Criminology of the borders

Lesson 2: Southernising and decolonising criminology

Lesson from:
Máximo Sozzo (Professor of Sociology of Law and Criminology, University of Santa Fe, Argentina).

1. Southernising
criminology……………………………………………………………………………………
……………..

Southernising criminology as a collective effort that tries to problematize, resist and change the
relation of hierarchy, dependency and subordination between the Global North and South in the
production of knowledge in the complex and polyvalent field of the social studies on the “criminal
question”, as well as in the social control policies, institution and practices.

Nowaday, there are many important sources of inspiration in the contemporary debate in social
theory. Indeed, direct influence from more recent contributions, especially in the last years. For
example, in the last two decades, there were also growing crucial interventions related to
“counter-colonial”/postcolonial”/”decolonial criminology”.

There are strong levels of intersection and possibilities of cross-fertilization with the debates about
southern criminology: intent to explore all these relations of hierarchy (the importance of
colonization).

2. Periphery/South: meanings and possibilities:.......................................................................

- Center/periphery and relations of inequality, subordination and dependency between

regions of the world. Dependency theory and World-system theory since the 1900s.
- Some important works of critical criminology during the 1880s. Its centrality in LA critical
thought on the criminal question.

North/South:
It has been a distinction that became important in the world in the 1990’s. AUS and NZ in the
Northern part. It wanted to be against the binaries that divide the world and establish a term/region
as a final destination.

This distinction between North/South is perceived as a binary that is not time-based, trying to go
beyond a narrative of evolution or succession, presenting an Initial geographical fixation, as well as a
lot of limitations and metaphoric uses. In addition, it’s substantially similar to the preceding
theoretical exercises around the differentiation Center/Periphery.

We can think about it as a more dynamic and fluid conception, in which the borders of periphery and
south become complex and it’s necessary to avoid rigid outlines. Nevertheless, we have to take into
account that there can be peripheries in the Center and Centers in the Peripheries (boundaries are
not that clear even in the proper distinction). Periphery is not conceived as an homogeneous entity,
otherwise, there are different ways of being Periphery.
If we go back again to the world or dependency theory, it describes different types of peripheries,
which, finally, are difficult to define each one, just because, at the end, there are relational and
relative differentiations. Without a Center there is no Periphery, and vice-versa. In this sense, these
terms are mutually constitutive.

Now, despite all these complexities, it’s necessary at the same time to vindicate the indispensable
nature of this differentiation when referring to contemporary criminal questions at a global level. In
order to avoid a well diffused attitude (throughout history and our present)of “reading from the
Center” what is going on with criminals in the periphery (?).

3. Hierarchy, dependency and subordination in the production of knowledge on the criminal

question…………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………..

Inequality, dependency and subordination in the production and circulation of knowledge on the
criminal question throughout modernity. As a consequence, there is a strong predominance of
problems, concepts and arguments produced in the Center/South at a global scale.

Indeed, problems, concepts and arguments are formulated at the Center/North as if they were
universal, placeless, context-free, but they are rooted in certain places (and at certain times) that
have their own distinctive and specific features.
- Peripheral/Southern scholars often import these problems, concepts and arguments from
the Center/North in an article way and “apply” them to their own contexts.
- Suppliers of local empirical data, universalism and “vertical integration” that reinforces
dependency and subordination.
- Intellectual and material basis.

4. Challenges and resistances throughout the history of criminology in the

South…………………..

Throughout the history of criminology in the South/Periphery, however, it’s possible to find moments
of theoretical resistance, and invention by local intellectuals, born out of exploiting local problems
and context, as well as adaptation of imported elements which resulted in real metamorphoses of
vocabularies from the Center/North.

This exercise did not radically question the inequality in the production and circulation of knowledge
on the criminal question and continued to place the central context in a privileged superior position.
- Massive violation of human rights by penal institutions and practices, enormously greater
than that generated in the central countries. This difference was not only quantitative but
qualitative.
- Extreme levels of economics and social marginalization generated in LA peripheral capitalism
and colonialism in its various forms in the history of the region.
 5. Paradox and
risk………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………….

This recent and enduring episode, evidences what could be thought as a paradox. Even in this case,
with its high level of inventiveness and departing from critical diagnosis on this problematization,
there is not a total break with the problems, concepts and arguments generated in this regard in the
central context.

The critique of criminal questions in the periphery cannot be identical to that elaborated in the
central context, since its “theoretical frameworks” are “to a certain extent ineffective” “always
partial” in our scenarios, since they have not been constructed specifically in relation to them.

Present in the most famous contributions of today:

- Brown (2008) draws the reflection produced in post-colonial debates in India, especially the
work of Chakrabarty (2000).
- The Hindu social theorist posits that metropolitan thinking is far from being universal and
must be provincialized but this does not imply rejecting or discarding it. He was reacting to
the failed previous attempts by the Subaltern Studies Collective of “converting some kind of
genuine, almost primordial center of indigenous thought and knowledge, untainted by the
colonial experience”.
- “European thought is at once bothe indispensable and inadequate in helping us to think
through the experiences of political modernity in non-western nations”.

We can recognize the indispensable nature of dialogue with the intellectual productions of the
center context when it comes to understanding peripheral criminal questions, even when these are
per se inadequate for this task. Hence the need to provincialize the problems, concepts and
arguments generated by the field in criminology in the privileged scenarios.

The “coloniality of crime control” both in the past and the present. Importation and metamorphoses
and the many particularities. From the birth of the prison to the diffusion of plea bargaining.

In order to describe and understand peripheral crime control, then, given multiple importations from
central scenarios in the past and the present, dialogue with the literature that discusses the central
crime control institutions, discourses and practices that have inspired them is indispensable, even if
they prove inadequate per se to understand their metamorphose presence in these other marginal
places.

Now, as Brown has argued, gripping this paradox of attempting to read from the periphery, the
criminal question, but assuming the inevitability of a dialogue with the intellectual production from
the central context - although considered inadequate to make sense per se to understand their
presence in these other marginal places -.

6. Antidotes………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………….

Attempts of this kind have been multiplying in recent years in the field of criminology. Antidotes in
this recent literature:
A) Placing at the center of the research agenda the exploration of the coloniality of knowledge
about peripheral criminal questions, so that relations of inequality, subordination and
dependence.
B) Placing at the center of the research agenda the exploration of the coloniality of peripheral
crime control policies, institutions and practices, identifying how the relations of inequality,
subordination and dependence articulated by the various forms of colonialism throughout
history have played a role in the configuration of them on the margins and how they
reproduce social hierarchies that emerged in the framework of the original colonialism and
persist, permuting, in our present.
C) A dense exploration of peripheral criminal questions in each place, which can be channeled
through various techniques and procedures, but which must involve our strong encounter
with empirical moments in our own settings. This implies proceeding inductively rather than
deductively, constantly striving to decenter the intellectual production generated in the
central contexts in this regard. This can give rise to concepts and arguments, rooted in these
other marginal contexts, which, although not constructed in relation to the topic of
coloniality, generate a vision of what is happening far from the simple reproduction of those
generated in the central scenarios.