Scientific Method and the Crimes of the Powerful

Abstract

Over the past six decades researchers interested in the crimes of the powerful have developed a respectable body of literature. Owing to the empirical and theoretical richness of these contributions, the crimes of the powerful sub-field is ready for critical interventions to be made on the plane of scientific method. Moreover, such interventions have become increasingly necessary owing to the disciplinary hegemony of an orthodox empiricist approach which erects a problematic boundary between empirical representations of the crimes of the powerful and theoretical explanation. To aid a critique of this approach, this paper will employ the scientific framework of classical Marxism to decipher the peculiar problems which flow out of the orthodoxy's method. It will be concluded that while classical Marxism offers a more rigorous framework for penetrating analyses of the crimes of the powerful, orthodox scholars have nevertheless made significant contributions which should also be utilised in future research.

Een schip op het strand is een baken in zee

“…Bij state-initiated corporate crime vinden schadelijke bedrijfsactiviteiten plaats in opdracht van of met uitdrukkelijke goedkeuring van de overheid. Matthews (2006) voegde corporation-facilitated state crime toe en Lasslett (2010) op zijn beurt corporation-initiated state crime. Bij het eerste voorzien bedrijven in de middelen voor staten om illegale en/of schadelijke gedragingen te stellen of laten ze begaan.…”

“…Shipbreaking neemt vooral de vorm aan van state-facilitated corporate crime, hoewel overheden regelmatig ook een meer actieve rol (state-initiated corporate crime) opnemen. Gezien de verwevenheid van banken en overheden is de stap naar corporation-initiated state crime niet zo veraf (Lasslett, 2010). Shipbreaking wordt veroorzaakt door het lage risico en de hoge winsten in een toegeeflijke -formele én informele -omgeving die systematisch economische doelstellingen boven de ecologische (en sociale) prioriteert.…”

19. Understanding state crime

“…would-be deterrent measures taken after the event, which were not implemented effectively. While accounts such as this encapsulate a variety of causal factors in a way that is easily assimilated to mainstream criminological theory, they are open to criticism for being essentially descriptive and offering limited insight into any deeper and less easily legible process that might underlie the surface phenomena (Lasslett 2010). The use of parallels with 'street' crime is perhaps most productive when it yields insights into the emptional and interpersonal dynamics of extreme violence, as in Rafter's (2016) recent work on genocide.…”

State-Corporate Crime and the Process of Capital Accumulation: Mapping a Global Regime of Permission from Galicia to Morecambe Bay

“…We say this because the most apparent link across those cases seems to be that they are ''crimes of the economy'' (Ruggiero 2013) in the sense that their circumstances are rooted in a classical political economy understanding of the human consequences of shifts in the forces of supply and demand that are shaped and co-ordinated in a global economy. The abstraction that both Tombs (2012) and Lasslett (2010) point to in their critique of state-corporate crime, however, is something that occurs outside the observable features of political economy. They are concerned with the way that particular approaches to political economy produce an abstraction of social relationships.…”