Invited review: The Punitive City: Privatized Policing and Protection in Neoliberal Mexico, by Markus-Michael Müller, Journal of Latin American Geography 16(3), 177-179 (original) (raw)

Invited review: The Punitive City: Privatized Policing and Protection in Neoliberal Mexico, by Markus-Michael Müller, Journal of Latin American Geography 16(3), 177-179

First paragraph: Markus-Michael Müller’s new book, The Punitive City, is a valuable analysis of an ongoing “punitive turn” in the neoliberal governance of Mexico City. Müller suggests that we can broadly characterize this punitive turn in urban governance as a war on impoverished people, who are, according to contemporary governmental logic, an impediment to urban economic development. Muller’s book comes on the heels of more than a decade of Mexicanist scholarship from multiple disciplinary perspectives (e.g., political theory, literary studies, geography, sociology, anthropology, and criminology) that problematizes the rhetoric of “democratic transition” in Mexico and situates the contradictions and tensions embodied in democratization in a transnational context. Müller himself has substantially contributed to this literature from a geographically informed sociological and criminological perspective (see, e.g., articles in Geopolitics, Latin American Perspectives, and Third World Quarterly). This new book offers fresh insights but also synthesizes Müller’s previous writing to reveal the punitive turn in the governance of Mexico City as the combined effect of “the urbanization of neoliberalism, the securitization of urban space, and the criminalization of poverty” (p. 40). In doing so, The Punitive City also offers a grounded argument for “desecuritizing” scholarly analysis and practical engagement with the instabilities wrought by neoliberal governance of urban society.