“Frank Pearce and Colonial State Crimes: Contributions to a research agenda”. In Bittle, S., Snider,L., Tombs, S., and Whyte, D. (eds.) Revisiting Crimes of the Powerful: Marxism, crime and deviance. London and New York: Routledge, 309-321. ISBN: 978-0-415-79142-7. (original) (raw)
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This paper aims to apply Frank Pearce's (1976) critical methodology and Marxist theoretical framework to the development of the concept of colonial state crimes. By doing this, the paper will show how, even though Pearce does not develop a colonial perspective in his analysis of the crimes of the powerful, his theory and his methodological emphasis in the study of what has been normalized and naturalized constitute a foundational contribution to the development of the colonial perspective in the analysis of state crimes. This colonial approach will be developed in three sections: 1) an exposition of the concepts of the crime of the powerful and state crimes; 2) an exploration of the relation between the anticolonial tradition and state crimes; 3) a discussion of how the concept of colonial state crimes can illuminate the global south's experiences with regards to state violence and criminality. The intention is to show how Pearce has contributed to the development of the colonial state crimes concept, allowing for a better understanding of colonial violence.
'A wrong done to mankind' – Colonial perspectives on the notion of universal crime
Current debates on 'crimes against humanity' address its history and its potentially neo-imperial effects in international relations. In reference to these issues, this essay abstracts the idea of universal crime from the contemporary concept of 'crimes against humanity' and analyzes its mobilizations in early-modern perspectives on the legitimacy of European colonialism. First theorizing the easy union between notions of universal crime and arguments about European imperialism, I then draw on arguments by Vitoria, Gentili, and Grotius. I find that they rely on the idea of an offense injuring all mankind to negotiate colonial relationships between European powers and peoples abroad as well as between European powers vis-à-vis one another, both within Europe and in non-European spaces. The essay concludes by offering three venues for inquiry into the concepts of universal crime and crimes against humanity, namely their political productivity, their historical circulation, and their contemporary neo-imperial character.
BEYOND STATE-FETISHISM: DEVELOPING A THEORETICAL PROGRAMME FOR STATE CRIME STUDIES
In ways that were perhaps unimaginable even a decade ago, state crime studies has the opportunity to become a rich intellectual resource for diverse struggles of resistance opposed to the crimes of the powerful. However, this role is by no means assured. One barrier that must be overcome is a disciplinary tendency to fetishise those organisational forms – principally states and corporations – through which capitalist relations of production function. This paper will examine the epistemological roots of organisational fetishism, and the consequential effects this analytical tendency has on understandings of state crime. We will then consider how the method, and conceptual framework, which Marx developed to inquire into the sinuous core of the capitalist mode of production can be used to move beyond fetishised understandings of the state. To demonstrate the complexity of the theoretical task before us, I will draw upon the example of Papua New Guinea, a country that has witnessed a range of gross human rights violations associated with the Bougainville war, and which departs in many ways from archetypal models of capitalism. Nevertheless, it will be maintained that Marxism remains a vital framework for enriched understandings of state crime in Papua New Guinea, that move beyond fetishised accounts of elite offending.
COLONIAL STATE CRIMES AND THE CARICOM MOBILIZATION FOR REPARATION AND JUSTICE
State Crime Journal , 2018
Colonial rule in the Caribbean was based on the normalization, legalization and naturalization of violence, genocide, slavery, torture, dispossession and plunder, to the point that the victims of these colonial state crimes and their descendants continue to suffer the consequences. This article has a twofold aim: firstly, it discusses the Caribbean experiences with colonial state crimes and secondly, it analyses Caribbean Community and Common Market's (CARICOM's) mobilization for reparations for the harm caused by the violence of colonialism and slavery as an example of decolonial justice. To accomplish this, a threefold analysis is conducted: (1) an exposition of the concept of colonial state crimes from a Caribbean perspective, (2) a brief depiction of the colonization and enslave-ment processes in the Caribbean and (3) a discussion of the CARICOM mobilization for reparations and justice. Thus, this article aims to initiate a debate on the importance of revisiting state crimes in colonial contexts and their continuity in the present.
Cahiers d'Études africaines, 2004
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The Kilwa Massacre: Critical Analysis for a Southern Criminology
International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2020
This paper explores the 2004 Kilwa massacre in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) through a decolonial perspective, explaining how the massacre is situated within the history of colonial power and global capitalist relations. As such, the convergence of mining and political interests that created the context in which this violence was possible is examined, rather than the specific human rights abuses committed during the massacre. This approach highlights how such acts of violence are an ongoing factor of colonial and postcolonial exploitation, as well as the difficulties in holding the responsible parties accountable. This investigation shows the importance of developing a decolonial Southern criminology that contextualizes human rights abuses within local and international systems of power and locates acts of criminal violence within the broader networks of structural violence.
Imperialism, crime and criminology: Towards the decolonisation of criminology
2004
Cohen (1988) once concluded that it is ironic that critics in the West are identifying forms of social control that are more traditional in the Third World as better alternatives to the neo-classical and positivistic repressive traditions in the West while some suggest that what they found malignant in the West should be exported to the Third World as benign. In this paper, I am going beyond Western crime control models to examine the character of criminology itself as an imperialist science for the control of others.