I González Sánchez, Neoliberalismo y castigo
| Published date | 01 October 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221078999 |
| Author | José A. Brandariz |
| Date | 01 October 2023 |
Book Reviews
I González Sánchez, Neoliberalismo y castigo. Manresa: Bellaterra, 2021:
234 pp. ISBN: 978-84-18684-08-1, €15.
Leading scholars have called for an expansion of the punishment and society perspective
beyond the North Atlantic, neoliberal heartlands on which this body of literature has pri-
marily focused its analytical gaze (Simon and Sparks, 2013). Ignacio González’s
Neoliberalismo y castigo (Neoliberalism and Punishment, hereinafter NyC) is a decisive
step in that direction. Indeed, not many monographs published in Spanish are as consist-
ent as NyC in exploring the penal field as a complex social institution (see NyC, pp. 25,
177), recognising that the penal field cannot be understood by merely taking into account
its legal and law enforcement dimensions (pp. 52, 184).
Superficially considered, NyC can be seen as an academic effort to test the neoliberal
penality thesis (Wacquant, 1999/2009, 2009) in a Southern European jurisdiction such as
Spain. Certainly, the book presents the results of that type of exploration, but it goes well
beyond that specific academic endeavour. It makes a significant contribution to the pol-
itical economy of punishment by closely scrutinising the impact of the neoliberal ethos
and rationales on three key public policy fields: labour policies, social policies, and
penal policies. For these purposes, NyC examines the shifts in these three fields witnessed
in Spain over a four-decade period by considering them through the lens of some basic
tropes of neoliberal governmentality, that is those of individualisation, ‘contractualiza-
tion’and moralisation, all of which are safeguarded by punitive forms of state coercion
(see e.g. pp. 179, 181–182).
In elaborating its richly textured analysis of these public policy changes, NyC goes a
long way in revitalising and updating academic debates on the neoliberal penality thesis.
The monograph persuasively highlights the many methodological and theoretical
strengths of that analytical framework (see pp. 37–41). However, in problematising
Wacquant’s thesis by bringing it to a new geographical and temporal setting, NyC lays
bare some of its limitations requiring further examination (see also Wacquant’s
Foreword, p. 12). In fact, the book casts new light on two critical dimensions of that
thesis. Initially, it challenges the claim that an expanding penal state may be seen as a
vital, inherent component of neoliberalism (pp. 44–45, 187–189), in line with previous
critics of Wacquant’s work (Mayer, 2010; O’Malley, 2014). In fact, the book ends by
emphasising that the consolidation of a neoliberal rationale in the field of public policies
‘does not necessarily entail the expansion of the penal arm of the state’(NyC, p. 204).
That perspective allows González to advocate the validity of the neoliberal penality
Punishment & Society
2023, Vol. 25(4) 1138–1167
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/14624745221078999
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