Abstract
“Globalisation” is understood in this book as “a complex set of developments with multiple modalities.” In-depth knowledge of society, politics, urbanisation, trade and migration from a worldwide perspective is necessary to comprehend the true nature of globalisation in relation to the category of ‘crime’ which is equally multi-faceted according to this book.
Globalisation is claimed to have unfolded on the world scene in two waves; the first wave of globalisation during the early 1990s was marked by widespread consensus among many social commentators that the state was ‘withering away’ due to the rising power of multinational corporations and international organisations. This was followed by a second wave of globalisation which is still unfolding and whose key features are the persistence of the state and realisation of the importance of the state to both national and global economies, as revealed by the massive investment of public money to save the global financial system during the 2008 crisis.
The author, Katja Franko of the University of Oslo, is a professor of criminology. However, the argument in this book does not, as tradition would have it, revolve around the concepts and doctrines of criminology and their relationship with globalisation. From the outset, a critical understanding is adopted concerning criminal activity in the world economy and its regulation by states in the context of declining welfare states in developed countries and imposition of neoliberal economic policies in the global South over the preceding four decades.
The facts about the ‘unevenness’ of globalisation and its ‘paradoxes’ such as the spawning of a ‘borderless world’ for inhabitants of a small number of Western nations, hand in hand with ‘pervasive structural inequality’ at the expense of the global South, are not only described in this book but also explained with great care.
The elaboration of what constitutes a crime is non-technical and critical. The book examines the ‘crimes of globalisation’, said to result from the policies of the World Bank, IMF (International Monetary Fund) and WTO (World Trade Organisation) and to have brought “demonstrably harmful consequences, disproportionately on large numbers of people living in developing countries.” The wider category of ‘harm’ as opposed to the more restrictive legal definitions of ‘crime’ is outlined and is preferred because it addresses structural and systemic phenomena that are important in the study of “transgressions against ecosystems, humans, and non-humans.” These include broader issues of environmental degradation, societal values such as the addiction to cheap oil and the political value placed on the pursuit of economic growth by the developed countries and the imposition of this “value” on the developing countries.
The book highlights the dangers of attempts to tear down the legal order so as to preserve the social order. It offers a critical review of some emergent policies of crime control such as the ‘precautionary logic’ exemplified by the ‘denaturalisation’ of the ‘foreign fighters’ who travel from their countries of birth in the UK and several Western states to Syria, Iraq, Libya and other troubled spots to fight alongside rebel groups. It discusses the methods of aggressive policing and the militarisation of policing that comprise the toolkit of “internationalised crime control.” The chronologically older US-led ‘war on drugs’ in central America is viewed as a precursor to the ongoing US-led ‘global war on terror’, providing key pointers as to the likely cost in human terms of its successor. It is argued that the political interests of the United States and powerful countries in Western Europe predominate in what are presented as international crime-control enterprises.
Although the book draws heavily from social theorists of late modernity many of whose writings were addressing the situation inside developed countries such as Ulrich Beck, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, viewpoints in favour of, and from the global South are by no means marginalised. For instance, the reference made to the work of Mohamedou in discussing the real nature of globalisation in the context of the ‘war on terror’ is considered here as significant and, it is suggested, ought to be seen by traditional criminologists as an eye-opener. Another example can be seen in the discussion surrounding the moral indeterminacy of the term “terrorist” owing to the political context in which the term is used. The text makes reference to the universally-recognised right of peoples to self-determination and discusses the founding of countries such as Algeria and Kenya that witnessed violent nationalist uprising before they attained independence, which helps to put “terrorism” in context.
The claim that a key feature of the contemporary neo-liberal state is that it is a ‘penal state’ or ‘a carceral state’ is ably borne out by the massive evidence assembled in the book. The breadth of reference material, although extensive, is presented with precision and the analysis engages the reader. The bibliography section alone occupies more than 20 pages which is useful not only to criminologists but also to political economists, scholars of international law and international relations and environmental activists.
Overall, the book articulates a vision of ‘cosmopolitan justice’. This is defined in the glossary as the pursuit of justice for human rights violations, inequality and poverty on the global level in light of state incapacity due to compulsion by powerful countries and international financial institutions to follow the strictures of neoliberalism, or else due to state unwillingness to provide redress for structural crimes.
It indicts traditional criminology for being narrowly conceived, and for disregarding the suffering of the vast majority of people on the globe who are excluded from the benefits of globalisation and compelled by the neo-liberal policies adopted by their governments to assume personal responsibility for education, healthcare and housing in the urban areas.
In the final chapter, the issue of knowledge production in the field of criminology is addressed. Well-grounded doubts are cast on the utility to the global South of the major precepts of criminology as it currently stands. This is because conditions in the global South were not studied or analysed during the process of the development of criminology’s main concepts. This book is an extremely important contribution to the study of issues of crime and its control by states, it offers a critical understanding of the interrelation between crime and globalisation during the ‘second wave of globalisation.’