Reading penalty from the periphery
| Published date | 01 November 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806231199749 |
| Author | Máximo Sozzo |
| Date | 01 November 2023 |
Reading penalty from
the periphery
Máximo Sozzo
National University of Litoral, Argentina
Abstract
This article presents a critical reflection on the task of reading penality from the periph-
ery, adding to several significant contributions in punishment and society studies. It
explores the center/periphery, North/South differentiations and their uses in recent
social theory as a useful tool for studying contemporary penality at a global scale. It
argues that previous modes of analysis did not put relations of inequality, subordination
and dependence between different regions of the world in their agenda of research,
because they were overwhelmingly concerned with penal processes and dynamics in
the central contexts. Instead, it calls for placing at center stage the effects of imperialism
and colonialism, in their different forms throughout history, in ways of thinking and act-
ing in relation to penality and the center/periphery. From there, the article identifies
some paradoxes and risks, as well as antidotes that provide a horizon for our future
research.
Keywords
Colonialism, Latin America, penality, periphery, punishment and society
This article presents a critical reflection on the task of reading penality from the periphery.
In recent years, scholars in the field of punishment and society have argued that the trad-
itional definition of penality associated with criminal law needs to acknowledge, among
other things, practices of detention and expulsion of migrants regulated by administrative
law, sanctions against contempt regulated by civil law, and extra-legal infliction of pain
against individuals accused of having committed crimes carried out by both state and
Corresponding author:
Máximo Sozzo, Faculty of Social and Juridical Sciences, National University of Litoral, Candido Pujato 2751 1
Piso, Santa Fe CP3000, Argentina.
Email: msozzo@fcja.unl.wdu.ar
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2023, Vol. 27(4) 660–675
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13624806231199749
journals.sagepub.com/home/tcr
non-state actors (Aas, 2014; Beckett and Murakawa, 2012; Bosworth et al., 2018; Super,
2022, 2023). This theoretical redefinition has been extremely important and is changing
the configuration of this field of study today. But equally significant, and with a similar
capacity to reconfigure this area of research, scholars have, more recently, begun to pay
attention to the role of imperialism and colonialism in forging and maintaining penality
(Aas, 2012: 14; Aliverti et al., 2021, 2023; Carrington et al., 2019: 4–5, 9–11; Fonseca,
2018b: 55–57).
This article, which draws on my research on penality in Latin America, is structured
from one of the peripheries, the South(s), from a specific“angle of vision”(Zaffaroni,
1989: 179), a “situated”perspective (Aas, 2012: 11). It proceeds in four parts. First, it
explores the center/periphery, North/South differentiations and their uses in recent
social theory, identifying some difficulties in their more simplistic formulations, and
arguing for a more fluid, dynamic way of thinking about them as a useful tool for studying
contemporary penality at a global scale. In the second section, it analyses the relations of
inequality, subordination, and dependence between center and periphery in the produc-
tion and circulation of knowledge about penality throughout history and the types of
intellectual attitudes on which they have been based. In peripheral contexts, this gener-
ated a long-standing tradition of reading penality from the center. The following
section notes the existence, however, of episodes of resistance to such inequality, subor-
dination, and dependence in the past, which have given rise to theoretical innovations that
still have not necessarily involved radical breaks with the intellectual production of the
central contexts. The fourth section identifies the paradox that in order to read penality
from the periphery, one cannot renounce dialoguing with the concepts and arguments
of the central contexts, even though these are inadequate to account for penal institutions,
discourses, and practices in the margins. It then specifies how this paradox is also fueled
by the coloniality of peripheral penality itself. From there, it identifies the significant risk
this paradox entails: striving to read penality from the periphery may well end up repro-
ducing what it seeks to suppress, albeit in more subtle ways. Finally, on a more optimistic
note, three antidotes from recent literature are presented, which together are capable of
averting this risk and provide a horizon for our future research.
Center/periphery, North/South, and punishment
and society studies
The distinction between “center”and “periphery”as a way of differentiating regions of
the world to understand the relations of inequality, subordination, and dependence across
them, has been built from different perspectives in social theory since the 1960s.
“Dependency theory”and “world-system theory”have played a crucial role in this direc-
tion (So, 1990). In the criminological field, this distinction was already prominent in the
very construction of a critical theoretical vocabulary, particularly in peripheral contexts.
For example, in Latin America, Eugenio R Zaffaroni pioneered the use of these categories
to critically address the past and present of the importation of penal policies, institutions,
and laws, as well as of concepts and arguments both in the field of criminal law and crim-
inology from the central into these peripheral countries. In turn, he inscribed these
Sozzo 661
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