Post(colonial) penalities
Project start and end dates
2014 --
Research team members
Background and aims of the project
The project examines the challenges faced by societies that achieved independence from colonisers but have struggled to escape their colonial heritage. This is particularly acute in the domain of punishment and control, as reflected in the continuing prominence of colonial laws, institutions and infrastructure (eg, prison facilities) in many parts of the global south. My work on the persistence, or stickiness, of colonial logics in postcolonial India was awarded Theoretical Criminology's best article prize in 2017 (Postcolonial penality: Liberty and repression in the shadow of independence, India c. 1947).
I am currently working with colleagues from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi) on colonial-postcolonial continuities of control experienced by nomadic hunting communities at the periphery of contemporary Indian society.
This program of research has led to a number of publications, including the below, plus a chapter in the forthcoming Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South (2025).
- Brown M, Jadhav VK, Raghavan V & Sinha M (2021) Imperial legacies and southern penal spaces: a study of hunting nomads in postcolonial India. Punishment and Society, 23(5), 675-696. View this article in WRRO
- Brown M (2021) Truth and method in southern criminology. Critical Criminology, 29(3). View this article in WRRO
- Brown MM (2018) “An Unqualified Human Good”? On Rule of Law, Globalization, and Imperialism. Law and Social Inquiry, 43(4), 1391-1426. View this article in WRRO
- Brown MM (2018) Colonial states, colonial rule, colonial governmentalities: Implications for the study of historical state crime. State Crime Journal, 7(2), 173-198. View this article in WRRO
- Brown M (2017) Postcolonial penality: Liberty and repression in the shadow of independence, India c. 1947. Theoretical Criminology, 21(2), 186-208. View this article in WRRO
Chapters
- Brown M (2023) Colonialism and penality, The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice (pp. 380-390). Routledge
- Brown MM (2018) Southern Criminology in the Post-colony: More Than a ‘Derivative Discourse’? In Carrington K, Hogg R, Scott J & Sozzo M (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South (pp. 83-104). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. View this article in WRRO