A Conversation on Crime, Law, and Political Economy with Associate Professor Jarrett Blaustein of the Australian National University

Join Us for a Conversation on Crime, Law, and Political Economy with Associate Professor Jarrett Blaustein of the Australian National University, co-author of Unraveling the Crime-Development Nexus, 2022

When: March 21, 2023; 2:30-4:00 pm

Where: Selznick Seminar Room, 2240 Piedmont Avenue

Sponsor: Center for the Study of Law & Society

To RSVP Contact: Professor Jonathan Simon, jssimon@berkeley.edu 

Crime, corruption and lawlessness are increasingly framed as obstacles to sustainable development. Unraveling the Crime-Development Nexus (with Tom Chodor and Nathan W. Pino) interrogates this issue linkage, accounts for its historical construction, and considers what its institutionalization as part of the Sustainable Development Goals implies for the future of global governance. Utilizing a neo-Gramscian lens, the book analyzes the historical development of this discourse as an element of the international crime policy and development agendas to illustrate how its construction and mobilization have long been responsive to the interests of dominant social forces in the global economy. It has repeatedly been invoked and reinvented to advance the expansion of global capitalism and manage its disruptive effects, while reproducing the marginalized position of those in the developing world. The book concludes that a ‘harm-sustainability’ frame may support more equitable and sustainable governance practices that respond to the structural causes of criminalized harms and uneven development. 

Bio: Jarrett Blaustein is an Associate Professor and the Director of Education in the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at The Australian National University, and was recently appointed as an Associate Editor of Policing & Society. He holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and his interdisciplinary research explores how and why societies govern and deliver security during periods of change, crisis, and instability.