Dimitri Bogazianos, 5 Grams: Crack Cocaine, Rap Music, and the War on Drugs
| Author | William T Armaline |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1462474514532320 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
credentials – Scandinavian countries being obvious examples in point. Explaining
the blooming of these spaces of governance shored up by the selective application
of the rule of law demands a re-examination of deeply rooted legal constructs.
Some of the chapters in this collection embark on this task by calling into question
the enduring function of citizenship to allocate rights and privileges, and to justify
states’ prerogatives to seclude, exclude and eject – see Zedner’s and Gibney’s chap-
ters in particular.
A final word is due in relation to the ambitious project set out by the editors of
the book. Migration controls cut across a range of disciplines, and criminology and
criminal justice studies should engage with the issues raised in their conceptual,
normative and explanatory dimensions. This book is an important step towards
building that productive engagement. Yet, scholars should also avoid creating a
‘niche’, free-standing field disentangled from core intellectual questions and over-
arching theories for specialization brings with it its own risks: fragmentation and
limited general analytical value of the knowledge produced, intellectual shallow-
ness and foreclosure of dialogue across core, contiguous disciplines.
References
Bosworth M (2010) Introduction: Reinventing penal parsimony. Theoretical
Criminology 14: 251–256.
Eagly I (2010) Prosecuting immigration. Northwestern University Law Review 104:
1281–1360.
O’Malley P (2000) Criminologies of catastrophe? Understanding criminal justice on the
edge of the new millennium. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 33:
153–167.
Sklansky D (2012) Crime, immigration, and ad hoc instrumentalism. New Criminal Law
Review 15: 157–223.
Zedner L (2002) Dangers of dystopias in penal theory. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
22: 341–366.
Ana Aliverti
University of Warwick, UK
Dimitri Bogazianos, 5 Grams: Crack Cocaine, Rap Music, and the War on Drugs, New York
University Press: New York, 2012; 216 pp. (including index): 9780814787014, $20.60 (pbk),
$67.50 (cloth)
The ballot or the bullet, some freedom or some bullshit?
Will we ever do it big, or keep just settling for lil’ shit?
We brag on having bread, but none of us are bakers.
We all talk having greens, but none of us own acres.
If none of us on acres, and none of us grow wheat,
Then who will feed our people when our people need to eat?
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