Ideology? What ideology?
| Date | 01 November 2010 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895810382371 |
| Author | Stanley Cohen |
| Published date | 01 November 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Ideology? What ideology?1
Stanley Cohen
London School of Economics, UK
In reading Wacquant’s latest work, I was reminded of the famous cartoon where one
academic says to another: ‘Well yes, he discovered fire, but what’s he done since then?’
Wacquant has produced highly creative research. (This creativity was already apparent a
few years ago in the field of social control, and it is odd that he does not refer to that as
his field.) I intend here to discuss some points that ‘need further development’, if I may
use a cliché. I will focus more specifically on the role Wacquant attributes in his narrative
to knowledge, ideas, academic theories and organisations such as think-tanks.
I do not have many problems with the content of Wacquant’s thesis: the massive surge
in the use of imprisonment; the penalisation of poverty to curb urban disorders resulting
from economic deregulation and the erosion of social care; and the perception of the
prison not merely as a technical instrument for implementing criminal justice policy, but
as a core political institution for the Leviathan to reveal itself. We are all Foucauldian
enough to grasp the inextricable and inevitable link between power and knowledge, but I
believe we can still look at the operation of knowledge – and academic and intellectual
knowledge in particular – in a separate sphere. I can see three stages in which ideas appear
to matter, explicitly or implicitly, in Wacquant’s current books. First, in the original con-
struction of institutional changes; that is to say, the ideas that inform (or ‘lie behind’) the
change of the policy. Second, in their continuing role in legitimating power. Here knowl-
edge functions as an alibi for the continued implementation of policy changes (leaving
behind ‘deposits of power’). And third – a rather special and specific context –, in the
export or transfer of policies, especially from the United States to continental Europe.2
Wacquant explicitly takes the role of warning the gullible natives, particularly the
French. The latter come out rather badly in his caricature; a savage portrait of these stupid
and pompous institutions in France’s pretentious and utterly bogus public face, with titles
like ‘Institute for Higher Studies and Domestic Security’, which obviously sound even
grander in French. Wacquant notes that these institutions neither hide nor even try to hide
their fascination for the supposedly novel and amazingly effective methods of community
policing and other such American policies, which they just buy into without any question.
Such Mickey Mouse ideas as ‘broken windows’, ‘zero tolerance’, ‘community policing’,
Corresponding author:
Stanley Cohen
Email: s.cohen@lse.ac.uk
Criminology & Criminal Justice
10(4) 387–391
© The Author(s) 2010
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1748895810382371
crj.sagepub.com
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