The state, penality and human insecurity The sociological insights of Loïc Wacquant
TL;DR: In this article, Wacquant's three recent volumes, UrbanOutcasts, Punishing the Poor and Prisons of Poverty, are considered with a particular focus on the theoretical and empirical contours of his over-arching account of the rise of what he calls a new government of social insecurity.
Abstract: Over the past 30 years a growing body of scholarship has highlighted the significance of practices of punishment and penality within contemporary Western societies. Penal expansionism, most dramatically evidenced in the United States, has drawn the attention of a raft of commentators, including that of French sociologist Loic Wacquant. In this essay, Wacquant’s three recent volumes – UrbanOutcasts, Punishing the Poor and Prisons of Poverty – are considered with a particular focus on the theoretical and empirical contours of his over-arching account of the rise of what he calls a ‘new government of social insecurity’.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose a unifying reading of Wacquant's works as an interpretation advocating revitalization of a critical social science, which they call "civic sociology".
Abstract: The critical and polemic receptions of the work of Loic Wacquant has been extensive, but to a large extent focused on specific works and colored by professional specialty, that is, in a word: fragmented. In counteracting that fragmented response, the article sheds light on the undercurrents in Wacquant’s works by stressing four prominent and consistent features: his heritage from (and updating of) Bourdieu; his emphasis on and constant practice of theory (implicit as well as explicit); the distinct ethos with which he addresses political sociology (in the dual form of a sociology analyzing the effects of the political productions of populations categories and a so-called ‘civic sociology’); and finally, the persistent and ubiquitous critique of everything in existence – a thematic indicator permeating each and every one of his works. Thus the article proposes a unifying reading of Wacquant as an interpretation advocating revitalization of a critical social science.
7 citations
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: Auf die gewalttatigen Proteste von Jugendlichen in Pariser Vorstadten (banlieus) im Jahr 2005, die riots in Londoner Wohnvierteln im Jahre 2011 and the massiven Proteste gegen rassistisch motivierte Polizeibrutalitat in Baltimore im Jahres 2015 folgten repressive, teils militarische Eingriffe in die Versammlungs-and die personliche Freiheit nicht nur der Protestierenden,
Abstract: Auf die gewalttatigen Proteste von Jugendlichen in Pariser Vorstadten (banlieus) im Jahr 2005, die riots in Londoner Wohnvierteln im Jahr 2011 und die massiven Proteste gegen rassistisch motivierte Polizeibrutalitat in Baltimore im Jahr 2015 folgten repressive, teils militarische Eingriffe in die Versammlungs- und die personliche Freiheit nicht nur der Protestierenden, sondern der Bevolkerungen ganzer Stadtteile. Gemeinsam ist diesen Konfrontationen, dass sie in von ethnischer Diversitat gepragten Teilen post-industrieller Stadte des Globalen Nordens stattfanden. In Paris und London waren Nachkommen der zweiten oder dritten Generation von MigrantInnen, in den USA die internationale »Black Lives Matter« Bewegungen in den Strasenkampf mit staatlichen Gewaltakteuren verwickelt (Khan, 2015).
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Book•
15 Jul 1992
TL;DR: The authors provides a systematic and accessible overview of the internal logic of Bourdieu's work by explicating thematic and methodological principles underlying his work, including a theory of knowledge, practice, and society.
Abstract: Over the last three decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory and research of the post war era. Yet, despite the influence of his work, no single introduction to his wide-ranging "oeuvre" is available. This book, intended for an English-speaking audience, offers a systematic and accessible overview, providing interpretive keys to the internal logic of Bourdieu's work by explicating thematic and methodological principles underlying his work. The structure of Bourdieu's theory of knowledge, practice, and society is first dissected by Loi c Wacquant; he then collaborates with Bourdieu in a dialogue in which they discuss central concepts of Bourdieu's work, confront the main objections and criticisms his work has met, and outline Bourdieu's views of the relation of sociology to philosophy, economics, history, and politics. The final section captures Bourdieu in action in the seminar room as he addresses the topic of how to practice the craft of reflexive sociology. Throughout, they stress Bourdieu's emphasis on reflexivity--his inclusion of a theory of intellectual practice as an integral component of a theory of society--and on method--particularly his manner of posing problems that permits a transfer of knowledge from one area of inquiry into another. Amplified by notes and an extensive bibliography, this synthetic view is essential reading for both students and advanced scholars. Pierre Bourdieu is Professor of Sociology at the Colle ge de France. Loi c J. D. Wacquant is a Junior Fellow, Society of Fellows, Harvard University.
8,465 citations
Book•
29 Oct 2007
TL;DR: Ghetto, Banlieue, Favela et Caetera: Tools for Rethinking Urban Marginality as mentioned in this paper, is a tool for rethinking urban marginality.
Abstract: Ghetto, Banlieue, Favela et Caetera: Tools for Rethinking Urban Marginality. PROLOGUE: AN OLD PROBLEM IN A NEW WORLD?. 1. The Return of the Repressed: Riots, 'Race,' and Dualization in Three Advanced Societies. I. FROM COMMUNAL GHETTO TO HYPERGHETTO. 2. The State and Fate of the Dark Ghetto at Century's Close. 3. The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in 'Bronzeville'. 4. West Side Story: A High-Insecurity Ward in Chicago. II. BLACK BELT, RED BELT. 5. From Conflation to Comparison: How Banlieues and Ghetto Converge and Contrast. 6. Stigma and Division: From the Core of Chicago to the Margins of Paris. 7. Dangerous Places: Violence, Isolation, and the State. III.- LOOKING AHEAD: URBAN MARGINALITY IN THE 21st CENTURY. 8. The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Specifications and Implications. 9. Logics of Urban Polarization from Below. Postcript: Theory, History, and Politics in Urban Analysis
1,126 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1939
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that there was a more pronounced difference in criminal punishment based on class and economics, and that the development of penal methods determined by basic social relations.
Abstract: Why are certain methods of punishment adopted or rejected in a given social situation? To what extent is the development of penal methods determined by basic social relations? The answers to these questions are complex, and go well beyond the thesis that institutionalized punishment is simply for the protection of society. While today's punishment of offenders often incorporates aspects of psychology, psychiatry, and sociology, at one time there was a more pronounced difference in criminal punishment based on class and economics.
734 citations
TL;DR: The authors poses the question of the social and intellectual conditions for genuine social scientific internationalism, through an analysis of the worldwide spread of a new global vulgate resulting from the false and uncontrolled universalization of the folk concepts and preoccupations of American society and academe.
Abstract: This article poses the question of the social and intellectual conditions for genuine social scientific internationalism, through an analysis of the worldwide spread of a new global vulgate resulting from the false and uncontrolled universalization of the folk concepts and preoccupations of American society and academe. The terms, themes and tropes of this new planetary doxa - `multiculturalism', `globalization', `liberals versus communitarians', `underclass', racial `minority' and identity, etc. - tend to project and impose on all societies American concerns and viewpoints, thereby transfigured into tools of analysis and yardsticks of policy fit to naturalize the peculiar historical experience of one peculiar society, tacitly instituted as a model for humanity. The article suggests how the logic of the international circulation of ideas, the transformations of the academic field, the strategies of foundations and publishers, and of local collaborators in global conceptual `import-export' converge to fost...
643 citations
TL;DR: Boyer, 1978, Katz, 1983, Patterson, 1986, and Fishman, 1988 as mentioned in this paper argued that the urban ghetto is a nefarious place that disrupts and corrupts social life, especially among the lower classes.
Abstract: Three deep-seated proclivities or premises have dominated the recent debate on racial division and urban poverty in the United States. These premises are rooted in longstanding American conceptions of the poor — and particularly the black poor — as morally defective and of the city as a nefarious place that disrupts and corrupts social life, especially among the lower classes (Boyer, 1978; Katz, 1983; Patterson, 1986; Fishman, 1988). Endowed with plausibility by the weight of cultural history and intellectual inertia, reinforced by an individualistic national idiom that de-emphasizes class and euphemizes ethno-racial domination, they form the cornerstones of the current academic doxa on the topic and therefore typically go unargued and unquestioned.1 Yet these underlying tenets truncate and distort our understanding of the ongoing (re)articulation of color, class, and place in the American metropolis. The first, more recent, tendency is the dilution of the notion of ghetto simply to designate an urban area of widespread and intense poverty, which obfuscates the racial basis and character of this poverty and divests the term of both historical meaning and sociological content. The second, century-old, tenet is the idea that the ghetto is a
304 citations