Resist the Punitive State
Grassroots Struggles Across Welfare, Housing, Education and Prisons
Published on 20. November 2019
Book
Hardback
288 pages
978-0-7453-3952-8 (ISBN)
Description
To examine government policy and state practice on housing, welfare, mental health, disability, prisons or immigration is to come face-to-face with the harsh realities of the 'punitive state'.
But state violence and corporate harm always meet with resistance. With contributions from a wide range of activists and scholars, Resist the Punitive State highlights and theorises the front line of resistance movements actively opposing the state-corporate nexus. The chapters engage with different strategies of resistance in a variety of movements and campaigns. In doing so the book considers what we can learn from involvement in grassroots struggles, and contributes to contemporary debates around the role and significance of subversive knowledge and engaged scholarship in activism.
Aimed at activists and campaigners plus students, researchers and educators in criminology, social policy, sociology, social work and the social sciences more broadly, Resist the Punitive State not only presents critiques of a range of harmful state-corporate policy agendas but situates these in the context of social movement struggles fighting for political transformation and alternative futures.
But state violence and corporate harm always meet with resistance. With contributions from a wide range of activists and scholars, Resist the Punitive State highlights and theorises the front line of resistance movements actively opposing the state-corporate nexus. The chapters engage with different strategies of resistance in a variety of movements and campaigns. In doing so the book considers what we can learn from involvement in grassroots struggles, and contributes to contemporary debates around the role and significance of subversive knowledge and engaged scholarship in activism.
Aimed at activists and campaigners plus students, researchers and educators in criminology, social policy, sociology, social work and the social sciences more broadly, Resist the Punitive State not only presents critiques of a range of harmful state-corporate policy agendas but situates these in the context of social movement struggles fighting for political transformation and alternative futures.
Reviews / Votes
'At a time when organising resistance and protest is crucially necessary, the collected authors marshal a virtuous trinity of activism, critically engaged scholarship and theory. Activists may not need academics, and nor should they be in the vanguard, but this text highlights welcome intellectual and practical solidarity' -- Mick McKeown, Professor of Democratic Mental Health at the University of Central Lancashire 'In this excellent book, the editors bring together an impressive range of chapters covering resistance to punitivism in social welfare and criminal justice. The book's radical agendas are crystal clear and critical at a time of brutal state action. It deserves a wide readership' -- Chris Grover, co-editor of 'Disabled People, Work and Welfare: Is Employment Really the Answer?'More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Library binding
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
540 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7453-3952-8 (9780745339528)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Emily Luise Hart is a Lecturer in Criminology at Leeds Beckett University. Her research takes a critical and abolitionist approach to the study of prisons; women offenders; forms of prisoner resistance and desistance from crime. She is co-editor of New Perspectives on Desistance: Theoretical and Empirical Developments (Palgrave, 2017) and is a campaigner for Community Action on Prison Expansion (CAPE) and a Trade Union activist.
Joe Greener is Lecturer in Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool in Singapore. Joe has been an active campaigner in several anti-austerity campaigns in Liverpool. His research interests broadly address critical perspectives on welfare policy and criminology in Singapore and the United Kingdom. More specifically, recent research has focused on the social care crisis, prisons and the impact of privatisation.
Rich Moth is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Liverpool Hope University. Rich has been involved in a number of mental health, welfare and anti-austerity campaigns over recent years, and is a member of the national steering committee of activist group the Social Work Action Network (SWAN). He is author of Understanding Mental Distress: Knowledge and Practice in Neoliberal Mental Health Services (Policy Press, 2019), and an Associate Editor of Critical and Radical Social Work journal.
Joe Greener is Lecturer in Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool in Singapore. Joe has been an active campaigner in several anti-austerity campaigns in Liverpool. His research interests broadly address critical perspectives on welfare policy and criminology in Singapore and the United Kingdom. More specifically, recent research has focused on the social care crisis, prisons and the impact of privatisation.
Rich Moth is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Liverpool Hope University. Rich has been involved in a number of mental health, welfare and anti-austerity campaigns over recent years, and is a member of the national steering committee of activist group the Social Work Action Network (SWAN). He is author of Understanding Mental Distress: Knowledge and Practice in Neoliberal Mental Health Services (Policy Press, 2019), and an Associate Editor of Critical and Radical Social Work journal.
Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction - Rich Moth, Emily Luise Hart and Joe Greener
PART I: CHALLENGING STATE-CORPORATE POWER: THEORIES AND STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE
1. Resisting the Punitive State-Corporate Nexus: Activist Strategy and the Integrative Transitional Approach - Joe Greener, Emily Luise Hart and Rich Moth
2. Prefigurative Politics as Resistance to State-Corporate Harm: Fighting Gentrification in Post-Occupy New York City - Laura Naegler
3. Struggles Inside and Outside the University - Steve Tombs and David Whyte
PART II: RESISTING THE PUNITIVE WELFARE STATE: HOUSING, MENTAL HEALTH, DISABILITY AND IMMIGRATION
4. Class, Politics and Locality in the London Housing Movement - Lisa Mckenzie
5. Mad Studies: Campaigning Against the Psychiatric System and Welfare 'Reform' and for Something Better - Peter Beresford
6. Challenging Neoliberal Housing in the Shadow of Grenfell - Glyn Robbins
7. The Disabled People's Movement in the Age of Austerity: Rights, Resistance and Reclamation - Bob Williams-Findlay
8. The 'Hostile Environment' for Immigrants: The Windrush Scandal and Resistance - Ken Olende
PART III: SUBVERSIVE KNOWLEDGE AND RESISTANCE: RECONCEPTUALISING CRIMINALISATION, PENALITY AND VIOLENCE
9. Resisting the Surveillance State: Deviant Knowledge and Undercover Policing - Raphael Schlembach
10. Ordinary Rebels, Everyone: Abolitionist Activist Scholars and the Mega Prisons - David Scott
11. Re-Imagining an End to Gendered Violence: Prefiguring the Worlds We Want - Julia Downes
12. Challenging Prevent: Building Resistance to Institutional Islamophobia and the Attack on Civil Liberties - Robert Ferguson
Notes on Contributors
Index
Introduction - Rich Moth, Emily Luise Hart and Joe Greener
PART I: CHALLENGING STATE-CORPORATE POWER: THEORIES AND STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE
1. Resisting the Punitive State-Corporate Nexus: Activist Strategy and the Integrative Transitional Approach - Joe Greener, Emily Luise Hart and Rich Moth
2. Prefigurative Politics as Resistance to State-Corporate Harm: Fighting Gentrification in Post-Occupy New York City - Laura Naegler
3. Struggles Inside and Outside the University - Steve Tombs and David Whyte
PART II: RESISTING THE PUNITIVE WELFARE STATE: HOUSING, MENTAL HEALTH, DISABILITY AND IMMIGRATION
4. Class, Politics and Locality in the London Housing Movement - Lisa Mckenzie
5. Mad Studies: Campaigning Against the Psychiatric System and Welfare 'Reform' and for Something Better - Peter Beresford
6. Challenging Neoliberal Housing in the Shadow of Grenfell - Glyn Robbins
7. The Disabled People's Movement in the Age of Austerity: Rights, Resistance and Reclamation - Bob Williams-Findlay
8. The 'Hostile Environment' for Immigrants: The Windrush Scandal and Resistance - Ken Olende
PART III: SUBVERSIVE KNOWLEDGE AND RESISTANCE: RECONCEPTUALISING CRIMINALISATION, PENALITY AND VIOLENCE
9. Resisting the Surveillance State: Deviant Knowledge and Undercover Policing - Raphael Schlembach
10. Ordinary Rebels, Everyone: Abolitionist Activist Scholars and the Mega Prisons - David Scott
11. Re-Imagining an End to Gendered Violence: Prefiguring the Worlds We Want - Julia Downes
12. Challenging Prevent: Building Resistance to Institutional Islamophobia and the Attack on Civil Liberties - Robert Ferguson
Notes on Contributors
Index