This book provides a wide-ranging, global exploration of policies and practices which have sought to undermine dissent during recent and less recent social, political, economic and health ‘crises’. Examining various cases of activism and opposition from both the Global North and the Global South, and drawing on multi-disciplinary insights, this book analyses the many ways in which state and non-state actors have targeted dissent, activism and protest, including by vulnerable groups. This includes strategies that have silenced dissenting opinions, restricted the right to protest, intensified policing practices and the surveillance of activists, imposed onerous administrative fines, criminalised and prosecuted dissenters, and even killed activists. Fundamentally, this volume considers ‘criminalisation’ as a process that develops on a continuum of control and repressive practices that aim to undermine dissent. It contributes to the broader discussion on criminalisation processes, policing, the rule of law, and the quality of our democracies.
Chapter
1. Introduction.- Part I: UNDERMINING DISSENT THROUGH CENSURE,
SURVEILLANCE AND HARASSMENT.
Chapter
2. Book bans, children's literature,
and state and corporate power in the twenty-first century; Avi Brisman,
Professor at Eastern Kentucky University, Adjunct Professor at Queensland
University of Technology and Honorary Professor at the University of
Newcastle.
Chapter
3. Affective force of the surveillant state: policing
dissent in Turkey; Deniz Ionocu, Lecturer, Newcastle University.
Chapter
4.
Criminalisation of solidarity and production of fear at the border: the case
of the French Basque Country border area; Cristina Fernandez-Bessa, Ramón y
Cajal-Senior Research Fellow, University of A CorunaIgnacio Mendola,
Associate professor, University of the Basque Country - UPV/EHU.- Part II:
UNDERMINING PROTEST DURING THE COVID-19 HEALTH CRISIS.
Chapter
5. When the
exception makes the rules: COVID-19 regulations and public order policing in
England; Lambros Fatsis, Senior Lecturer, University of Brighton.
Chapter
6.
Repression of dissent and police powers during and after the 2020 pandemic in
Spain: commonalities and differences; Manuel Maroto Calatayud, Professor of
Criminal Law, Complutense University of Madrid.
Chapter
7. Environmental
backlash: understanding experiences of repression against environmental
activists in Italy and Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic; Anna Di Ronco,
Senior Lecturer, University of Essex; Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti, Principal
Lecturer, University of Brighton.
Chapter
8. From the prison yard to the
streets: social protest and authoritarianism in Colombia; Manuel Iturralde,
Associate Professor, School of Law, Universidad de los Andes,
Bogotá-Colombia.- Part III: CRIMINALISING DISSENT.
Chapter
9. The repression
of the yellow vests: police, judicial and legislative response to an
unprecedented social movement; Manuel Cervera-Marzal, research associate,
Liège University / FNRS Vanessa Codaccioni, research professor, Paris VIII
University.
Chapter
10. Green criminalisation. The criminal approach to
environmental protest in Argentina; Valeria Vegh Weis, Research Fellow at
Konstanz Universität and Professor at Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Chapter
11. Resisting the criminalisation of dissent and political activism in
Albania; Diana Malaj, PhD Researcher, Centre for Southeast European Studies,
University of Graz (Austria) Brunilda Pali, Assistant Professor, Department
of Political Science, University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) .
Chapter
12. Historical injuries and colonial criminalisation: the experiences of
Indigenous communities in Colombia; Gustavo Rojas Paez, PhD candidate at
University of the Basque County, Lecturer in Criminology and Legal Theory at
Universidad Libre (Bogotá, Colombia) .
Chapter
13. Economic crisis,
neoliberal austerity and criminalisation of dissent in Sri Lanka; Ramindu
Perera, Senior Lecturer, Department of Legal Studies, The Open University of
Sri Lanka.- PART IV: FRAMING ACTIVISTS AS THREATS, TERRORISTS AND MAFIA.-
Chapter
14. From terrorists to peacemakers? Analysing shifting official
discourses on Northern Irish republican prisoners in times of war and peace;
Elena Bergia, Visiting Scholar, Queen's University Belfast.
Chapter
15.
State repression of pro-independence mobilisation: a comparative analysis of
the Basque and Catalan cases; Rossella Selmini, Associate Professor,
University of Bologna ; Adriano Cirulli, Researcher, University of Udine.-
Chapter
16. Crises, conspiracies, and counterinsurgency: policing and dissent
in Pakistan; Zoha Waseem, Assistant Professor, University of Warwick.-
Chapter
17. Criminality across the carceral geographies of Palestine; Annie
Pfingst, Associate Research Fellow, Goldsmiths.
Chapter
18. Thresholds of
threat: processes of criminalisation and repression in the liberal settler
state; Elian Weizman, Senior Lecturer, London South Bank University.-
Chapter
19. Framing activists as mafia: the criminalisation of housing and
neighbourhood protests in Italy; Stefano Portelli, affiliate, Department of
Geography, Leicester University.
Chapter
20. The criminalisation of social
protest in Italy: The case of the precarious workers against "Il padrone di
merda" (the "shitty" boss); Veronica Marchio, researcher, University of
Padua.- Part V: KILLING AND EXILING ACTIVISTS.
Chapter
21. Killing Latin
American feminists: an analysis of the criminalisation of women activists
(2015-2022); Simone da Silva Ribeiro Gomes, Associate Professor in Sociology
at Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel) Guilherme Figueredo Benzaquen,
Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE)
Rodrigo Cantu de Souza, Associate Professor in Sociology at
UniversidadeFederal de Pelotas (UFPel) .
Chapter
22. Persecuted for poetry,
peaceful protests and public nudity: autoethnography of a Ugandan exiled
ex-convict; Stella Nyanzi (PhD), Writers-in-Exile, PEN Zentrum Deutschland.
Anna Di Ronco is Associate Professor at the University of Bologna, Italy, and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Essex, UK.
Rossella Selmini is Associate Professor of Criminology at the Department of Legal Sciences at the University of Bologna, Italy.
