Deconstructing the Delinquent as a Subject of Class and Cultural Power
| Published date | 01 December 1997 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00059 |
| Date | 01 December 1997 |
INTRODUCTION
In the postmodern era it has become unfashionable in the social sciences to
engage in grand theorizing about class. Attempts to break away from
totalizing theories and highlight the diverse forms and effects of power have
led to a tendency to reject, or at least downgrade, the relevance of class.
However, class exploitation continues to exist alongside other forms of
power in many social relations, and the current emphasis on micro-
theorizing, such as Smart’s1work on the politics of gender, offers fresh
insight on how to extend and elaborate a non-deterministic analysis of the
microphysics of class power.
In
Punishment and Modern Society,2Garland picks up the postmodern
agenda to argue that penality cannot be reduced to one form of power,
whether it be class or discipline. He advocates a more ‘composite picture of
the phenomenon’,3which conceptualizes the penal system as an arena in
which a variety of other cultural, moral, and bureaucratic power struggles
take place. However, the end result of this argument is that class disappears
into insignificance in his account of the micro-dynamics of penality. This
article represents an attempt to bring class issues back into the analysis of
penality by showing how dominant class interests can be articulated through
diverse forms of power, particularly disciplinary and cultural power. The
discussion will specifically focus on sentencing practices in the Hong Kong
juvenile court, where key decisions are made about the type of punishment
to be meted out to young offenders below the age of sixteen years. I do not
argue that class is determinant, but contend that it continues to be an
important element in the analysis of juvenile justice.
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1997, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
* Lecturer, Department of Social Work and Social Administration, University
of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the British Criminology Conference,
Loughborough University, 18–21 July 1995.
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JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 24, NUMBER 4, DECEMBER 1997
ISSN: 0263–323X, pp. 526–51
Deconstructing the Delinquent as a Subject of Class and
Cultural Power
PATRICIA GRAY*
THE CULTURAL BACKDROP: HEGEMONY AND THE
PRODUCTION OF JUVENILE JUSTICE IN HONG KONG
This article adopts a strategic-relational approach to juvenile justice issues.4
While I accept Garland’s point that a number of diverse social forces seek
to have an impact on penal policies, it will be contended that the juvenile
justice system is a complex network of power-invested social relations through
which strategies of class domination over delinquent working-class youth
can be articulated. However, these strategies are not masterminded at the
top of the state hierarchy and directed down to the juvenile court. Indeed,
one must abandon the belief that power operates along a vertical macro-
micro continuum and instead interpret the codification of class power in
relational terms. This implies that in their day-to-day activities, juvenile
justice professionals struggle to produce their own set of global strategies
which co-ordinate class interests in diverse micro relations throughout a variety
of juvenile justice settings. It is possible to argue that this process occurs in
the decision-making struggles between juvenile court officials, as they
compromise their individual views to produce a degree of strategic unity in the
sentencing of young offenders, a strategic calculation which is undoubtedly
informed by the structural orientation of decision-makers.5However, overall
unity can only be attained when a specific hegemonic project or national-
popular programme is articulated which narrows the diversity of such views
so that a broad strategic direction begins to evolve within the juvenile justice
system. Such projects provide the unifying framework to a set of strategies
which allow certain dominant class factions and their allies to secure their
long term interests both in juvenile justice relations and in other socio-
political and economic arenas of power.
In the 1970s Hong Kong’s economic strategies were restructured as the
economy entered a more advanced stage of capitalist growth.6A realignment
of class forces took place as British business interests declined and local
Chinese élites, including their allies in the professional and administrative
classes, acquired a more prominent role in economic relations.7Socio-
political strategies were transformed as this new ‘hegemonic power bloc’
struggled to widen its social base of support and strengthen its legitimacy
by appealing to the cultural sensibilities of the indigenous Chinese populace.
A new consultative style of political administration appeared,8in keeping
with traditional cultural mores and backed up by the development of a basic
infrastructure of welfare state type provision in health, education, and social
services.9Like its liberal-democratic counterpart in the United Kingdom,10
the liberal-consultative state which emerged in Hong Kong by the end of
the decade sought, through this new hegemonic endeavour, to boost national
efficiency and secure working-class support for the continuation of capitalist
development.11
The contest over hegemony in the socio-political sphere was paralleled by
attempts to find a way of managing delinquent working-class youth which
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© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1997
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