Uncovering the Crimes of Urbanisation: Researching Corruption, Violence and Urban Conflict

ISBN-13: 9781138120327 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 254 str.

Kristian Lasslett

Opis

Urbanisation has long been a central concern for criminology, particularly its relationship with crime trends, security and policing. What is missing from the debates however is a criminological analysis of the illicit transactions that form an integral part of the process of urbanisation. This book takes as its focus the complex land frauds, illicit commercial transactions, forced displacements, residential demolitions, networks of organised violence, and state-corporate actors, which illicitly stimulate new urban agglomerations, in addition to the communities of resistance that emerge in response to these chains of criminality. This book explores how state-corporate actors driving extensive forms of urbanisation circumvent social barriers that confront their expansionary movement through illicit devices such as bribery, corruption, and fraud; the breach of domestic and international regulations governing zoning, construction, compulsory acquisition and development-based displacement; and systematic forms of violence. However, the implosion of lived space through deviant means is nearly always resisted by those whose heritage and lived connections face dissolution. Accordingly, this book also explores the complex forms of resistance that emerge in response to these illicit practices.

Spis treści

Introduction: The darkness of neon lights: Introducing the crimes of urbanisation, 1. Key concepts, empirical backdrop and research design, 2. Fictitious capital, class monopoly rents and urban governance: Theorising criminogenic opportunity structures and incentive schemas, 3. The crimes of the powerful and urbanisation: An investigative framework, 4. Uncovering the data trail: Accessing, handling and triangulating sources, 5. The crimes of urbanisation and megaprojects: Investigating a ‘tourism city’, 6. A land-grab in the world’s ‘tuna capital’, 7. State-corporate wrongdoing in land and property markets: Forging an analytical framework, 8. Crimes of urbanisation research and social resistance: Conclusions and the task ahead

O autorze

Kristian Lasslett is Professor of Criminology at the University of Ulster, and sits on the Executive Board of the International State Crime Initiative. He is joint Editor-in-Chief of State Crime, a leading international peer reviewed journal, and Editor of The State Testimony Project, the first online casebook for state crime studies.