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Expansionism

About: Expansionism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 979 publications have been published within this topic receiving 11169 citations.


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Journal Article
TL;DR: Sudbury's analysis is theoretically stimulating and politically provocative in demanding a reappraisal of our thinking about prisons, particularly in the aftermath of September 11 and the war in Iraq.
Abstract: JULIA SUDBURY'S COMPELLING ARTICLE ANALYZES THE COMPLEX INTERRELATIONSHIP between militarism, the neoliberal globalization of capital, and the transnational expansion of the prison-industrial complex. The analytical connections she makes between multinational corporations, U.S. empire building and the devastated, criminalized lives of women in particular directly challenge the mystifying liberal fog that has descended on much of the academic debate around prisons. She also challenges critical scholars to think about developing new tactics, strategies, and links in order to repudiate the deeply embedded popular and political discourses that extol the prison behemoth as a mechanism of social defense operating in the public interest. These discourses mystify the institution's role as a place of punishment and pain for the poor and powerless, especially women, and black and other minority groups. Sudbury's analysis is theoretically stimulating and politically provocative in demanding a reappraisal of our thinking about prisons, particularly in the aftermath of September 11 and the war in Iraq. My response builds on the insights in the article to shed light on some recent developments in England and Wales. It does this by focusing on four areas: the expanding prison, the issue of private prisons, the militarization of the criminal justice system, and strategies of resistance. The Expanding Prison As Sudbury indicates, modern penal institutions are deeply implicated in the management of an inequitable and divided social order through detaining increasing numbers of the socially and economically marginalized. In England and Wales, the expanding prison is literally and metaphorically the big house of the poor while, as ever, the powerful operate beyond the law's reach as successive governments have pursued an anti-statist strategy with respect to the non-policing of their destructive and detrimental activities (Sim, 2000). The country is now the prison capital of Western Europe. This process began in the early 1980s when Margaret Thatcher's first Conservative government initiated the biggest prison-building program seen in the 20th century. This expansion continued over the next two decades (despite the occasional drop in the numbers inside), to the point that the average daily prison population reached an all-time high of 74,960 in March 2004. Projected figures indicate the population could rise to over 109,000 by the end of the decade (Prison Reform Trust, 2003). Other data provide further evidence of the stark reality of penal expansionism. In 2002, the courts sentenced 111,600 people to immediate custody and 186,500 to community punishments. Both figures were "the highest on record" (Home Office, 2004: 2). Taken together, they raise serious issues about "the continual recycling of the same individuals and groups between prisons and communities, [which] creates a damaging but self-sustaining process" (Matthews, 2003: Abstract). As in the USA, the prison in England and Wales has become a punitive space for the disproportionate detention of black people in general and black women in particular. In 2001, the incarceration rate for white people was 170 per 100,000 of the population. This compared with 1,140 per 100,000 for black people, 536 per 100,000 for Chinese and other groups, and 166 per 100,000 for South Asians (Home Office, 2003a: 106; 113). At the end of June 2002, 22% of the male population and 29% of the female population came from ethnic minority backgrounds. In addition, foreign nationals made up 11% of the prison population. In terms of drugs, and again running parallel with Sudbury's argument, 28% of sentenced female British nationals were imprisoned for drug offenses. This figure rose to 84% in the case of female foreign nationals (Home Office, 2003b: 114). Once confined, black and other minority groups experience a range of inequalities based on skin color (Commission for Racial Equality, 2003). …

10 citations

Book
01 Jan 2001
TL;DR: Murphy as mentioned in this paper traces the passage of the civic idea of justice from its origins in the ancient Greek polis and Roman civitas, through its various transformations in medieval and Renaissance Europe, to the modern world and its adaptation by the American Republic.
Abstract: This imaginative and original study traces the passage of the civic idea of justice from its origins in the ancient Greek polis and Roman civitas, through its various transformations in medieval and Renaissance Europe, to the modern world and its adaptation by the American Republic. Peter Murphy systematically explores the meaning of civic justice in its philosophical, art-historical, sociological, and political dimensions. The classical city embodies civic justice as a beautiful equilibrium of contending forces. Murphy traces its ascent and descent. Following the fall of Rome and the collapse of the City form, the civic idea finds renewed expression during the Renaissance in the Italian city-republic, both in its political arrangements and in the works of the great humanist architects who captured the virtues of civic pride, proportion, symmetry, and moral beauty in stone. The humanist legacy will in turn profoundly influence later European society and the new world. Reflected in its historical oscillations, the delicate balance of civic forces is frequently subject to crisis: it breaks down or is altered by the emergence of the absolutist state, capitalism, mercantile imperialism, and modern expansionism. In analysing these, Murphy addresses fundamental questions about the use and abuse of space in city architecture, the quality of urban life, and the interplay of reason and authority, freedom and limits, and modernity and antiquity in Europe and America. He concludes with a sustained reflection on the legacy of the American Republic. Founded on a torturous compromise between resistance to authority and the civic ideals of justice, America becomes the first great republic to disavow the city - a disavowal that has had enduring and tragic effects on its politics and social life. This superb volume is a provocative re-evaluation of the significance of humanism and the relevance of an enduring classical idea to contemporary life.

10 citations

Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the limits of science are considered in the context of the issues of expansionism and imperialism, and a better understanding of these issues is given. But it is not yet clear how to understand the relationship between universalism and the complexity of science.
Abstract: Universalism in science, when conceived in methodological terms, leads to the problem of the limits of science. On the one hand, there is "methodological imperialism," which in principle involves a form of universalism. On the other hand, there is the multivariate complexity – structural and dynamic, as well as epistemological and ontological – which represents a huge problem for methodological universalism, as may be seen with the obstacles for scientific prediction. Within the context of the limits of science, there is a better understanding of the issues of expansionism and imperialism.

10 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose a new socio-eco-technological transformation towards sustainable development, which takes into account ecological boundaries, but there is no consensus on the direction of the upcoming socio-ecological-technologies transformation.
Abstract: Two key issues are currently dominating the discourse on the future: On the one hand, technological and especially digital transformation, on the other hand the socioecological transformation towards sustainable development, which takes into account ecological boundaries. Both topics are becoming increasingly linked, but there is no consensus on the direction of the upcoming socio-eco-technological transformation. As stated in the article, the controversies and the different concepts are influenced by the utopian traditions of modernity. In particular, the technical utopia ‘Nova Atlantis’ by Bacon, and the paradigmatic social utopia ‘Utopia’ by More are crucial. The hegemonic technology-oriented sustainability concepts are in the tradition of Bacon. Since they continue modern expansionism, they are inadequate to solve the ecological crisis. Approaches in the tradition of social utopia may be more likely to solve the crisis, as they include more comprehensive socio-eco-technical imaginaries of a sustainable future.

10 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Aug 2004-Diogenes
TL;DR: Some features of the ideology motivating the Roman destruction of Carthage in 146 BC have surprisingly modern echoes in 20th-century genocides, such as racial, religious or cultural prejudices, gender and other social hierarchies, territorial expansionism, and an idealization of cultivation as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Some features of the ideology motivating the Roman destruction of Carthage in 146 BC have surprisingly modern echoes in 20th-century genocides. Racial, religious or cultural prejudices, gender and other social hierarchies, territorial expansionism, and an idealization of cultivation all characterize the thinking of Cato the Censor, like that of more recent perpetrators. The tragedy of Carthage, its details lost with most of the works of Livy and other ancient authors, and concealed behind allegory in Virgil’s Aeneid, became known to early modern Europeans from briefer ancient accounts rediscovered only in the 15th century, as Europe’s own expansion began.

10 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202374
2022172
202126
202038
201928
201835