Postfordism & crime.

April 30, 2003 8:22 PM

The return of the dangerous classes: crime control in the 21st century."The language of crime control seems to be today on the verge of eclipsing all others - in particular that of social rights – and becoming the single, all encompassing goal of social policy."
Sounds topical? John Lea's work on the changes postfordism has brought to crime control are even more relevant now than they were when he wrote them back in the nineties. [more]
posted by slipperywhenwet (3 comments total)

Lea's website includes links to a number of his other essays. So far I've only gone through Postfordism and Criminality. It's denser than Return of the Dangerous Classes but is a very worthwhile.

A reciprocity between legal and illegal business is a general feature of contemporary capitalism ... and is symptomatic of an economic climate in which capital has to resort increasingly to breaking its own rules in order to remain viable.
posted by slipperywhenwet at 8:28 PM on April 30, 2003

The essays and lecture notes on organized crime are worth a look too. I'm a bit doubtful about certain of his 'big picture' conclusions about 19th-21st century convergences (they seem a bit polemical and doctrinaire to me), but I guess it's refreshing to see someone using nineteenth century social history in this way. The piece on Engels is a good example. However, I suppose the parallels are there to be made, and that in itself can't be a good thing.

It just goes to show that a Marxist framework (shorn, perhaps, of its revolutionary utopianism) can continue to elicit useful insights into social history and change.
posted by Sonny Jim at 4:25 PM on May 1, 2003

I really enjoyed reading this and am still mulling it over. Great link, SWW.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:32 PM on May 1, 2003