Deadly Symbiosis: Race and the Rise of the Penal State

by Loïc Wacquant

This outstanding book explores the rise of prison populations in the US, in Britain and in other European countries, as well as in Latin America. Beginning with a rich, ethnographic account of being inside the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles, the author moves on to develop an argument about the connections between neoliberalism as a political doctrine, and incarceration as a social policy.

Loïc Wacquant reveals that the growing symbiosis between politics, the media, immigration and penal institutions are transforming the definition, treatment and representation of crime, justice and citizenship not only in the United States but also in Europe and Latin America.

In the age of unfettered markets and enfeebled social-welfare states, the penal system is a major engine of social stratification, urban change and cultural demarcation in its own right. It remakes those segments of the city onto which it latches in its own image, turning them into devices for the expurgation of dispossessed groups and the symbolic destruction of important urban ills.

Deadly Symbiosis is a timely book, which offers a rigorous and engaging account of why the penal system must be put at the centre of social inquiry, political reflection and civic action today.

Genres: Sociology

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2010

About the author

Loïc Wacquant is a sociologist, specializing in urban sociology, urban poverty, racial inequality, the body, social theory and ethnography.

Wacquant is currently a Professor of Sociology and Research Associate at the Earl Warren Legal Institute, University of California, Berkeley, where he is also affiliated with the Program in Medical Anthropology and the Center for Urban Ethnography, and Researcher at the 'Centre de sociologie européenne' in Paris. He has been a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows, a MacArthur Prize Fellow, and has won numerous grants including the Fletcher Foundation Fellowship and the Lewis Coser Award of the American Sociological Association.