Punishment at the Margins: Groundwork for a Revisited Sociology of Punishment

Decolonizing the criminal question

“…Animated by the incipient modern capitalism, colonialism is in this vein an earlier precursor of contemporary globalization. Despite the enduring social, political and economic force of colonialism, much of the social sciences, including criminology, continue to neglect its importance in forging contemporary patterns of interconnectivity and interdependence (Fonseca, 2018a). Moreover, much criminological work still remains constrained by the borders of the nation-state, thus falling foul of methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002).…”

“…Indeed, Latin America has a long tradition of embracing criminological concepts and methods both from positivism, particularly between the 1880 s and 1940s, and from the critical tradition, since the 1970s onwards. Throughout this history, local intellectuals -not always defining themselves as 'criminologists'-borrowed from these established narratives of the Global North but also produced adaptations and innovations, generating a diverse metamorphosis of the theoretical vocabularies of the field Del Olmo, 1981;Fonseca, 2018a;Sozzo, 2011b). However, as Melossi and colleagues observed, in general, the direction of 'travel' of criminological concepts, ideas and methods has been predominantly southbound (Melossi et al, 2011).…”

“…Indeed, it is necessary to challenge the very status of criminology, since it was precisely its institutional authority and epistemological apparatus in some contexts that have enabled it to ignore and repress its colonial and imperial roots, aspects and ramifications. To move beyond a sterile hegemonic conception of the criminal question, we must start by shaking the foundations of the dominant epistemological structures in the field, including the very boundaries and frontiers dividing North and South (Carrington et al, 2016(Carrington et al, , 2019Fonseca, 2018a;Moosavi, 2019;Sozzo, 2021).…”

“…These recent efforts are related to important precedents in the critical criminologies of the 1980s, both in Europe and Latin America (Beirne, 1983;Cohen, 1982;Del Olmo, 1981, 1990Sumner, 1982;Zaffaroni, 1988Zaffaroni, , 1989. In the last two decades we have witnessed groundbreaking, detailed historical work on the relationship between imperialism, criminology, criminal law and punishment (Agozino, 2003;Brown, 2001Brown, , 2014Brown, , 2015Godfrey and Dunstall, 2005;Hogg and Brown, 2018;Mukherjee, 2003) as well as an increasing interest in drawing out the effects of colonialism on the contemporary architecture of crime and punishment on the one hand and on criminological knowledge on the other, including appeals to build "counter-colonial", "postcolonial", "decolonial" and "southern" perspectives (Aas, 2012;Agozino, 2003Agozino, , 2004Agozino, , 2010Agozino, , 2018Blagg, 2008;Blagg and Thalia, 2019;Brown, 2017Brown, , 2018Cain, 2000;Carrington et al, 2016Carrington et al, , 2018Carrington et al, , 2019Cunnen, 2011Cunnen, , 2018aCunnen, , 2018bCunnen and Tauri, 2017;Fonseca, 2018aFonseca, , 2018bMedina, 2011;Moosavi, 2019;Rodriguez Goyes, 2018;Travers, 2019;Zaffaroni and Codino, 2015). This work has sparked a crucial contemporary debate.…”

Inequality, welfare and punishment. Comparative notes between the Global North and South

“…This series of political and cultural dynamics and processes, ‘proximate’ rather than ‘deep’, is crucial to understand the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of this increase in punitiveness at the regional level. And, in turn, they are difficult to capture through the analysis of statistical indicators, even if of a sophisticated nature (Fonseca, 2018; Iturralde, 2019, 2021; Miller, 2021; Sozzo, 2016, 2017a, 2017b, 2018b; Wilenmann, 2020). 16 From my perspective, only inquiries that could address simultaneously these two interrelated theoretical and methodological requirements would be capable of addressing the different paradoxes that emerged from this first attempt to ‘southernize’ the debate on welfare, inequality and punishment.…”