‘Impedimenta state’: Anatomies of neoliberal penality
| Author | Martin Jones |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895810382380 |
| Date | 01 November 2010 |
| Published date | 01 November 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
‘Impedimenta state’: Anatomies
of neoliberal penality
Martin Jones
Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD), and Institute of
Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Wales
Punishing the Poor avers not only that the United States has shifted from the single (welfare)
to the double (social-cum-penal) regulation of the poor, but also that the ‘stunted development
of American social policy’ skilfully dissected by Piven and Cloward stands in close causal and
functional relation to America’s uniquely overgrown and hyperactive penal policy. The misery
of American welfare and the grandeur of American prisonfare at century’s turn are the two
sides of the same political coin. The generosity of the latter is in direct proportion to the
stinginess of the former, and it expands to the degree that both are driven by moral behaviourism.
(Wacquant, 2009a: 292–3, original emphasis)
I wish I could write like Loïc Wacquant. Not only in terms of the volume of published
material, but also in terms of the quality of that rich output: how many articles and books
in a relatively short period of time and on a variety of topics? Wacquant has made a mas-
sive contribution to social science, and has extremely rare qualities indeed. Passion and
the power of persuasion drive his text repeatedly – sentence after sentence, paragraph
after paragraph of layered arguments on the materialist anatomies of post-Fordist society,
its urban forms, and contradictions. I have had the pleasure of meeting him, twice. The
first time was at a conference in Chicago on neoliberalism and its spaces, in September
2001 (see Brenner and Theodore, 2001). The second time was in London, in October
2009, where I was invited as the geographer to comment on his last two books, Punishing
the Poor (2009a) and Prisons of Poverty (2009b), which collectively chart the arrival of
the ‘penal state’. I rehearsed there some of the arguments that I am presenting in this
article. On both occasions, his elegantly written research was matched by the elegance
of its oral delivery, captivating the audience with a machine-gun-like argument on the
interactions between state, class, and race. Bang, bang, bang . . . No ‘fancy’ PowerPoint
slides, no close reading from his notes or a pre-prepared script, just a diagram represent-
ing a triangular relationship between the concepts under consideration and a rapid,
engaging, and passionate dialogue with his audience.
Corresponding author:
Martin Jones
Email: msj@aber.ac.uk
Criminology & Criminal Justice
10(4) 393–404
© The Author(s) 2010
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895810382380
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