through critical discourse analysis of policy documents, social media and interviews with the different stakeholders and confronting the found discourses with relevant literature.
Brazilian geographer Milton Santos is one of the most quoted and celebrated social scientists of the so-called “global South”. His body of work employs a rich vocabulary including reinterpretations of concepts such as “totality”, as well as original concepts like “used territory”. These and other concepts have formed the basis of what could be called a “Miltonian” school of thought in geography. However, despite his national and regional importance to Brazil and the “global South” more generally, he has long been overlooked by the English-speaking community of geographers and social scientists. With this project we intend to bridge this gap by translating part of his work from Portuguese into English.
New digital and mobile technologies (re)configure the relations between citizens and the state: they allow local authorities to crowdsource real-time information on the urban environment and enable citizens to file reports and complaints directly to the relevant authorities in a direct, rapid and simple manner. But these new interactions and interfaces are not devoid of social and political implications. On one hand, citizens’ expectations of mobile digital technologies can translate into exaggerated expectations towards public authorities: municipal interventions take more time, and are less predictable, than a Deliveroo take-away. Local authorities, on the other hand, adopt mobile city application with trepidation, fearing an untenable burden, loss of control over municipal priorities, an excess of (irrelevant) information to sift through, and the redistribution of resources towards tech-savvy, well-informed residents at the expense of others.
Through a focus on the governance of minor offences at our partner, the Brussels’ municipality of Schaerbeek, we explore the case of FixMyStreet, a mobile city application where residents report nuisances and incidents to their local authorities. We critically examine the unintended consequences arising with the introduction of such new participatory legibility schemes, both within municipal authorities’ structures and within the wider social and political landscape. Our research will aim to answer two main research questions – First, how are citizens’ relations with local authorities specifically, and with the state more broadly, (re)configured following the introduction of mobile city applications and participatory legibility schemes? And secondly, how can local authorities’ handling of participatory incident reporting by urban residents be reformed to produce better social and material interventions?
In this project we employ a mixed methods approach, combining a quantitative analysis of FixMyStreet reports and subsequent interventions with an in-depth qualitative research of the municipal services at our partner organization, the Brussels’ municipality of Schaerbeek. This research will make both a scientific contribution in the fields of criminology, urban studies and surveillance studies, while developing tangible custom-made solutions to the questions and challenges faced by Brussels’ local authorities when they elicit citizens’ reports on the urban environment through mobile city applications. Our research findings will allow us to produce new working protocols, practical workshops and an online training module to be used in the municipality of Schaerbeek, and then promoted in the wider Brussels region. Together, these will make an innovative, forward-looking contribution to prepare both scholars and practitioners to the growing role of mobile and digital technologies in the governance of everyday life.
