Policing Neoliberalism - Austerity, Authoritarianism, and the Police in Britain
Project start and end dates
Ends Summer 2024
Research team members
Background and aims of the project
Policing Neoliberalism is a book project, currently under contract with Oxford University Press. It provides a cutting-edge study of the relationship between policing, neoliberalisation, and authoritarianism by bringing together historical and conceptual analyses with case studies of policing in marginalised communities in south London as well as insights and methods from criminology, critical political economy, sociology, geography, and urban studies. It
- Offers both a conceptual and theoretical engagement with the relationship of neoliberalisation and policing as well as a concrete analyses of policing and authoritarian neoliberalisation by focussing on case studies in Britain and, specifically, south London.
- Expands the analytical reach of the concept of ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ and focuses on the aspects of physical coercion and policing, which have not been at the centre of this emerging canon of research.
- Accentuates the imperative role of the state and its institutions in reproducing neoliberal order.
Methods
Semi-structured interviews, observation, content analysis.
Key findings to date
Policing Neoliberalism’s main contribution is to centre questions of policing for current (British) neoliberalism and to develop an understanding of the authoritarian reconfigurations of the (British) state in the neoliberal era more generally and the post-2008 era specifically. This is achieved by putting them in historical context and studying them on the ground and in their most direct, coercive, and physical manifestation – through policing. Thus, the book helps to qualify the novelty and distinctiveness of neoliberalisation, adds to debates about its proper periodisation and, through the focus on policing, develops a perspective on authoritarian state institutions that has not been developed in the canon of authoritarian neoliberalism while, vice versa, offering a new criminological account of policing that considers the importance of wider authoritarian neoliberal political economic transformations.