Who Killed the Berkeley School?

"The Berkeley School of Criminology stands, to this day, as one of the most significant developments in criminological thought and action. Its diverse participants, students and faculty, were true innovators, producing radical social analyses (getting to the roots causes) of institutions of criminal justice as part of broader relations of inequality, injustice, exploitation, patriarchy, and white supremacy within capitalist societies. Even more they situated criminology as an active part of opposition to these social institutions and the relations of harm they uphold. Their criminology was directly engaged in, and connected with, the struggles of resistance that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Not surprisingly perhaps, they became a target of regressive and reactionary forces that sought to quiet those struggles. Notably the Berkeley School of Criminology was targeted by key players in the US military-industrial complex such as Ronald Reagan himself, then Governor of California and Regent of UC-Berkeley. Who Killed the Berkeley School? by Julia and Herman Schwendinger, key players in the Berkeley School, is the first full-length, in-depth analysis, of the Berkeley School of Criminology, its participants, and the attack against it. It tells the story of an important infrastructure of resistance, a resource of struggle, and how it was dismantled. It lays bare the role not only of conservatives but of liberal academics and false critical theorists, who failed to stand up in defense of the School and its work when called upon. This is a story with profound lessons in the current period of corporatization of campuses, neoliberal education, and market-driven curricula. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with developing resistance to the corporate campus and seeking critical alternatives. It also stands as a challenge to social science disciplines, including criminology, to develop a practice that identifies the roots of social injustice and organizes to confront it.

Homeland Fascism

"It can't happen here." This has been the prevailing sentiment about the possible emergence of fascism in the United States since the rise of international fascism in the 1930s. Yet there are signs that it may already be happening, and at the highest levels of government... In their copiously researched and documented work the Schwendingers outline the structural transformations, policies, and practices that raise the prospect of fascist governance in the 21st Century US. They show that a homeland fascism has significant supports within the framework of American liberal democracy. This is an important analysis in a context in which concerns about fascist demagoguery and far right mobilization appear to be growing in the US and beyond

Who Killed the Berkeley School?

"The Berkeley School of Criminology stands, to this day, as one of the most significant developments in criminological thought and action. Its diverse participants, students and faculty, were true innovators, producing radical social analyses (getting to the roots causes) of institutions of criminal justice as part of broader relations of inequality, injustice, exploitation, patriarchy, and white supremacy within capitalist societies. Even more they situated criminology as an active part of opposition to these social institutions and the relations of harm they uphold. Their criminology was directly engaged in, and connected with, the struggles of resistance that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Not surprisingly perhaps, they became a target of regressive and reactionary forces that sought to quiet those struggles. Notably the Berkeley School of Criminology was targeted by key players in the US military-industrial complex such as Ronald Reagan himself, then Governor of California and Regent of UC-Berkeley. Who Killed the Berkeley School? by Julia and Herman Schwendinger, key players in the Berkeley School, is the first full-length, in-depth analysis, of the Berkeley School of Criminology, its participants, and the attack against it. It tells the story of an important infrastructure of resistance, a resource of struggle, and how it was dismantled. It lays bare the role not only of conservatives but of liberal academics and false critical theorists, who failed to stand up in defense of the School and its work when called upon. This is a story with profound lessons in the current period of corporatization of campuses, neoliberal education, and market-driven curricula. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with developing resistance to the corporate campus and seeking critical alternatives. It also stands as a challenge to social science disciplines, including criminology, to develop a practice that identifies the roots of social injustice and organizes to confront it.

Homeland Fascism

"It can't happen here." This has been the prevailing sentiment about the possible emergence of fascism in the United States since the rise of international fascism in the 1930s. Yet there are signs that it may already be happening, and at the highest levels of government... In their copiously researched and documented work the Schwendingers outline the structural transformations, policies, and practices that raise the prospect of fascist governance in the 21st Century US. They show that a homeland fascism has significant supports within the framework of American liberal democracy. This is an important analysis in a context in which concerns about fascist demagoguery and far right mobilization appear to be growing in the US and beyond

Beyond 'Criminology vs. Zemiology': Reconciling crime with social harm

Since its emergence at the start of the twenty-first century, zemiology and the field of harm studies more generally, has borne an ambiguous and, at times, seemingly antipathetic relationship with the better-established field of criminology. Whilst the tension between the perspectives is, at times, overstated, attempts to reconcile the perspectives have also proved problematic, such that, at present, it appears that they risk either becoming polarized into mutually antagonistic projects, or harmonized to the point that zemiology is simply co-opted within criminology. Whilst tempting to view this as nothing more than an academic squabble, it is the central argument put forward in this chapter that the current trend towards either polariziaton or harmonization of the criminological and zemiological projects, risks impoverishing both perspectives, both intellectually and, more fundamentally, in terms of their capacity to effect meaningful social change. To this end, this chapter offers a critical reflection of recent attempts to reconcile the social harm perspective with criminology, focussing in particular on Majid Yar’s attempts to do so using the concept of ‘recognition’ derived from critical theory. It is suggested that such attempts, whilst important in the contribution they make to developing a theory of harm, are necessarily flawed by their reliance on an implicit assumption of a shared conception of harm underpinning both the concept of ‘crime’ and ‘social harm’. By contrast, it is the central argument put forward in this chapter that zemiology and criminology are best understood as divergent normative projects which, whilst sharing many of the same goals with regards to the improvement of the criminal justice system and the tackling of social problems, differ primarily in the means by which they seek to achieve these. Therefore, rather than denying this debate through the collapsing of one perspective into the other, or polarizing them into hostiles camps, it is only by recognising the nature of this debate and fostering dialogue between the perspectives that we can achieve our shared goals and effect meaningful change

Criminology or Zemiology? Yes, please! on the refusal of choice between false alternatives

Buried deep within the zemiological movement and its supportive literature is the implicit assumption that the word zemia, the organising concept around which zemiology is built, simply represents ‘the Greek word for harm’. This interpretation has supported numerous drives to ‘move beyond criminology’ and erect strict borders between the study of crime and harm. However, a deeper, albeit still rather brief, exploration of zemia reveals that it possesses a broader range of meaning than that commonly afforded to it. By beginning to unpick zemia’s semantic genealogy, it appears that the conventional use of the word to support the imposition of false alternatives between criminology and zemiology is untenable. Accordingly, this chapter attempts to foreground a more integrated approach to the study of crime and harm