External Intimacy: Community-based Intervention Concerning Crime and the Integral State in Quebec
| Author | Eduardo González Castillo |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639221076089 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
External Intimacy:
Community-based
Intervention Concerning
Crime and the Integral
State in Quebec
Eduardo González Castillo
Department of Criminology, 120 University Private,
Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1N G5N
Abstract
This article deals with the contradictory way in which community-based intervention
concerning crime relates to political domination and to the institutions of the State in
Quebec, Canada by exploring the pertinence of the Gramscian conception of civil soci-
ety. Surprisingly, although Antonio Gramsci offers an interesting set of concepts for the
study of the relationship between civil society and government institutions, his ideas
have rarely been used to understand community intervention in general and that related
to public security in particular. Gramscian concepts such as civil society, political society,
hegemony, and the integral State strike us as particularly useful in this regard. In our
opinion, they offer a much more comprehensive view of the current relationship
between community action (civil society) and the criminal justice system (the govern-
ment) than narratives that insist on the alleged autonomy of civil society and on the
weakening of the State. To show the utility of these concepts, we used them to under-
stand community tensions related to racially discriminatory practices by police officers
in the multiethnic borough of Montréal-Nord in Montreal.
Keywords
Civil society, community-based intervention, Gramsci, integral state, North America
Corresponding author:
Eduardo González Castillo, Department of Criminology, 120 University Private, Social Sciences Building, Office
FSS130031 Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1N G5N.
Email: egonzale@uottawa.ca
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2022, Vol. 31(6) 893–913
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09646639221076089
journals.sagepub.com/home/sls
Introduction
This article deals with community action and intervention with regard to crime in Canada,
in the francophone province of Quebec. The notion of community action and intervention
refers here to the activities that local communities deploy to accomplish goals related to
crime prevention, social reintegration, and restoration in collaboration with the govern-
ment (Soska and Ohmer, 2018). The article frames the study of this in the discussion
of the evolution of the relationship between civil society and the State during the past
decades in Canada. In this sense, one important goal of this paper is to show that the
set of organizations involved in community action and intervention can be studied in a
profitable way through the concept of civil society. In particular, the article highlights
the relevance of philosopher and communist politician Antonio Gramsci’s thought
with respect to the understanding of the relationship between civil society (community
action) and the state (the criminal justice system). The review of the Gramscian approach
seems pertinent given its relative absence in most works concerning community interven-
tion and its utility for the understanding of some particular contradictions related to it.
Overall, it is possible to distinguish two major streams of research work concerning
the use of communities on crime control policies in North America. On the one hand,
in the contexts of social work, administration, and criminology, some researchers
focus primarily on the practical and organizational dimension of the issue. As such,
with the help of concepts like social capital, partnership/consultation, collective efficacy,
or even self-control, these researchers concentrate on the elaboration of intervention strat-
egies aimed at improving the results of community mobilization and partnerships
between civil society and government (Alain and Hamel, 2015; Hamel et al., 2003;
Kearney and Vaillancourt, 2006; Kelling and Wilson, 1982; Soska and Ohmer, 2018;
Spergel and Grossman, 1997). This kind of research can be appropriately described as
applied.
On the other hand, other researchers show more interest in studying the societal causes
at the origin of use of “the community”. Often developed through critical approaches and
analysis, these studies mobilize theoretical frameworks stemming from the philosophical
thought of Michel Foucault (Dufresne and Goupil, 2010; Mann et al., 2007; Rose, 2000),
from political economy (Paquin, 2005; Bailleau et al., 2009), and from classic socio-
logical approaches : Weber, Durkheim (Cauchi et al., 2015; Crawford, 2004;
Defilippis et al., 2006). Although most of these studies include the question of the
State in the analysis, they seem to take for granted its relationship to civil society. In par-
ticular, they do not adequately deal with the fact that, as part of civil society (this is, as
part of the different organizations of society that take no part in the government), the dif-
ferent organizations related to community intervention dealing with crime seem to play a
contradictory role because at the same time that they try to deploy non-repressive strat-
egies to dealing with marginalized populations, they often end up contributing to the per-
petuation of governmental dynamics causing marginalization, repression and political
oppression.
Gramscian approach to civil society as well as concepts such as political society,
hegemony, and the integral State seem to us to be particularly useful to explain these con-
tradictions. Gramscian concepts offer a much more comprehensive view of the
894 Social & Legal Studies 31(6)
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