V. Vegh Weis ed., Criminalization of Activism: Historical, Present, and Future Perspectives, reviewed by Lea Pilone
State Crime Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2022)
Lea Pilone, Freie Universität Berlin
In this anthology edited by Valeria Vegh Weis the authors discuss the criminalization of protest movements. The collection uses an interdisciplinary approach and combines theoretical approaches from different fields, such as historical, critical, green, feminist and southern criminology as well as Indigenous and LGBTIQ+ Studies (p. 1). In continuation of Vegh Weis’ theoretical framework put forward in Marxism and Criminology: A History of Criminal Selectivity the repression of political activism is understood as a form of over-criminalization (p. 1). In Marxism and Criminology, Vegh Weis argued that in capitalism criminal law follows a selective logic of over- and under-criminalization and that the punishability of a certain behaviour does not correspond to the social harm of it, but rather to the damage the action poses to capitalist relations of production. “Criminalizing activism” comes at a time when not only are protests rising globally and the capitalist crisis is deepening, but also at a point where the way protests are met is changing: the police suppression of protests is becoming militarized and technological surveillance takes on a new quality. Following an introductory part the book is organized in five sections… (read more)
