Foundations of Critical Criminology – Week 9 Lecture
The state was using crime as a means of weaponizing the resistance of social conflict.
Marxian/Radical Criminology
Crime is a product of capitalist society, (aggressiveness, selfishness, greed, pursuit of power, violence and want)
“Cui bono” (In whose interests are laws made?)
Assumes law and social control are determined by:
Capitalism privatization of the means of production = exploitation and wage slavery.
Class conflict, social antagonism and egoism.
Ideology law and the state are neutral arbiters of conflict.
Ruling class and powerful groups influence the state to criminalize the conduct of their social competitors and labour, but treat their own conduct as by-products of business. (Ex. Externalities)
No state wants to do away with the illicit or underground economy. It is through the illicit an underground economy that they get to construct crime as dangerous and harmful, and therefore go after groups that are troubling and problematic. (Ex. People who must sell their labour, or create an alternate economy)
The underground economy is mobilized by the upper world economy to do things that are illegal, such as toxic dumping.
There is no such thing as a free market. It is always maintained and managed by the state. (Ex. Drug dealers cannot resolve conflict matters in court. It’s usually done with violence) It usually has greater or lesser degrees of inequality.
Group and Culture Conflict Theory
Society is composed of groups that are locked in a competition and struggle over scarce resources.
Society is divided into powerful and powerless groups.
Powerful groups lobby the state to protect their interests over others while claiming their interests are in the collective good. (Management vs. labour.) (Settlers vs. indigenous peoples.) (Two founding nations vs. the rest of us) (Euro Canadians vs. people of colour.)
Feminist criminology.
Sex inequality is the defining feature of society split between female and male.
Definitions and theories of crime were seen as androcentric, meaning men’s experiences are the standard for understanding crime.
Women’s legal violations relate to women’s oppression, experiences of violence by men.
IMPORTANT: Women are punished more harshly and disproportionately than men for the same offences. (social inequality, not often for women to get the same offence that men get)
Conservative feminist criminologists argue for equality of punishment.
Symbolic interactionism (SI) argues that:
Humans are simple, creating dependent and manipulating animals.
Symbolizing allows us to give and share meaning.
Symbols are abstractions, (artifacts, signs and words.)
Symbolic interactionist process:
People act in the world on the basis of what meanings are, given inherited or chosen to:
Explain events and things.
Define the self and other people.
Humans enter a world populated with meanings arising from dynamic interactions that they:
Accept without question.
Negotiate, modify an create anew.
Resist.
Reject.
Critical race theory says that only time people of African descent get any measure of equality is when there is a convergence of interest between white people and African American people.
Video Readings History of Neo-Liberalism Pt. 1 and 2
Gets you thinking there is free market, but get trapped in the monopoly
Tries to paint benevolent image
When they spend all the feudal conflicts on the military
Ideology of neoliberalism is a con scheme
Ideas of the ruling class, were what directed the market
Idea of universities trying to be sieged
Keynesianism managing the demands in the economy to make sure there is rational growth, need strong state intervention (inflation problems, and trade unions, and upper classes getting annoyed about anti-corporate legislation)
The importance of preserving capitalism started with the balanced of relations between the upper class and the workers.
Neoliberals Reflecting on student movement. Practially told them “OK, you want liberty. We’re going to give you liberty, but about social justice you can forget it, but you can at least have your liberty.”
Refers to the idea of Marx saying that freedom of the market is likely to produce greater levels of social inequality, meaning the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Housing, Health care, education all becoming commodities in order to progress
Neoliberalism is in alliance with Conservatives and Fascists
Animal Spirits of the Entrepreneur, “great feeling” turns out it’s not free market, it’s MONOPOLY POWER, liberty is quickly corralled, not free after all
Marx Markets do not go towards equilibrium, but contradiction, lots of people are to be bailed out in whom they got lead into the crash
Neoliberals do things such as deregulate, privatize, and cut taxes, and go into debt, and they don’t care because THEY HAVE THE POWER
Similar to Totalitarianism, we’re shifting more into that direction
Neoliberalism as an economic policy works not by generating wealth but redistributing wealth by “accumulation of dispossession.”
Financialization, start of credit cards, credit card companies
Education should be a public service, not a commodity
Capital is supposed to profitable, but it CANNOT survive without huge amounts of public subsidy
Why China doesn’t open to capital markets, don’t want to be raided
How do you legitimize this? In the early stages, it was pretty popular based on the propaganda and ideology, when ppl started realizing this was like a scam, lead to the authoritarian state, shift toward far-right politics
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