The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm [1 ed.] 3030724077, 9783030724078

Table of contents :
Praise for The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
1 The Case for Studying Social Harm
Introduction
Layout of the Handbook
References
Part I Histories and Theoretical Perspectives
2 Beyond Criminology?
A Brief ‘Critical’ Critique of Criminology
Crime Has no Ontological Reality
Criminology Perpetuates the Myth of Crime
‘Crime’ Consists of Many Petty Events
‘Crime’ Excludes Many Serious Harms
Constructing ‘Crimes’
Criminalisation and Punishment Inflict Pain
‘Crime Control’ Is Ineffective
‘Crime’ Gives Legitimacy to the Expansion of Crime Control
‘Crime’ Serves to Maintain Power Relations
The Potential of a Social Harm Approach
Defining Harm
The Vicissitudes of Life
The Allocation of Responsibility
Policy Responses
Mass Harms
Challenges to Power
A Critique of Risk
Criminology, Social Harm and Justice
References
3 Ideology and Harm
Introduction
Marx on Ideology
Gramsci on Ideology
Althusser on Ideology
The Reversal of Ideology
Negative Ideology
Conclusion
Further Reading
References
4 The Assumption of Harmlessness
A Call to Take Pause
The State of Harm
Social Harm in an Era of Liberal Cynicism
The Assumption of Harmlessness
Closing Remarks
References
5 Global Harms and the Natural Environment
Introduction
Why a ‘Harm’ Perspective?
Wider Definitions
Environmental Victims
Classification Systems
Time and Environmental Harm
Transference and Mobility of Environmental Harm
Geography of the Harm
Climate Change
Threats to Biodiversity
Pollution and Waste
Conclusion
Further Reading
References
Part II Methods for Studying Harm
6 On Researching Harm: An Ultra-Realist Perspective
Introduction
Mediating the Other of the Real
Ultra-Realism Qua Third
The Issue of Defining Harm
Methodological Challenges
The Politics of Harm
Conclusion: Implications for a Less Harmful Society
Further Reading
References
7 Visual and Sensory Methodologies to Explore Environmental Harm and Victimization
Introduction
On Social and Environmental Harm
An Example of Green Visual Criminology ‘With’ Images: Photo Elicitation
Beyond the Visual: For a Sensory Methodology?
Toward a Conclusion
Further Reading
References
8 Documenting Harm to the Voiceless: Researching Animal Abuse
Introduction
Problematising Legal Constructions of Animal Abuse
Giving Voice to the Voiceless
Origins, Scope and Theoretical Developments in Animal Abuse Studies
Defining, Identifying and Measuring Nonhuman Animal Abuse
Ethical Challenges in Researching Nonhuman Animal Abuse
Implications for a Less Harmful Society
Conclusion
Further Reading
References
Part III Social Harms Based Scholarship
9 The Harms of Industrial Food Production: How Modern Agriculture, Livestock Rearing and Food Processing Contribute to Disease, Environmental Degradation and Worker Exploitation
Introduction and Background Context
Growing Plants: The Harms of Agriculture
Raising Animals: The Harms from—and to—Livestock
Making Food: The Harms of Processed Food and Animal Slaughter
Implications for a Less Harmful Society
Conclusion
Further Reading
References
10 Work-Based Harm
Introduction
Work-Based Harm Research
Zemiology and Work-Based Harm
Hillyard and Tombs’ Typology of Harm
Harms of Recognition
Flourishing and Harms of Human Need
Making Sense of Work-Based Harm
Understanding Work-Based Harm via the Ultra-Realist Approach
Positive and Negative Motivations for Work-Based Harm
Implications for a Less Harmful Society
Conclusion
Further Reading
References
11 The Deviant Leisure Perspective: A Theoretical Introduction
Reclaiming ‘Deviant’ Leisure
Does Leisure Exist in Late-Capitalism?
Ultra-Realism, Consumerism and Motivation
Leisure Futures: Towards the Pro-social
Conclusion
References
12 Beyond Meat? Taking Violence Against Non-human Animals Seriously as a Form of Social Harm
Introduction
Background
Green Criminology
Species Justice Approaches
Speciesism
Non-human Victimology
Critical Animal Studies
Cognitive Dissonance and Carnism
Non-human Animals and Social Harm
Non-human Animals and the Social
Eating Meat as Social Harm
Harmful to Non-human Animals
Harmful to Human-Animals
Speciesism, Capitalism and Exploitation
Speciesism, Sexism and Patriarchy
Speciesism, Racism and Colonialism
Harmful to the Environment
Implications for a Less Harmful Society
Academic Changes
Legal and Political Changes
Adopting and Promoting Veganism
Conclusion
Further Reading
References
Part IV Social Harm: Visions and Futures
13 Crime, Harm and Justice: The Utopia of Harm and Realising Justice in a ‘Good Society’
Introduction
Background
Criminal (In)Justice
Summarising the Limitations of Criminal Justice
Responding to Criminal (In)Justice
Reforming Criminal Justice
Abolishing Criminal Justice
Zemiology and Abolitionism
Realising Justice in a ‘Good Society’
The Utopia of Harm
Zemiological Justice
Reimagining Justice: A Public Health Approach to Homicide
Current Developments in Policy and Practice
Harm Reduction Initiatives
A Public Health Approach to Knife Crime
Reimaging Justice in the Context of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matters
Next Steps and Future Directions
Extending the Public Health Approach
Resisting the Language of Crime and Criminology
Unearthing ‘Subjugated Knowledges’
Summary Conclusion
Further Reading
References
14 Rebuilding the Harm Principle: Using an Evolutionary Perspective to Provide a New Foundation for Justice
Introduction
The Importance of the Harm Principle
The Collapse of the Harm Principle
The Collapse Spreads
The Consequences of These Collapses
How to Rebuild the Harm Principle
Evolutionary Ethics to Redefine Good
Consequentialism
Deontology
Virtue Ethics
Redefining Harm
Discussion and Conclusion
References
15 An Exploration of Security Privatisation Dynamics Through the Lens of Social Harm
Introduction
Background
The Case Study of Border Management in the UK: How Privatisation Engenders Commodification, Exploitation, Inequality and Criminalisation
Visa and Immigration Privatisation
The Privatisation of Migrant Detention
Implications for a Less Harmful Society
Conclusion
Further Reading
References
16 Looking at Crime and Deviancy in Cyberspace Through the Social Harm Lens
Introduction
Background
Harms in Cyberspace: Same Wine, New Bottles?
Case Study I: Copyright Infringements and the Amplification of Harm
Case Study II: Health Frauds and the Under-Recognition of Harm
Implications for a Less Harmful Society
Conclusions
Further Reading
References
17 Harm and Migration
Introduction
Background
Migratory Dimensions of Social Harm
Harmful Causes of Migration
Harms of the Migration Process
Migration Management as Social Harm
Conclusion
Further Reading
References
18 Why Social Harm Matters: Five Reasons from a Feminist Influenced Victim Perspective
Introduction
A Victim Perspective
Marrying Harm and Victimisation
Violent Harm
Five Reasons Why Social Harm Matters to Criminologists
A Harms-Based Approach from a Victim Perspective
Domestic Abuse
All Harm Matters
References
Index

Citation preview

MIGRATION, PALGRAVE STUDIES IN VICTIMS AND VICTIMOLOGY DIASPORAS AND CITIZENSHIP

The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm Edited by Pamela Davies · Paul S. Leighton · Tanya Wyatt

Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology

Series Editors Pamela Davies, Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK Tyrone Kirchengast, Law School, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

In recent decades, a growing emphasis on meeting the needs and rights of victims of crime in criminal justice policy and practice has fuelled the development of research, theory, policy and practice outcomes stretching across the globe. This growth of interest in the victim of crime has seen victimology move from being a distinct subset of criminology in academia to a specialist area of study and research in its own right. Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology showcases the work of contemporary scholars of victimological research and publishes some of the highest-quality research in the field. The series reflects the range and depth of research and scholarship in this burgeoning area, combining contributions from both established scholars who have helped to shape the field and more recent entrants. It also reflects both the global nature of many of the issues surrounding justice for victims of crime and social harm and the international span of scholarship researching and writing about them. Editorial Board Antony Pemberton, Tilburg University, Netherlands Jo-Anne Wemmers, Montreal University, Canada Joanna Shapland, Sheffield University, UK Jonathan Doak, Durham University, UK

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14571

Pamela Davies · Paul Leighton · Tanya Wyatt Editors

The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm

Editors Pamela Davies Department of Social Sciences Northumbria University Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Paul Leighton Department of Sociology Anthropology & Criminology Eastern Michigan University Ypsilanti, MI, USA

Tanya Wyatt Department of Social Sciences Northumbria University Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology ISBN 978-3-030-72407-8 ISBN 978-3-030-72408-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Contributor: Brain light/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Praise for The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm

“Though some readers might ponder what criteria we should use when prioritising what harms to reduce and how, and if and when intentional harms by ‘conscious opponents’ should be treated differently in law and by enforcement, this Handbook of Social Harm is an important exploration of a range of human, non-human and environmental harms, taking readers well beyond the conventional boundaries of criminology.” —Michael Levi, Professor of Criminology, Cardiff University, UK “In the tradition of Sutherland’s white-collar crime, Davies, Leighton and Wyatt have challenged criminology and victimology to rethink traditional concepts of crime to a harms-based ‘zemiological’ notion of crime as social harm. The contributors explode traditional victimology into a kaleidoscope of collectivities whose lives are punctured by an array of insidious practices in whose intersecting webs we are all enmeshed. Thus, resonant with green criminology and critical animal studies, our environments are polluted, including rivers, forests, plants and ecosystems. Non-human animals are subject to violence in our attempts to harness them for food. The contributors show that criminal justice as currently

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Praise for The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm

constituted is powerless to control or correct injustice produced by these systems. This book succeeds in showing the interrelatedness of harm and victimization as a holistic framework, and for that alone it is essential reading.” —Stuart Henry, Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at San Diego State University, USA “Davies, Leighton and Wyatt’s compilation is a must read for all scholars and students of criminology. Through its conceptual interrogation of harm and justice, application of novel methods, and focus on the most deleterious forms of harm affecting humans, non-human species and the environment, the Handbook of Social Harm brings together scholars who individually and collectively successfully contribute to expanding the frontiers of the discipline in significant and diverse ways.” —Professor Christina Pantazis, Professor of Zemiology, University of Bristol, UK

Contents

1

The Case for Studying Social Harm Paul Leighton and Tanya Wyatt

Part I

1

Histories and Theoretical Perspectives

2

Beyond Criminology? Paddy Hillyard and Steve Tombs

11

3

Ideology and Harm Simon Winlow, Emma Kelly, and Tammy Ayres

37

4

The Assumption of Harmlessness Thomas Raymen

59

5

Global Harms and the Natural Environment Rob White

89

Part II 6

Methods for Studying Harm

On Researching Harm: An Ultra-Realist Perspective Justin Kotzé

117

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7

8

Contents

Visual and Sensory Methodologies to Explore Environmental Harm and Victimization Lorenzo Natali

139

Documenting Harm to the Voiceless: Researching Animal Abuse Jennifer Maher

167

Part III 9

Social Harms Based Scholarship

The Harms of Industrial Food Production: How Modern Agriculture, Livestock Rearing and Food Processing Contribute to Disease, Environmental Degradation and Worker Exploitation Paul Leighton

10 Work-Based Harm Anthony Lloyd

199 227

11 The Deviant Leisure Perspective: A Theoretical Introduction Thomas Raymen and Oliver Smith

251

12 Beyond Meat? Taking Violence Against Non-human Animals Seriously as a Form of Social Harm Nathan Stephens Griffin and Naomi Griffin

281

Part IV 13

14

Social Harm: Visions and Futures

Crime, Harm and Justice: The Utopia of Harm and Realising Justice in a ‘Good Society’ Lynne Copson Rebuilding the Harm Principle: Using an Evolutionary Perspective to Provide a New Foundation for Justice Ed Gibney and Tanya Wyatt

313

349

Contents

15

16

17

ix

An Exploration of Security Privatisation Dynamics Through the Lens of Social Harm Helena Carrapico

377

Looking at Crime and Deviancy in Cyberspace Through the Social Harm Lens Anita Lavorgna

401

Harm and Migration Chris Moreh

421

18 Why Social Harm Matters: Five Reasons from a Feminist Influenced Victim Perspective Pamela Davies

453

Index

473

Notes on Contributors

Dr. Tammy Ayres is an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Leicester. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who works in the areas of drugs and terrorism. Her research interests focus on the functionality of drug use, trauma, coping and consumerism. She has been undertaking research in the area of drugs for almost two decades and has extensive experience of undertaking research in both the UK and Guyana with vulnerable populations, particularly problematic drug users, prisoners and people with mental ill-health. Dr. Helena Carrapico is Jean Monnet Chair in European Integration (focusing on the UK-EU post-Brexit security relationship), Associate Professor in Criminology and International Relations, and co-Research Director in the Department of Social Sciences at Northumbria University. Her research focuses on European Union Justice and Home Affairs governance and comprises three strands: (1) the governance of specific policy fields within Justice and Home Affairs, namely organised crime and cyber crime; (2) the governance of the external dimension of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice; and (3) the governance of Brexit in relation to police and judicial cooperation. She holds a doctoral degree

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Notes on Contributors

in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute (Florence), where she developed her thesis on European Union organised crime policies. Dr. Lynne Copson is a Lecturer in Criminology at the Open University, UK, having previously held positions at the University of Edinburgh. Her work focusses on the concept of harm, zemiology and its relationship to criminology, and utopianism. She has published on a variety of topics including utopianism and criminology, zemiology, penal populism and the concept of cultural harm. Dr. Pamela Davies is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Her research focuses on gender, crime and victimisation, and she has led a number of research projects and evaluations of multi-agency innovations that tackle gendered forms of harm including interpersonal violence, domestic abuse, the policing of serial perpetrators and support for victims. Pam has published widely on the subject of victimisation and social harm and on how gender connects to matters of community safety. She has authored and co-edited a number of scholarly texts including Victimology: Research, Policy and Activism, Victims, Crime and Society, Invisible Crimes and Social Harms and Doing Criminological Research (now in its 3rd edition). Pam is the series editor of the Palgrave Macmillan ‘Victims and Victimology’ book series (with Professor Matthew Hall). Ed Gibney is an Author and Independent Researcher. He writes fiction and philosophy focused on an evolutionary perspective. His work can be found at evphil.com. Dr. Naomi Griffin is a Researcher in the Department of Sport and Exercise and the Department of Sociology at Durham University. Her research interests include social justice movements and activism, identity, inequality in education, social policy and animal advocacy. She also has an interest in discourse analysis. Dr. Paddy Hillyard is a Professor (Emeritus) at Queen’s University Belfast. His research focuses on social order and control in modern welfare states, with particular attention to violence, criminality, poverty

Notes on Contributors

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and inequality. He has done extensive work on political violence in Northern Ireland and Britain and the attendant growth of police power. His recent work includes research not only in Northern Ireland but also in South Africa and Lebanon. Dr. Emma Kelly is Head of Criminology and Policing at Leeds Trinity University. She is a committed ethnographer and has written about a wide range of issues in criminology, but her main interest is the connections that exist between poverty and crime in the Republic of Ireland. Dr. Justin Kotzé is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Teesside University, UK. He has previously published work on the historical sublimation of violence; the consumption of steroids; and the commodification of abstinence. He is also the author of The Myth of the ‘Crime Decline’: Exploring Change and Continuity in Crime and Harm (Routledge, 2019) and co-editor of Zemiology: Reconnecting Crime and Social Harm (Palgrave, 2018). Dr. Anita Lavorgna is Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Southampton (UK). Anita has an international research track record on and expertise in interdisciplinary research drawing together criminology, socio-legal studies and web/computer science. She has worked extensively on cybercrime, serious and organised crime, and online social harms. Dr. Paul Leighton is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology at Eastern Michigan University. He is co-author of the Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison (12th edition, 2020) and Class, Race, Gender & Crime (5th edition, 2018). He is involved in the local domestic violence shelter and the college food pantry. Dr. Anthony Lloyd is Reader in Criminology and Sociology at Teesside University. His research primarily considers work and employment from a social harm perspective. His most recent book, The Harms of Work: An Ultra-Realist Account of the Service Economy, was published in 2018 by Bristol University Press.

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Notes on Contributors

Dr. Jennifer Maher is a Senior Lecturer at the University of South Wales. Her research expertise in animal abuse, green criminology, human-animal studies and interpersonal violence has been facilitated by EU, UK government and NGO funding. The co-editedInternational Handbook of Animal Abuse Studies (2017, Palgrave) and Greening Criminology in the 21st Century (2016, Routledge) are among her international publications. Dr. Chris Moreh is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at York St John University (UK) and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Southampton (UK). His research focuses on international migration, nationalism, ethnicity and the political sociology of citizenship. His work has been published in various peer-reviewed journals, such as International Migration Review, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and The British Journal of Sociology, and he is author of Alcalái Románok. Migráció és társadalmi differenciálódás [Romanians of Alcalá. Migration and social differentiation] (L’Harmattan, 2014). Lorenzo Natali holds a Ph.D. in Criminal Law and Criminology and is currently a Researcher in Criminology at the School of Law, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. His research focuses on violent crime, symbolic and radical interactionism, green criminology, and qualitative and interdisciplinary approaches, including visual methodologies. Dr. Thomas Raymen is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Northumbria University. He is the author of Parkour, Deviance, and Leisure in the Late-Capitalist City (Emerald, 2018) and co-editor of Deviant Leisure: Criminological Perspectives on Leisure and Harm (Palgrave, 2019). He is currently dedicated to developing an account of social harm rooted in post-liberal ethics. Dr. Oliver Smith is Associate Professor (Reader) in Criminology. He is a criminologist and ethnographer with an interest in leisure, harm, consumerism and culture. Smith is the author of ‘Contemporary adulthood and the night-time economy’, which uses the night-time economy (NTE) as a lens through which to examine the relationship between global consumer culture and harms associated with the erosion of traditional forms of adult identity. He is a founding member of the Deviant

Notes on Contributors

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Leisure group as well as the Critical Criminology sub-group of the British Society of Criminology. Dr. Nathan Stephens Griffin is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Northumbria University. His research interests include animal advocacy, environmentalism and other forms of political activism, with a particular interest in the criminalisation of political protest. He is also interested in biographical, visual and graphic narrative approaches to social research. Dr. Steve Tombs is Professor of Criminology at Open University. He has long-standing interests in the incidence, nature and regulation of corporate and state crime and harm, and has published widely on these matters. Further, he continues to work on the impacts and potential of a ’social harm’ perspective, as part of an ongoing, critical engagement with the limitations of the dominant concerns of more mainstream criminology; and part of this is an emergent critique of the (lack of impact) of recent and current crises upon criminology and socio-legal studies. Dr. Rob White is Distinguished Professor of Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Tasmania, Australia. He has written extensively in the areas of criminology, youth studies and eco-justice. His recent authored and co-authored books include Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective (2013), Green Criminology (2014), Innovative Justice (2015), Media and Crime (2017), Climate Change Criminology (2018) and The Extinction Curve: Growth and Globalisation in the Climate Endgame (2021). Critical Forensic Studies will be published in 2021. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology, and the Academy of Social Sciences, United Kingdom. Dr. Simon Winlow is a Professor of Social Sciences at Northumbria University, UK. He is the author of Badfellas (Berg, 2001) and co-author of Bouncers (Oxford, 2003), Violent Night (Berg, 2006), Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture (Willan, 2008), Rethinking Social Exclusion (Sage, 2012), Revitalizing Criminological Theory (Routledge, 2015), Riots and Political Protests (Routledge, 2015), Rise of the Right (Policy, 2017) and the forthcoming Death of the Left (Policy).

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Notes on Contributors

Dr. Tanya Wyatt is a Professor of Criminology at Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK. She is a green criminologist specialising in wildlife trafficking, non-human animal abuse and the intersections of organised crime, corporate crime and corruption. Her latest books are Crime and Power with Professor Pam Davies and Is CITES Protecting Wildlife?

List of Figures

Fig. 7.1

Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3 Fig. 7.4 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 14.1 Fig. 14.2 Fig. 14.3 Fig. 14.4

Aurelio as he walks describing to himself the landscape he is crossing. Still image taken from the video of the itinerant soliloquy Avenida Francisco Montenegro, Huelva Rebeca taking a photo on the wharf of the Río Tinto. Still image from the video of the itinerant soliloquy View of the wharf of the Río Tinto, Huelva Example of a methodology to research animal abuse Seven spheres of biology The shift from Maslow’s view to an evolutionary view Repugnant view of life Evolutionary view of life

149 152 154 155 180 361 363 365 366

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1 The Case for Studying Social Harm Paul Leighton and Tanya Wyatt

Introduction Writing this chapter and editing this collection during a global pandemic has helped highlight the urgent need for the study of social harm—zemiology. At the time of writing, there were nearly 189,921,964 confirmed cases and 4,088,281 deaths globally from COVID-19 (World Health Organisation (WHO) 2020). These numbers continue to rise with no end in sight, due in no small degree to epic failures of numerous governments around the world to respond effectively. A British Journal of P. Leighton (B) Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Criminology, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. Wyatt Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_1

1

2

P. Leighton and T. Wyatt

Medicine captured some of these concerns in its editorial, Covid-19: Social murder, they wrote—elected, unaccountable, and unrepentant (Abbasi 2021). And that brings us to social harm. None of the failures of governments to protect their citizens, none of the broken healthcare systems that will fail to care for those contracting and recovering from the coronavirus and none of the discriminatory responses that privileged the rich (usually White) patients over other patients are crimes; these acts are undoubtedly harmful and worthy of investigation, but they are not recognised as crimes. Criminology is widely and commonly thought to be the study of crime, criminals and criminal justice. Since crime is a legal (and social) construct, criminology inevitably studies criminal law (Carrabine et al. 2020). Orthodox or traditional criminology stops there and only investigates what is defined as a crime. Other approaches to criminology, the critical and radical traditions in particular, advocate for exploring beyond the confines of the law to acts that are harmful, but not illegal. Some criminologists have taken this even further to argue for moving beyond criminology altogether to study and to challenge social harm (Hillyard and Tombs 2004—reprinted in this volume as Chapter 2). This Handbook collects the latest research on social harm as well charting the origins of such scholarship. Part I—Histories and Theoretical Perspectives—begins with possibly the seminal publication in the study of social harm, a reprint of Paddy Hillyard’s and Steve Tombs’ chapter ‘Beyond Criminology’ in the edited collection Beyond Criminology: taking harm seriously. Their chapter and the edited collection document the series of discussions and conferences where this group of scholars advocated for an alternative focus and alternative narratives to the narrow ones found in criminology. Hillyard and Tombs make a strong case for why sticking within the confines of studying only crime leaves a significant amount of suffering and injury unexamined and unchallenged. Furthermore, crime as predominantly a social construct of the powerful creates its own harms that are largely discriminatory towards certain human populations. Our Handbook extends these themes of suffering and injury that are not crimes as well as explores harms that stem from criminalisation (see

1 The Case for Studying Social Harm

3

Chapter 17 by Chris Moreh). Whilst the harms from work that Hillyard and Tombs mention persist (see Chapter 10 by Anthony Lloyd), non-criminal suffering and injury have also moved into new spaces and aspects of society that our authors detail. Since the 2004 edited collection, the social harm approach has widened its scope of inquiry beyond only humans to investigate the harms against non-humans and the environment. With the consequences of climate change and ecological collapse present around the world, the gaze beyond humans is essential as shown by Chapters 5, 7, and 9 (‘Global Harms and the Natural Environment’, ‘Visual and Sensory Methodologies to Explore Environmental Harm and Victimisation’, and ‘The Harm of Industrial Agricultural’). The focus of social harm research in terms of the non-human does not stop there. As evident in Chapters 8 and 12 (‘Documenting harm to the voiceless: Research on animal welfare’ and ‘Beyond Meat? Taking Violence Against Non-Human Animals Seriously as a Form of Social Harm’), non-human animals, from companion animals to ‘livestock’ and from zoo animals to wildlife, suffer harm individually and systemically. In addition to the expanding scope of zemiology, often studies of social harm start from an ultra-realist perspective (Chapters 3, 6 and 10—‘Ideology and Harm’, ‘Researching Harm: an integrated approach between criminology and zemiology: the role of ultra-realism’, and ‘Work-based Harm’). Ultra-realism challenges the zemiological environment that is inherent to the current neoliberal capitalist system. Thus, it focuses on socioeconomic and political-economic relationships and structures that perpetuate harm. Other chapters, too (Chapter 15 on the privatisation of security) also uncover the role of the capitalist system in creating harm. Throughout the Handbook, it is evident that harm is individual and institutional, one off and frequent, unintentional and intentional. The study of social harm can be a valuable perspective to unpack these different layers of harm, whilst challenging the status quo that allows such suffering and injury to continue. The next 18 chapters make a strong case for why there is a need to study social harm.

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P. Leighton and T. Wyatt

Layout of the Handbook The next section is Part I on Histories and Theoretical Perspectives of social harm. Chapter 2 ‘Beyond Criminology’ by Paddy Hillyard and Steve Tombs sets the stage for the remainder of the contributions. In Chapter 3 ‘Ideology and Harm’, Simon Winlow, Emma Kelly and Tammy Ayres encourage criminologists and zemiologists to ask why people harm each other and the planet rather than cooperating to work towards a better life. They suggest that an adapted understanding of ideology can help remove the constraints of our imagination and activity to answer this question. Thomas Raymen, in Chapter 4 ‘The Assumption of Harmlessness’, opens by applauding the increase in social harm research both as a discipline of its own and in the various ‘criminologies’ that have emerged in the last few years. He makes the case though that despite the numerous studies of social harm, there are very few that investigate or define what harm is. This means that ‘the concept and language of harm itself is currently in a significantly underdeveloped state of disorder and ambiguity’. He goes onto outline the current state of the concept of social harm in both academia and the contemporary context. Raymen then reconsiders the nature of social harm before arguing that the default position is an assumption of harmlessness for ‘the vast majority of our socio-economic and cultural practices, or positions such harms as ‘necessary evils’ in order to keep greater catastrophic harms at bay’. The final chapter in Part I is Rob White’s ‘Global Harms and the Natural Environment’. In this chapter, White lays out green criminological perspectives, such as eco-justice, that incorporate critical criminology and crimes of the powerful to analyse the devastating range of environmental destruction that is often part of ‘business as usual’. White argues why a harm perspective is critical for the environment, due in part to the differences in time, mobility and scale that are evident in environmental harm. He also outlines how corporations and nation-states are the inflictors of harm and of ecocide, which is risking the survival of humans, non-human animals and non-human entities like rivers, forests, oceans and wetlands among others.

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In the second part of the Handbook, our contributors offer insights into how to research social harm. Without being legally recognised or having an agreed upon definition, there are no official statistics to draw upon. Thus, studies of social harm must be innovative in the methodologies they employ to document the vast range of social harms. In the first chapter of this section, Justin Kotze writes about ‘Researching Harm: an integrated approach between criminology and zemiology: the role of ultra-realism’. He suggests that the study of social harm has stalled and that one way for it to move forward is to take an ultra-realist approach, which would bridge the divide between criminology and zemiology. Lloyd proposes that ultra-realism can help to overcome the obstacles that have blocked the advancement of social harm research, such as the politics of harm and the reformist critique. Chapter 7, ‘Visual and Sensory Methodologies to Explore Environmental Harm and Victimisation’ by Lorenzo Natali, demonstrates how non-traditional methodologies, like photo elicitation and itinerant soliloquy, can be powerful tools to document social and environmental harm. Natali challenges taken-for-granted views of people, when it comes to our relationships with each other and the environment and proposes that visual and sensory methodologies can help to change this as well as empower communities and victims of social and environmental harms. In Chapter 8—Documenting harm to the voiceless: Research on animal welfare—Jenny Maher outlines the challenges for researchers, who are trying to make the voice of those who cannot speak for themselves heard. In particular, she argues for the further development of animal abuse and critical animal studies or non-speciesist approaches that expand the notion of who can be a victim and highlight the everyday harms inflicted on millions of non-human animals. Part III is titled ‘Social Harms based scholarship’. The five chapters in this section employ a harm-based approach to the study of various topics, all of which are everyday acts that people may not realise are harmful to someone or something. Paul Leighton begins this section with an analysis of the harms embedded in the industrialisation of food production in Chapter 9 ‘The Harms of Industrial Food Production: How Modern Agriculture, Livestock Rearing and Food Processing Contribute to Disease, Environmental Degradation and Worker Exploitation’. Not

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only is industrial food production the main cause of deforestation, it also is one of the main sources of pollution, through fertilisers, pesticides and animal waste. And whilst more food than ever before is being produced, millions of people are starving and/or undernourished and others suffer from food alienation and insecurity. Even in wealthy Western nations, portions of the population are unable to meet their nutritional requirements. Much of the food that is produced is unhealthy and un-nutritious, and both human workers and non-human animals are exploited during the process. Chapter 10 by Anthony Lloyd takes an ultra-realist approach to examining the overlooked and invisible nature of work-based harms. He suggests that the transformation of the workplace that has taken place during neoliberalism has resulted in the proliferation of work-based harms. Social harm may have explanatory power, but needs a stable base that ultra-realism may provide. Chapter 11 is a reprint of ‘The Deviant Leisure Perspective: A Theoretical Introduction’ by Thomas Raymen and Oliver Smith. The authors are two of the creators of the project of deviant leisure, which sets out to reclaim the term from its use in leisure studies and the sociology of deviance to refer to actions that are illegal. Rather, they label activities linked to values of liberal capitalism as deviant leisure. In the pursuit of mass consumption, people’s leisure activities are responsible for largescale social and environmental harms that Raymen and Smith argue need to be challenged. Nathan Stephens Griffin and Naomi Griffin finish this section on social harm based scholarship with Chapter 12 ‘Beyond Meat? Taking Violence Against Non-Human Animals Seriously as a Form of Social Harm’. The deaths of billions of non-human animals every year is not only an individual harm to each of them, but also an institutional harm perpetuated around the world as well as a harm to the humans in the meat industry and the environment. Stephens Griffin and Griffin end the chapter with positive actions stemming from green criminology and critical animal studies that can be used to reduce this violence. The last part of the Handbook is ‘Social Harm: visions and futures’. This section of five chapters offers glimpses into the way forward for studies of social harm in terms of approaches and topics. Lynne Copson

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in Chapter 13 ‘Crime, harm and justice: the utopia of harm and realising justice in a good society’ explores the potential of the social harm perspective for transcending the status quo and reimagining justice. As Copson notes, the criminal justice system, whilst designed to uphold and/or achieve justice, often is the source of injustice for people who are not white, socially and economically powerful men. She suggests utopian theory can aid in securing justice. Chapter 14 ‘Rebuilding the Harm Principle: Using an Evolutionary Perspective to Provide a New Foundation for Justice,’ a reprint by Ed Gibney and Tanya Wyatt, takes on the task mentioned by Raymen in Chapter 3 of defining what harm is. They argue that an evolutionary perspective can give the practical summum bonum (highest good), from which harm and good can be defined, thus repairing the harm principle, restoring its place in determining justice. Gibney’s and Wyatt’s rebuilding of the harm principle has potential to inform future studies of social harm. Chapter 15, the ‘An Exploration of Security Privatisation Dynamics through the Lens of Social Harm’ by Helena Carrapico, documents the trend in social harm related to the transfer of power from the public sector to the private sector in relation to security. Driven by the neoliberal discourse, border control, asylum and migration management, the criminal justice system, policing, surveillance, counter-terrorism, counter-organised crime and defence have and are all the sites of privatisation in the name of efficiency. Yet, exploring this trend through a social harm lens reveals a range of consequences that Carrapico looks at particularly in the case of UK border management. In ‘Looking at crime and deviancy in cyberspace through the social harm lens’, Anita Lavorgna outlines how some cybercrimes are focused on to drive a security agenda, whilst other crimes are ignored even though they pose risks. She uses contemporary cases of medical (mis)information online to demonstrate a social harm approach can help us to better understand prevention and mitigation strategies in the online context as well as improve public awareness. The last substantive chapter is ‘Harm and Migration’ by Chris Moreh, where he expands the social harm approach to look beyond only the harms of restrictive immigration and asylum policies to also explore the harms of the causes of migration, the act of migration itself and nation-states’ management of migration. Moreh demonstrates the

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complexity and paradoxes of migration and how a zemiological approach uncovers these. The Handbook ends with Chapter 18 where Pam Davies reiterates the need to study harm, why a victimological approach to the study of harm is valuable and why more inclusion of harm-based research in criminology will strengthen the discipline. This conclusion makes a strong case for the continued need to move beyond the limits of ‘crime’ and that there are multiple ways to do this as seen throughout the contributions to this Handbook.

References Abbasi, K. (2021). Covid-19: Social murder, they wrote—elected, unaccountable, and unrepentant. BMJ . 372: n314. https://www.doi.org/10.1136/bmj. n314. Carrabine, E., Cox, A., Cox, P., Crowhurst, I., Di Ronco, A., Fussey, P., Sergi, A., South, N., Thiel, D., & Turton, J. (2020). Criminology: A Sociological Introduction (4th ed.). London: Routledge. World Health Organisation (WHO). (2020). Coronavirus Disease (COVID19) Pandemic. Available at: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ novel-coronavirus-2019. Accessed 19 July 2021.

Part I Histories and Theoretical Perspectives

2 Beyond Criminology? Paddy Hillyard and Steve Tombs

There are good reasons why this is an important moment to rehearse the criticisms and debate the issues around criminology and social harm. To begin with, van Swaaningen, in his recent analysis of critical criminology (1997, 1999), has argued that the ‘heyday’ of critical criminology has passed and that ‘criminology has shifted away from epistemological and socio-political questions and returned to its old empiricist orientation as an applied science … fuelled by the political issues of the day, and geared by the agenda of its financiers’ (van Swaaningen 1999: 7). Hillyard, P., & Tombs, S. (2004). Beyond Criminology? In Hillyard, P., Pantazis, C., Tombs, S., & Gordon, D. (Eds.), Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously (pp. 10–29). London: Pluto Press. Reprinted by permission of Pluto Press.

P. Hillyard Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK S. Tombs (B) The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_2

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Similarly, Muncie has noted that the critique of ‘crime’ and criminology advanced by ‘radical criminologists’ in the 1970s is a ‘debate that remains unfinished’, having been ‘foreclosed by the growing hegemony of realist approaches’ in the 1980s onwards (Muncie 1999: 6). While we may not agree with all of the details of van Swaaningen’s (nor, indeed, Muncie’s) analysis of the state of critical criminology, his call for the rejuvenation of critical criminology requires an assessment of the prospects of criminology per se, and it is in the spirit of this exigency that a reassessment of the limits of a criminology is necessary, and all the more fruitful if this is an exercise which assesses the merits or otherwise of criminology alongside an alternative set of discourses. Let us turn, then, to a brief statement of some of the key criticisms of criminology that have been advanced, largely in the past 30—40 years, by a range of critical social scientists. We shall do so by focusing critically upon the concept of crime, which remains central to the discipline of criminology, processes of criminalisation and the criminal justice system. Where we refer to ‘crime’, then, we are referring to the dominant construction of crime to which criminology has been, and remains, wedded

A Brief ‘Critical’ Critique of Criminology Crime Has no Ontological Reality Perhaps the most fundamental criticism of the category of crime is that it has no ontological reality. Everyone grows up ‘knowing’ what crime is. From a very early age children develop social constructions of robbers and other criminal characters who inhabit our social world. But in reality there is nothing intrinsic to any particular event or incident which permits it to be defined as a crime. Crimes and criminals are fictive events and characters in the sense that they have to be constructed before they can exist. This is a point that has been made time and time again by numerous writers: Box, Christie, Hulsman, Mathiesen, De Hann and Steinert, to name a few. Crime is thus a ‘myth’ of everyday life.

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The lack of any intrinsic quality of an act which defines an event as crime can be emphasised by reference to a variety of ‘crimes’. Thus, for example, street violence, theft or unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle, rape, credit card fraud, the use or sale of certain illegal drugs, and the (consensual) nailing of a foreskin to a tree, are all defined as crime and thus should all be (and often are) reacted against with punishment. However, these ‘problematic situations’ as Hulsman (1986) calls them, can and do occur in totally different kinds of situations and for different reasons. Hulsman argues that since there is a heterogeneity of problems that are dealt with under the heading of ‘crime’, a standard response in the form of the criminal justice punishment cannot a priori be assumed to be effective. Further, he has pointed out that people who are involved in ‘criminal’ events do not appear in themselves to be a special category of people. In short, unless we have a story about what is crime and who is a criminal, it is impossible to recognise either. This is not to deny, of course, that there are some very nasty events which everyone calls crimes.

Criminology Perpetuates the Myth of Crime Criminology has not been self-reflective and has, on the whole, accepted the notion of crime. So much is it considered to be an unproblematic concept that few textbooks bother to query it. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology is illustrative. The first two editions (Maguire et al. 1994, 1997) contained no discussion of the notion of ‘crime’. It was not until the third edition that this lacuna was corrected with a chapter by Lacey (2002). This provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between legal and social constructions of crime and she adopts the notion of ‘criminalisation’ to show the ways in which these two different constructions of crime constantly interact. However, she does not go as far as Hulsman and suggest that there is no ontological reality to crime and there is no sustained analysis of the way the criminal law fails to capture the more damaging and pervasive forms of harm. At the same time, despite the post-modern critique of theory, criminology is still producing meta-theory to explain ‘crime’ or producing another cook’s tour from Lombroso through to strain theory. There is

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still a belief within criminology that it is possible to explain why people commit ‘crime’ notwithstanding that ‘crime’ is a social construct. The focus is still on content rather than on the social, political and economic context of the production of the regimes of truth. As Carol Smart pointed out, ‘the thing that criminology cannot do is to deconstruct crime’ (1990: 77).

‘Crime’ Consists of Many Petty Events The term ‘crime’ always invokes a certain level of seriousness, both popularly and—to a large extent—academically. However, the vast majority of events which are defined as crimes are very minor and would not, as Hulsman (1986) has pointed out, score particularly highly on a scale of personal hardship. A perusal of the Criminal Statistics for England and Wales, until 2002 an annual Home Office publication, illustrates this point. The police record the detail of hundreds of criminal events most of which create little physical or even financial harm and often involve no victim. In addition, many of the petty events defined as crimes are often covered by insurance and individuals are able to obtain compensation for the harm done or, indeed, for harms which either have not occurred or have been greatly exaggerated. There appears to be some expectation that since the potential harm has been insured against, it is legitimate and not seen as criminal by people making false claims in order to recover some the outlay for the costs of insurance. It is important to emphasise that this inclusion of vast numbers of petty events which would score relatively lowly on scales of seriousness is not simply a function of the definition of crime in the criminal law. We need to be clear that among those events that get defined as crime through the law, there are processes of selectivity in terms of which crimes are selected for control by criminal justice agencies, and how these events, once selected, are then defined by the courts, so that some rather than others are defined more seriously through the consistent attaching of harsher punishments. Thus Reiman presents a ‘pyrrhic defeat theory’ of criminal justice policy and systems, in which he argues that: ‘the definitions of crime in the criminal law do not reflect the only or the most

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dangerous of antisocial behaviours’; ‘the decisions onwhom to arrest or charge do not reflect the only or the most dangerous behaviours legally defined as criminal’; ‘criminal convictions do not reflect the only or the most dangerous individuals among those arrested and charged’; and that ‘sentencing decisions do not reflect the goal of protecting society from the only or the most dangerous of those convicted by meting out punishments proportionate to the harmfulness of the crime committed’ (Reiman 1998: 61).

‘Crime’ Excludes Many Serious Harms Many events and incidents which cause serious harm are either not part of the criminal law or, if they could be dealt with by it, are either ignored or handled without resort to it. Box, of course, developed this point in his classic book, Power, Crime and Mystification (1983), raising issues around corporate crime, domestic violence and sexual assault, and police crimes, all largely marginal to dominant legal, policy, enforcement and indeed academic, agendas, yet all at the same time creating widespread harm, not least among already disadvantaged and powerless peoples. There is little doubt, then, that the undue attention given to events, which are defined as crimes, distracts attention from more serious harm. But it is not simply that a focus on crime deflects attention from other, more socially pressing, harms—in many respects, it positively excludes them. The aim to preserve the label ‘crime’ for a discrete range of phenomena was, after all, the essence of Tappan’s (1947) celebrated response to Sutherland’s (1940, 1945, 1949) attempt to delineate a criminological focus upon ‘white-collar crime’, and this definitional issue continues to exercise those who would focus upon corporate and state crimes in particular (Friedrichs 1992, 1998a, b). Thus efforts, which have attempted to treat corporate or state crimes, have, in both areas, consumed a substantial amount of time and intellectual effort in the exercises of setting out, and then justifying, how and why certain activities of states and corporations can and should be treated through criminology. This is, as argued elsewhere with respect to the usage of the term ‘safety crimes’, more than an irritation—it has profound effects

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on the enterprise itself (Tombs 2000). Thus in the context of ‘safety crimes’, a focus upon recorded occupational injury entails reference to over 1 million workplace injuries per year in Britain; restriction to the term ‘crimes’ means making reference to 1000 or so successfully prosecuted health and safety offences. These are enormous differences and have implications in terms of what can be done with such data conceptually, theoretically and politically (Tombs 2000). Thus, while retaining a commitment to crime and law, attempts to introduce currently marginal concerns into the discipline of criminology (and, indeed, criminal justice)—for example, offences by the state or corporations—have raised enormous theoretical and practical tensions. Indeed, Christie (1986) has argued that these are not simply tensions, but necessary facets of criminal justice systems.

Constructing ‘Crimes’ In the absence of any intrinsic quality of an event or incident to differentiate them, the criminal law uses a number of complex tests and rules to determine whether or not a crime has been committed. One of the most important tests is the concept of mens rea—the guilty mind. It applies principally to the individual but not exclusively. For example, the highly questionable concept of conspiracy is used to prosecute groups of people (Hazell 1974). In some contexts the simple failure to act is sufficiently blameworthy to be a crime. Each of these tests is an artifice in a number of respects. It is, for example, impossible to look into a person’s mind and measure purpose, to understand what was going through their minds at the time or indeed what a reasonable person would think and/or do. Therefore, mens rea has to be judged by proxy through examining the person’s words and deeds and speculating as to the likely responses of a fictitious ideal/ordinary person. In addition, it is questionable whether a magistrate or jury in making a decision on guilt would actually arrive at their decision by the mere process of applying the appropriate technical legal test(s). Law’s complex reasonings in relation to defining crime, while not exclusively focused on the individual, have an individualising effect

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which extends beyond the notion of intent per se. Thus, even where intent is not the issue in determining liability—such as in the case of corporate manslaughter—then the individualising ethos of criminal law has militated against such successful prosecutions, while in contexts where this charge has been raised, such as following the Zeebrugge or Southall ‘disasters’, then charges of manslaughter have been raised against relatively low-level individuals on the scene of the incident namely, the assistant bosun or the train driver (see Tombs 1995; Slapper and Tombs 1999: 30–34, 101–107; and Chapter 10 [of Beyond Criminology: taking harm seriously], passim). It is also worth noting that the notion of intent presupposes, and then concretises, a moral hierarchy which, once examined, is counter common-sensical, certainly from the viewpoint of social harm. This point is made originally—to the best of our knowledge—by Reiman in a simple but striking fashion. Reiman contrasts the motives (and moral culpability) of most acts recognised as intentional murder with what he calls the indirect harms on the part of absentee killers, by which he means, for example, deaths which result where employers refuse to invest in safe plant or working methods, where manufacturers falsify safety data for new products, where illegal discharges are made of toxic substances into our environment, and so on. Reiman notes that intentional murderers commit acts which are focused upon one (or, rarely, more than one) specific individual, a point which we know holds for contemporary Britain, despite moral panics about ‘stranger danger’; thus in such cases the perpetrator—whom in many respect fits our archetypal portrait of a criminal—‘does not show general disdain for the lives of her fellows’ (Reiman 1998: 67). Reiman contrasts such forms of intentional killing with the deaths that result from ‘indirect’ harms. For Reiman, the relative moral culpability of the intentional killer and the mine executive who cuts safety corners is quite distinct and, he argues, contrary to that around which law operates; the mine executive wanted harm to no-one in particular, but he knew his acts were likely to harm someone—and once someone is harmed, the victim is someone in particular. There is no moral basis for treating one-on-one harm as criminal and indirect harm as merely regulatory (Reiman 1998: 67–70).

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Thus, Reiman concludes, the former is less likely to represent some generalised threat to others than is the latter. For Reiman, and his point is a convincing one, indifference is at least if not more culpable than intention, and ought to be treated as such by any criminal justice system (see Pemberton, Chapter 5 [of Beyond Criminology: taking harm seriously]). Yet the greater moral culpability that is attached both legally and popularly to acts of intention can also allow those implicated in corporate crimes to rationalise away the consequences of their actions (see Slapper and Tombs 1999: 105–107, 118–122; and Chapter 5 [of Beyond Criminology: taking harm seriously], passim).

Criminalisation and Punishment Inflict Pain Defining an event as a ‘crime’ either sets in motion, or is the product of, a process of criminalisation. The state appropriates the conflict and imposes punishment (Christie 1977). The state—via the criminal justice system—proceeds to seek to inflict suffering, once a crime and a criminal have been defined. It inflicts punishment on offenders, of which the prison sentence is the ultimate option and symbol (Blad et al. 1987). Christie (1986) is very deliberate in calling this process ‘pain delivery’. The criminal justice system delivers pain in all forms of punishment. He rejects the claims that prison, for example, seeks to rehabilitate, deter or provide just deserts. Indeed, the inflicting of pain by the state through the criminal justice system is a process that involves a number of discrete, but mutually reinforcing, stages: defining, classifying, broadcasting, disposing and punishing the individual concerned. Furthermore, these very processes create wider social harm s which may bear little relationship to the original offence and pain caused. For example, they may lead to loss of a job, a home, family life and ostracism by society. Moreover, such processes foreclose social policy or other responses to events (see below).

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‘Crime Control’ Is Ineffective The crime control approach has manifestly failed. On almost any publicly stated rationale upon which legitimacy has been sought for them, criminal justice systems are ineffective. Moreover, even on the basis of a narrow definition of ‘crime’, the number of events defined as ‘crime’ has been increasing steadily for many years with only a small recent downturn (Home Office 2003). Many of those who are defined as criminal return to crime after the infliction of pain. For example, a recent report in the UK claimed that ‘of those prisoners released in 1997, 58 per cent were convicted of another crime within two years. 36 per cent were back inside on another prison sentence’ (Social Exclusion Unit 2000: 1). If a car broke down on nearly 60 out of every 100 journeys, we would get rid of it. The criminal justice system does not work according to its own aims. The criminal justice system is supposed to do something about certain problems (crime) in society. It operates by processing those individuals (criminals) held responsible for certain actions. And the problem is seen to be solved if the offender has received a criminal justice system punishment. In his classic text Prison on Trial (1990), Mathiesen collates evidence from a wide range of sources (penal, sociological and criminological) regarding the defensibility of prison. He argues that no theoretical rationale for the prison—be this based upon individual prevention, rehabilitation, incapacitation, individual deterrence, general prevention or some pure neo-classicist calculation of proportional just punishment—is able to defend the prison. Yet despite the fact that it has never been able to work according to any stated rationales, it continues to exist, indeed proliferate. Pilger has recently observed that in the USA, ‘more people are now employed in what are known as the “prison industries” than in any of the country’s top 500 corporations, with the exception of General Motors’ (Pilger 1998: 70). Thus Mathiesen (1990) calls the prison a fiasco, arguing that we still have prisons because there exists a pervasive and persistent ideology of prison in our societies and he sets out several ideological functions in advanced welfare state capitalistic societies for the prison. In short, to broaden Mathiesen’s

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point, crime control activities have actual rationales beyond those of crime control.

‘Crime’ Gives Legitimacy to the Expansion of Crime Control Because crime is so often considered in isolation from other social harms it gives legitimacy to the further expansion of the crime control industry. As Christie (1993: 11) has pointed out, this industry solves two major problems that confront modern societies: differential access to paid work and the uneven distribution of wealth. It does this by providing profit and work while producing control of those who would otherwise cause trouble. Successive governments since the 1990s have made crime control a top priority. In the UK the amount committed to law and order has increased faster than any other area of public expenditure and, as a result, more and more people’s livelihoods are dependent on crime and its control. Modern social orders are thus being increasingly characterised by an unacknowledged but open war between young males, mainly from poor and deprived backgrounds, and an army of professionals in the crime control industry (Box 1983; Christie 1993; Reiman 1998). At the same time, many manufacturing industries have diversified to provide the equipment in the war against crime. As Hulsman (1986) has pointed out, the criminal justice system is characterised by a fundamental uncontrollability. For Henry and Milovanovic, conventional crime control efforts fuel the engine of crime: ‘Control interventions take criminal activity to new levels on investment and self-enclosed innovation. [.] Public horror and outrage call for more investment in control measures that further feed the cycle’ (1996: x–xi). Indeed, modernist criminological research, with the production of ‘scientific results’, plays its part in this circle by concretising and affirming reality (ibid.). More generally, numerous new courses in crime, criminology and criminal justice have been established in UK universities to

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train the personnel, while there have been large expansions in the collection and analysis of criminal intelligence and in the dissemination of crime news.

‘Crime’ Serves to Maintain Power Relations The concept of crime maintains existent power relations in a myriad of, more or less subtle, ways. First, although the criminal law has the potential to capture some of the collective harmful events perpetuated in the suites and in corridors of the state, it largely ignores these activities and focuses on individual acts and behaviours on the streets. This is in part a product of the individualistic nature of judicial reasoning and its search for the responsible individual. In part it is also a product of the centrality of the notion of a very particular version of crime and its discourses in our culture. Second, by its focus on the individual, the structural determinants which lead to harmful events—such as poverty, social deprivation and the growing inequalities between rich and poor— can be ignored. Third, the crime control industry is now a powerful force in its own right; it has a vested interest in defining events as crime. Fourth, politicians use crime to mobilise support both for their own ends and to maintain electoral support for their parties. Finally, recalling Reiman’s ‘pyrrhic defeat theory’, he argues that the net effect of the way in which the social reality of crime has been created in and reproduced through the criminal justice system and criminal justice policy is the perpetuation of ‘the implicit identification of crime with the dangerous acts of the poor’ (Reiman 1998: 61). Thus crime in many different sets of relationships serves to maintain existing power relations. Indeed, since its inception, criminology has enjoyed an intimate relationship with the powerful, a relationship determined largely by its failure to subject to critique the category of crime—and disciplinary agendas set by this—which has been handed down by the state, and around which the criminal justice system has been organised (Foucault 1980a; Cohen 1981; Garland 1992, 1997).

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The Potential of a Social Harm Approach This section outlines some reasons why a disciplinary approach organised around a concept of harm may be more theoretically coherent and imaginative, and more progressive politically. Taken together, these concerns, encompassing the deleterious activities of local and national states, and of corporations, upon people’s lives, whether in respect of lack of wholesome food, inadequate housing or heating, low income, exposure to various forms of danger, violations of basic human rights, and victimisation to various forms of crime, produces a sense of a need for a disciplinary home which could embrace a range of harms that affect many people throughout their life cycle. We have therefore sought a disciplinary approach that may encompass harms which are deleterious to people’s welfare from the cradle to the grave. Of course, when we speak of people’s welfare, we refer not (simply) to an atomised individual, or to men and women and their families, the social units which often experience harm. For it is clear that various forms of harms are not distributed randomly, but fall upon people of different social classes, genders, degrees of able-bodiedness, racial and ethnic groups, different ages, sexual preferences and so on. Further, one focus of a social harm approach might be upon harms concentrated upon particular geographical areas, so that, notwithstanding the enormous ideological baggage that follows such a term, it might be possible to deploy the term ‘community’ positively within social scientific discourses. The notion of a ‘harmed community’ could embrace groups of people in some form of collectivity who are physically or financially harmed by whatever means.

Defining Harm This still, of course, leaves an awful lot of work to be done in terms of defining precisely what is meant by social harm. And in this respect, this represents precisely the same problem that has long confronted criminology, though one largely avoided or ignored, certainly by ‘mainstream’ criminology. Intuitively, as we have stated, we would want the term to embrace a wide range of events and conditions that affect people during

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their life course. At the same time, one possible problem with a social harm approach is with its broadness, its encompassing nature. Here, we begin to mark out, tentatively not least since many of the chapters in the book elaborate substantially upon what we have to say, the range or types of harms of humans with which a social harm approach would be concerned. A social harm approach would first encompass physical harms. These would include premature death or serious injury through clinical iatrogenesis, violence such as car ‘accidents’, some activities at work (whether paid or unpaid), exposures to various environmental pollutants, assaults, illness and disease, lack of adequate food or shelter, or death, torture and brutality by state officials. It would also include financial/economic harm which would incorporate both poverty and various forms of property and cash loss. This latter sub-category is highly problematic, because our society operates on the principle of financial loss as the motor force of our social organisation— but we are thinking particularly here about a variety of forms of fraud, which includes pension and mortgage ‘mis-selling’, mis-appropriation of funds by government, private corporations and private individuals, increased prices for goods and services through cartelisation and pricefixing, and redistribution of wealth and income from the poorer to the richer through regressive taxation and welfare policies. Widening the notion of financial or economic harm would entail taking cognisance of the personal and social effects of poverty, unemployment and so on. Another possible and much more problematic area concerns emotional and psychological harm. These types of harms are much more difficult to measure and relate to specific causes. However, there is evidence, as some of the chapters in this book show, that these types of harms are significant in many different contexts. Finally, a developed understanding of social harm could include reference to cultural safety (Alvesalo 1999: 4), encompassing notions of autonomy, development and growth, and access to cultural, intellectual and informational resources generally available in any given society. There are obvious objections to be raised at such attempts to even begin to define harms. At best, it could be objected that harm is no more definable than crime, and that it too lacks any ontological reality;

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at worst, it might be objected that definitions of harm descend into a pure relativism, the production of particular political orientations to the world. We shall return to these objections below. Here, however, two points need emphasis. First, defining what constitutes harm is a productive and positive process—much more positive than simply pointing to a list of inquiry delimited by an existent body of (criminal) law. Indeed, a social harm approach is partially to be defined in its very operationalisation, in its efforts to measure social harms. The point is that if we are attempting to measure both the nature and the relative impact of harms which people bear, it is at least reasonable to take some account of people’s own expressions, and perceptions, of what those harms are! Thus a field of inquiry is (partially) defined by people’s understandings, attitudes, perceptions and experiences rather than preordained by a state. Part of the ‘problem’ of defining social harm, then, is not a problem at all, but a positive aspect—its definition is partially constituted by its operationalisation. Second, these objections seem to be premature and overly pessimistic. There are many examples where, despite some social phenomenon being difficult to define, we attempt to access and measure this via a series of indicators. What matters is what these indicators are, and how they are selected. For example, in the 1990s, the British government began to attempt to measure the ‘quality of life’, at first sight a highly intangible phenomenon. Yet, despite the fact that this is hardly a readily definable phenomenon, a number of proxy measures have been used. Again, these may be subject to dispute, but these disputes are about the substantive details rather than the validity or viability of the exercise. While we need to accept, then, that there are real difficulties in, first, identifying a range of harms that might fall within the rubric of social harm, and, second, developing a valid series of means of measuring these, we view these more as technical issues in, rather than as insuperable obstacles to, the development of such a disciplinary enterprise. Indeed, were we to fall at the first hurdle of definition in any attempt at an extended consideration of the utility of a social harm approach, then we would be accepting that criminology was a more useful set of discourses simply because its referent objects—law, crime—allowed it to proceed less ‘controversially’. This would be problematic to say the least—witness

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the vast amount of energy devoted to attempting to include white-collar, corporate or state crimes within this discipline. Rather than fall at this hurdle, then, let us explore what arguments can be proposed in favour of the development of a social harm approach. In the following section, we propose six such arguments which would produce a range of theoretical, conceptual, empirical and policy-oriented benefits.

The Vicissitudes of Life Perhaps the greatest benefit of an analysis of harm is that it would be the basis for developing a much more accurate picture of what is most likely to affect people during their life cycle. Harm could be charted and compared over time. While crime is charted temporally and, increasingly, spatially, it is seldom compared with other harmful events. Hence, crime statistics produce a very distorted picture of the total harm present in society, generating fear of one specific type of harm and perpetuating the myth of crime. A comparative and broader picture would allow a more adequate understanding of the relative significance of the harms faced by different groups of individuals. Finally, a stress upon social harm would also facilitate a focus upon harms caused by chronic conditions or states of affairs—such as exposure to airborne pollutants or to various health hazards at work, poor diet, inadequate housing, unemployment, state violence and so on—as opposed to the discrete events which tend to provide the remit of criminology and the criminal law. All of these foci would be of benefit for individuals, but they could also provide a basis for more rational social policy—policies, priorities and expenditures could be determined more on the basis of data, less on the basis of prejudice and mantra (the seemingly irresistible need to reduce ‘crime figures’). Thus a focus on harm could have benefits for local and national states— though we have to recognise that such a focus would present a potential threat to these states, since state activities (or inactivities) are likely to be highlighted as sources of harm

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The Allocation of Responsibility The study of harm permits a much wider investigation into who or what might be responsible for the harm done, unrestricted by the narrow individualistic notion of responsibility or proxy measures of intent sought by the criminal justice process. It allows consideration of corporate and collective responsibility. Thus, while the responsibility for serious rail crashes is often impossible to determine legally in any satisfactory fashion, companies involved in looking after the track and the train operators surely bear some moral responsibility for the multiple-fatality incidents? Indeed, the UK’s Law Commission (1996) has recently recommended that criminal responsibility should be extended to corporate bodies. While this would enlarge the scope of the criminal law, overall the restricted scope of criminal responsibility would remain. A study of harm allows a sharper focus on political and ministerial responsibility. In the UK, ministerial responsibility appears to have been increasingly watered down in recent years if the failure of ministers to resign in the face of major disasters and other harm events is any indication. The study of harm also raises the interesting new possibility of the allocation for responsibility in the failure to deal adequately with social problems. Dorling in Chapter 11 [of Beyond Criminology: taking harm seriously], for example, has indicated that some areas have experienced no homicides between 1981 and 2000 while other areas have experienced ten or more; these latter areas are highly correlated with poverty. Clearly, structural rather than individual factors are responsible. This conclusion thus raises the interesting question of whether the allocation of responsibility lies solely with the individual murderer or also with those who have either failed to eradicate or reproduced poverty in these areas.

Policy Responses A social harm approach might allow greater consideration to be given to appropriate policy responses for reducing levels of harm. The aim of welfare should be to reduce the extent of harm that people experience from the cradle to the grave. As we have indicated the focus of

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criminology and the use of the criminal law tend inevitably to generate responses to illegality which entail some form of retribution or punishment on the part of the state; what is more, these processes are in the hands of judges, magistrates, barristers and so on, who are largely unrepresentative of general populations, and in whose hands systems of ‘justice’ have time and time again proven to operate problematically (as can be seen, for example, in Chapter 7 [of Beyond Criminology: taking harm seriously]). A social harm approach, however, triggers quite a different set of responses to harm. Requiring policy responses entails a politicisation of an issue—rather than handing it over to unelected, largely unaccountable and certainly non-representative elites. Thus responses to social harms require debates about policy, resources, priorities and so on. Notwithstanding the limitations of formal political processes in so-called Western liberal democracies, these are surely more appropriate fora for debates than relatively closed and elite-dominated criminal justice systems. Of course, this shift from criminal justice to a broadly defined social policy raises questions of efficacy and justice. There are some who might wish to extend the scope of the criminal law to deal with activities and omissions that are hitherto either non- or ‘inadequately’ criminalised. For example, at least since Sutherland coined the term ‘white-collar’ crime in 1939, there have been successive generations of criminologists who have argued for the more effective criminalisation of white-collar and corporate offenders, not least in the name of some form of social justice—that is, an argument that if lower-class offenders are to be treated harshly, then an equality of pain should extend to other types of offenders. Such arguments have gone largely unheeded, so that the treatment of such offenders at all stages of the legal process remains highly favourable when compared with lower-class offenders (Slapper and Tombs 1999; and Chapter 10 [of Beyond Criminology: taking harm seriously], passim). This suggests something to us about the nature of the system—the criminal justice system—to which these arguments are directed. Moreover, it needs to be added that even if ‘successful’, such arguments may tend to legitimate the existence of an extended system of social control, within which the weakest and most vulnerable members of our societies have always suffered disproportionately. Further, but relatedly, such calls for more effective criminalisation need to be aware of the ‘flexibility’ of

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this system and the obduracy of its highly unequal functioning. Thus, those of us who have proposed reforms in the way in which corporate offenders, for example, are treated, must be clear that whenever we speak of policy implications, or propose reforms in relation to treating corporate offences as crimes, that these reforms may then be developed in ways that we had not intended. That is, ‘progressive’ reforms which seek to alter the basic workings of a highly unequal criminal justice system can and are often turned on their head, and may ultimately serve to exacerbate existing structures of inequality and vulnerability; the intentions behind proposals clearly do not determine their actual uses (Alvesalo and Tombs 2002).

Mass Harms A social harm approach might more accurately chart instances of mass harm. A basic weakness with crime and criminology, as we have seen, is that they are fundamentally related to the actions, omissions, intentions of and relationships between, individuals and hence have problems embracing corporate and state ‘crime’. All too often, the debates around these issues become entangled in ultimately somewhat sterile arguments regarding whether or not such harms do or should constitute crimes. Basically we have here attempts to squeeze into a discipline organised around individualistic notions of action and intention harms—both chronic and acute—caused by routine practices, Standard Operating Procedures, lines of organisational responsibility and accountability, general modus operandi, cultures of fear, indifference and thoughtlessness, and so on, on the part of bureaucratic entities which are not reducible to the actions, motives and intentions of the individual human agents who constitute them. There is, quite simply, a lack of fit. Equally great efforts are then expended—if ‘crimes’ have been identified—in attempting to determine effective policy responses within the existing criminal justice system. This enormous effort might better be used in determining more appropriate public policy responses. Thus, for example, developing mechanisms to render the activities of internal security services involved in ‘anti-terrorist’ activities more transparent and

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publicly accountable are likely to be more effective than using the criminal law to determine which particular individuals bear what degree of responsibility for particular transgressions, such as the effects of a ‘shoot to kill policy’; proposing changes to governance structures, or the nature of corporate ownership per se, is likely to prove more effective than seeking to identify individual company directors who might represent the corporate mind and who thus had the information to have prevented a particular ‘accident’ or ‘disaster’ occurring. The point is not that remedies through the criminal or civil law are worthless, but that remaining wedded to crime, law and criminal justice produces a myopia among many criminologists to wider, and at least potentially more effective, social and public policy responses.

Challenges to Power Foucault, apart from being very rude about criminology, did draw attention to the importance of the relationship between power and knowledge, and the need to resist the operation of power as it is articulated in all forms of relationships. In particular, he alerted us to the production of what he calls ‘regimes of truth’, and this should lead us to ask of claims to knowledge, who is producing these discourses and for what reasons? (Foucault 1979). Many feminists have also engaged in a long-term critique of discourses around crime and criminology, with some arguing for an abandonment of criminology (cf. Smart 1990; Carlen 1992). A similar position has been taken by some of the Marxists who worked within and around the National Deviancy Symposium in Britain. By contrast, and with no little irony, it is worth reiterating, as we have already noted, that there is perhaps less fundamental questioning now of the nature of criminology as a set of discursive practices, or as a discipline, than was the case 30 or 40 years ago. This is attributable, not least, to the decline of theorising within criminology, the pressures to gain external funding for academic research, the increased focus upon short-term utility as a basis for such research, and so on (Cohen 1981; Rock 1994; Hillyard and Sim 1997; Partington 1997; Holdaway and

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Rock 1998; Hillyard et al. 2004). If Foucault is a frequent reference point for contemporary criminology, the epistemological significance of much of Foucault’s work seems to have passed criminology by. One source of a challenge to the dominant discourse around crime and criminology could be a new discourse or discipline around social harm. This is not to claim that this discipline could escape the powerknowledge nexus. Indeed, the establishment of a discipline around social harm would not enter virginal discursive terrain, since states have historically defined harm in individualistic terms, terms which are institutionalised through medico-legal discourses and professions. But while a social harm approach can seek to develop social explanations, the origins of criminology render a shift from individualism highly problematic. Thus we are arguing that in its explicitly political starting point (see below), in its basis in intellectual reflexivity, in its commitment to the resurrection of subjugated knowledges, a social harm approach might entail a more progressive form of power-knowledge than that which criminology has come to represent in its 100-year plus history. It should be noted here also that such an approach is likely to pose quite different challenges for structures of power embedded within and around local and national states. All too often, the products of criminological reasoning have been used to bolster states, providing rationales for the extensions of state activities in the name of more effective criminal justice. Since the products of research around social harm are likely to implicate states, then the relationship with states will be quite different— there is likely to be less symbiosis in terms of activity and interests. Indeed, the seemingly increasingly close and complex links between local states and local, national and transnational capital mean that these challenges are both political and economic. In respect of challenges to existent power structures in these senses, then, an emphasis upon social harm may have far greater transformative potential than criminology.

A Critique of Risk Discourses of risk are currently popular following the work of Giddens (1991) and Beck (1992), in particular. Our society is increasingly

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conceptualised as a ‘risk society’ where insurance has become the key mechanism by which we deal with the lottery of life. A new form of knowledge based around actuarial decisions, probabilities and databases is being developed. Feeley and Simon (1992), as is well known, have applied the notion of risk to developments in penal policy and argue that there has been a shift away from a focus on rehabilitation and reform to a focus on risk. The penal system is now concerned about reducing the risk in the control of dangerous populations and an actuarial criminology has replaced a rehabilitative criminology. We would argue that a discourse around harm would pose a challenge to the overly individualistic (Pearce and Tombs 1998) and apolitical (Rigakos 1999) forms of analyses embraced by the notion of risk as it is dominantly being interpreted and developed. Risk has long historical roots located in the marketplace and associated with the problems and difficulties concomitant with the accumulation and investment of capital. It was then developed within the chemical and nuclear industries, not least as a way of defining legal corporate and state activity through reference to technicist calculations such as cost-benefit analysis, quantitative risk assessment, notions of acceptable risk based on the cost of a life, and so on (Pearce and Tombs 1996). As Garland (1997) suggests, insurance has promoted a form of ‘responsibilities autonomy’ and ‘dedramatised’ the social conflicts that arise out of economic life. Harm focuses on collectivities not in order to calculate individual risk but to seek a collective response to its reduction. It opens up discussions about the conflicts in economic life around the differentials in wealth and life chances. A social harm approach would, in this sense, be more positive.

Criminology, Social Harm and Justice It must be emphasised again that we are not arguing that a social harm approach has a necessary superiority over criminology. The key issue is that where there are competing claims then these must be judged according to which approach will produce greater social justice. This is ultimately a political question. Moreover, we would argue that these

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political questions must be addressed at both the strategic and the limited range of outcomes (albeit more or less favourable). In general, then, it is our view that all forms of theorising and intellectual practice tend to reify, support and indeed enhance that very phenomenon which is at the centre of their activity. Disciplines produce and reproduce their objects of study. Thus, no matter how deconstructive, radical or critical a criminology is, in the very fact of engaging in criminology, this at once legitimates some object of ‘crime’. In this context, it is worth emphasising that we have referred in this chapter constantly to the potential of criminology and the potential of a social harm approach. But criminology has been established as a discipline for well over 100 years and, while it would be simply wrong to claim that criminology has not contributed to any progressive social change, it is at least instructive that we must still couch progressive effects largely in terms of potential. Indeed, there is significant room for debate as to whether or not these particular instances of progressive social change could not have been achieved more effectively through means quite different from criminology and reference to, or use of, the criminal law. Even if we take the benign view, and grant criminology its progressive effects, then it remains clear that the costs of this progress, as criminology has established itself as a discipline, have been high. As is now well documented, one of the consistent effects of the category of crime and criminal justice systems—both largely accepted by most criminologists and forms of criminology—is the reproduction and exacerbation of social and economic inequalities. As Reiman (1998) so succinctly put it in the title of a now classic text, a key effect of the carnival mirror of harms around which criminal justice systems are organised is that The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Get Prison. Indeed, the contours of this carnival mirror are not incidental, but integral, to the nature of contemporary criminal justice systems. And it is this integral nature which explains the obduracy of dominant social constructions of crime—reproduced, of course, by criminologists—in the face of the enormous amount of critical scrutiny to which these have been, and remain, subject. While criminology may have, and criminologists certainly have been, responsible for important and progressive theoretical and practical work,

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the efforts of over 100 years’ focus on the object of crime have been accompanied by: a depressing and almost cyclical tour around a series of cul-de-sacs in search of the ‘causes’ of crime; vastly expanded criminal justice systems which, at the same time, have proven unsuccessful on the basis of almost any publicly provided rationale for them; and ever increasing processes of criminalisation, as a succession of critical criminologists have demonstrated. If criminology is now well established as a discipline, the costs of legitimacy and professionalisation have been, and continue to be, high when measured against any index of social justice. On the other hand, we would argue that in some respects an alternative discipline, such as that based around social harm, could barely be less successful. But it also entails pitfalls, and some might argue that these are more problematic than those entailed in ‘doing’ criminology, since the dangers associated with the latter activity are at least known (formally), while those attendant upon ‘doing’ social harm are relatively unknown. In the short to medium term, then, we should note that whether or not a new disciplinary focus is to emerge, we must accept that raising issues of social harm does not entail making a simple, once-and-for-all choice between representing these as either crimes or harms; each may form part of an effective political strategy. What we would add is that it is crucial that whether/when we speak of crime or harm, we must be clear about which we are speaking on particular occasions, that is, description and analysis must not slide between the two, not least due to the risk of opening up such work to charges from critics that it lacks rigour or displays bias, for example. In this respect, the development of a discipline organised around social harm may prove progressive, since it provides a further disciplinary basis from which, and series of outlets within which, treatments of social harm may—where deemed appropriate—proceed.

References Alvesalo, A. (1999). Meeting the Expectations of the Local Community on Safety—What about White-Collar Crime? Paper Presented at the 27thAnnual

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Conference of the European Group for the Study of Deviance, Social Control, September 2–5. Palanga, Lithuania. Alvesalo, A., & Tombs, S. (2002). Working for Criminalisation of Economic Offending: Contradictions for Critical Criminology? Critical Criminology, an International Journal, 11(1), 21–40. Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE. Blad, J., van Mastrigt, H., & Uildriks, N. (1987). The Criminal Justice System as a Social Problem: An Abolitionist Perspective. Rotterdam: Erasmus University. Box, S. (1983). Power, Crime, and Mystification. London: Tavistock Publications. Braithwaite, J. (1995). White-Collar Crime. In G. Geis (Ed.), White-Collar Crime: Classic and Contemporary Views (3rd ed.). Free Press. Carlen, P. 1992. Criminal Women and Criminal Justice: The Limits to, and Potential of, Feminist and Left Realist Perspectives. In R. Matthews & J. Young (Eds.), Issues in Realist Criminology. Sage. Christie, N. (1977). Conflicts as Property. British Journal of Criminology,17 (1), 1–15. Christie, N. (1986). Suitable Elements. In H. Bianchi & van Swaaningen (Eds.), Abolitionism: Towards a Non-Repressive Approach to Crime. Free University Press. Christie, N. (1993). Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags, Western Style. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Cohen, S. (1981). Footprints on the Sand: A Further Report on Criminology and the Sociology of Deviance in Britain. In M. Fitzgerald, G. McLennan, & J. Fawson (Eds.), Crime and Society: Readings in History and Theory. Routledge/Open University. Feeley, M., & Simon, J. (1992). The New Penology: Notes on the Emerging Strategy of Corrections and its Implications. Criminology, 30, 449–474. Friedrichs, D. (1992). White-Collar Crime and the Definitional Quagmire: A Provisional Solution. Journal of Human Justice., 3(2), 5–21. Friedrichs, D. (1998a). State Crime: Defining, Delineating and Explaining State Crime (Vol. 1). Ashgate Friedrichs, D. (1998b). State Crime: Exposing, Sanctioning and Preventing State Crime (Vol. 2). Ashgate. Garland, D. (1992). Knowledge in Criminal Justice and its Relation to Power. British Journal of Criminology, 44 (2), 403–422. Garland, D. (1997). Of Crimes and Criminals: The Development of Criminology in Britain. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan, & R. Reiner (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford University Press.

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Giddens, A. (1991). The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Standford University Press. Hazell, R. (1974). Conspiracy and Civil Liberties: A Cobden Trust Memorandum (Occasional Papers in Social Administration No 55). Social Administration Research Trust. Hillyard, P., & Sim, J. (1997). The Political Economy of Socio-Legal Research. In P. Thomas (Ed.), Socio-legal Studies. Dartmouth. Hillyard, P., Sim, J., & Tombs, S., & Whyte, D. (2004). Leaving a ‘Stain upon the Silence’: Critical Criminology and the Politics of Dissent. British Journal of Criminology, 44 (3), 369–390. Holdaway, S., & Rock, P. (1998). Thinking About Criminology: Facts are Bits of Biography. In S. Holdaway, & P. Rock (Eds.), Thinking About Criminology. UCL Press. Home Office. 2003. Crime in England and Wales: 2002–2003. Home Office. Hulsman, L. (1986). Critical Criminology and the Concept of Crime. In H. Bianchi, & R. van Swaaningen (Eds.), Abolitionism: Towards a Non-Repressive Approach to Crime. Free University Press. Lacey, N. (2002). Legal Construction of Crime. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan, & R. Reiner (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford University Press. Law Commission. (1996). Legislating the Criminal Code: Involuntary Manslaughter (Report No. 237). HMSO. Maguire, M., Morgan, R., & Reiner, R. (Eds.). (1994). The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maguire, M., Morgan, R., & Reiner, R. (Eds.). (1997). The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon. Mathiesen, T. (1990). Prison on Trial . London: SAGE. Muncie, J. (1999, July 11–15).Decriminalising Criminology. Paper Presented at the British Society of Criminology Conference. Liverpool. Partington, M. 1997. Socio-Legal Research in Britain: Changing the Funding Environment. In P. Thomas (Ed.), Socio-legal Studies. Dartmouth. Pearce, F., & Tombs, S. (1996). Hegemonic, Risk and Governance: ‘Social’ Regulation and the US Chemical Industry. Economy and Society, 25 (3), 428– 454. Pearce, F., & Tombs, S. (1998). Toxic Capitalism: Corporate Crime and the Chemical Industry. Aldershot: Ashgate. Pilger, J. (1998). Hidden Agendas. London: Vintage. Reiman, J. (1998). The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class and Criminal Justice. Chichester: Wiley.

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Rigakos, G. (1999). Risk Society and Actuarial Criminology: Prospects for a Critical Discourse. Canadian Journal of Criminology, 41(2), 137–150. Rock, P. 1994. The Social Organisation of British Criminology. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan, & R. Reiner (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford University Press. Slapper, G., & Tombs, S. (1999). Corporate Crime. London: Longman Criminology Series. Smart, C. (1990). Feminist Approaches to Criminology: Or Postmodern Woman Meets Atavistic Man. In L. Gelsthorpe, & A. Morris (Eds.), Feminist Perspectives in Criminology. Open University Press. Social Exclusion Unit. (2000). Reducing Re-offending by Ex-Prisoners. London: Cabinet Office. Sutherland, E. (1940). White-Collar Criminality. American Sociological Review, 5, 1–12. Sutherland, E. (1945). Is ‘White-Collar Crime’ Crime? American Sociological Review, 10, 5–12. Sutherland, E. (1949). White-Collar Crime. New York: Holt Reinhart and Winston. Tappan, P. (1947). Who Is the Criminal? American Sociological Review, 12, 96–102. Tombs, S. (1995). Law, Resistance, and Reform: Regulating Safety Crimes in the UK. Social & Legal Studies, 4 (3), 371–391. Tombs, S. 2000. Official Statistics and Hidden Crime: Research Safety Crimes. In V. Jupp, P. Davies, & P. Francis (Eds.), Doing Criminological Research (pp. 64 – 84). Sage. van Swaaningen, R. (1997). Critical Criminology: Visions from Europe. London: Sage. van Swaaningen, R. (1999). Reclaiming Critical Criminology: Social Justice and the European Tradition. Theoretical Criminology, 3(1), 5–28.

3 Ideology and Harm Simon Winlow, Emma Kelly, and Tammy Ayres

Introduction Despite its reputation for boundless analytical obscurantism and ‘difficulty’, ‘ideology’ is a rather straightforward concept. An ‘ideology’ is simply a set of ideas or beliefs that possess a degree of internal coherence. Usually, when we are talking about ideology, we are talking about S. Winlow (B) Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] E. Kelly Leeds Trinity University, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] T. Ayres Leicester University, Leicester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_3

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ideas that seek to address the fields of politics and economics. The concept of ‘ideology’ is a product of the European Enlightenment. In the decades that followed the Enlightenment—as capitalism established itself as an increasingly global economic system built upon an identifiable set of ideas that appeared to overwhelm the beliefs and traditions of the old world—the study of ideology became associated with critical scholars interested in identifying and deconstructing those ‘ideologies’ that appeared to exhort great influence upon everyday life (see Eagleton 2007, for discussion). Marx’s analysis of capitalist ideology is, in retrospect, rather basic and descriptive, but it established a mode of analysis—‘the critique of ideology’—which, especially during the middle third of the twentieth century, became a key feature of the academic accounts of the organisation of everyday life in capitalist societies. Marx was interested in identifying the processes that allowed an economic system that enriched only a tiny proportion of the overall population to continue. Why didn’t those cast as expendable and exploitable units of production rise up to overthrow the parasitic elites who had grown fat from the labour of others? Why was such a demonstrably unfair system allowed to stand? Marx’s account of class conflict, perhaps the best-known aspect of his work, is closely tied to his account of the ruling ideology—that is, the ideas that in every epoch exhort great influence upon the social world—and together they provide a reasonably clear framework for understanding Marx’s critical engagement with the work of Hegel and the resulting development of dialectical materialism. In the rest of the chapter, we will offer a basic description of Marx’s critique of the ruling ideology. We will then connect Marx’s account, which influenced the tone and style of all critical accounts of ideology in the twentieth century, to the more complex and detailed work of Gramsci and Althusser, who offer the most notable post-Marxist analyses of capitalist ideology. Then, drawing upon the work of Lacan and Zizek, we will offer an ultra-realist interpretation of ideology. Ultra-realists approach the problem of ideology from a different direction. Shifting our focus, ultra-realists argue, allows us to reconsider the fundamental question that should preoccupy criminologists and those interested in explaining the proliferation of social harms: why, rather than seeking

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solidarity, do we continue to pursue self-interested ends that negatively impact upon others and the natural environments upon which we depend? As will become clear, our goal here is not to suggest that ideologies are harmful. Ideologies, properly understood, provide us with a means of interpreting the world around us. The common drive to rid the world of ideology—which came to the fore in the middle third of the twentieth century and lingers still—simply moves us deeper into a dominant ideology that refuses to countenance ideological diversity. Of course, it is always the ideology of the other that is judged problematic. Our own commitments always seem measured, reasonable, ethical and grounded upon truth. It is, of course, certainly true that ideologies can encourage selfishness, bigotry and hatred, but they can also encourage altruism, selflessness and a commitment to the common good. Our goal is to encourage you to think about how our thoughts and feelings about one another and the world we share are organised, and why it is that we appear unable to enact the genuine change our world so sorely needs.

Marx on Ideology Marx began by looking closely at the ruling class and thinking about how the startling advantages experienced by members of this class were justified both to themselves and to the broader population. He looked carefully at how the ideas associated with this class were popularised and dispersed throughout the social system. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels (1965: 61) succinctly summarise their account of the dominant ideology thus: ‘the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force’. Throughout history, Marx and Engels suggest, ruling elites have been able to justify their privileges and disguise social injustice by shaping popular sentiments. A reality of profound injustice was obfuscated with words and ideas that prevented the working class from seeing the world as it is. The reality of their social position—in which they were rendered mere units of production

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and deprived of their humanity—could be neither accessed nor understood, because the ruling ideology covered over this reality with its own justificatory ideas and narratives, and its increasingly diverse systems of meaning and interpretation. For Marx and Engels, then, the ruling ideology contained a range of ideas—and ‘false ideas’ (see Eagleton 2007, for discussion)—that legitimised the domination of the ruling class and the unremitting struggle of the masses.

Gramsci on Ideology Gramsci was imprisoned by Mussolini’s fascist regime in the late nineteen twenties, and he remained in prison until his eventual death some ten years later. It was in prison that Gramsci (2005) produced his most popular work, The Prison Notebooks. In this posthumously published work, Gramsci offers an account of ideology that was principally concerned with the field of culture. Gramsci eschewed the ‘scientific socialism’ most commonly associated with Engels (2007). He also sought to move beyond Marx’s focus on economic processes that came to the fore in his later works (see, for example, Marx 2013. Marx died in 1883. The first edition of his Capital was first published in 1886). This did not mean he succumbed to the breathless, appreciative account of ideological struggle commonly associated with the English empiricists who followed him and occasionally drew upon his work (see especially Thompson 1975; see Winlow et al. 2015, for discussion). Gramsci’s account is far dourer than is often assumed. In a similar vein to Marx, Gramsci’s interpretation of ideology and culture begins with a fundamental question: why do the poor not rise up to challenge their oppression? This may seem a simple and straightforward starting point, but even this is disputed by some notable leftist intellectuals. E. P. Thompson (1996), a leftist historian who played a huge role in shaping the humanities and social sciences in post-war Britain, believed that there was clear evidence that the people have throughout history risen up to challenge oppression. The edifice of left idealist criminology, once considered edgy and countercultural, but now perfectly mainstream in criminological research and curricula, finds its roots in this tradition. Every unjust power, Thompson

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assumed, necessarily inspires countervailing popular oppositional movements. Thompson, while on the surface of things a historian given to careful empirical analysis, was in fact a dedicated humanist whose work displays a disavowed commitment to naturalism. Thompson believed that ‘the people’ would naturally take up the fight against oppression, and so his careful empirical work was shaped by a desire to discover what he already believed to be true. The same is true for left idealists working in criminology today. The people, idealists argue, do not meekly accept oppression and injustice (see, for example, Ferrell 1995). Every attempt to establish control is met with resistance. Contestation, insubordination and resistance are for them constant features of a diverse cultural field containing endless opportunities for organic expression and creativity in opposition to ruling elites (see, for example, Hall and Jefferson 2006). Just as sure as night follows day, every injustice inspires a fight for justice. While this account, offered by Thompson and so many others, of constant ideological struggle on the field of culture has been hugely influential and allowed idealists the comfort of assuming that ordinary people were on their side, hated capitalism and refused to countenance oppression, Gramsci saw things very differently. Gramsci did not believe that ordinary people were immediately capable of seeing and understanding the totality of capitalism and their place within it. Nor for Gramsci were ordinary people naturally equipped to take on the fight to depose capitalism and establish a more just social and economic system in its place. Resistance, Gramsci understood, would not naturally arise in communities worn down by the injustices of capitalism. Rather, resistance needed to be inspired, created, nurtured and carried forward by endeavour, sacrifice and commitment. The role of leftist intellectuals in this struggle was to educate the masses, make them cognisant of the capitalist system and its effects, and open up the possibility of change. By the time Gramsci began to write The Prison Notebooks, capitalism was a veteran and increasingly global power. Despite perennial exploitation, the working class in the West had yet to awaken from its prolonged slumber to assert itself as the principal agent of history. Gramsci wanted to explain why this was so, but also how things could change. As the nineteen twenties gave way to the nineteen thirties, Western capitalism again experienced one of its periodic downturns. However, this time

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the crisis was deeper and more protracted than ever before. The Great Depression of the nineteen thirties ripped through the global economic system and undermined many of the myths that supported it. The commonplace faith that the free hand of the market would, left to its own devices, create growth and popular prosperity was clearly misplaced. A proportion of the inquiring working class could now catch at least a glimpse of a reality beneath ideology, the reality of an economic system that enriched a tiny percentage of the population at the expense of everybody else. And yet, this historic revelation of the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist system did not open the way for what was, for traditional Marxists, an inevitable movement toward socialism. The great majority of the population hoped only that capitalism would recover quickly so that pre-crash normality could return. In 1936, at the height of the Great Depression, the Jarrow marchers, venerated at the time by many British leftists, marched not for socialism but for jobs— that is, jobs within the capitalist system. Only leftist radicals hoped the system would collapse entirely so that a new egalitarian society could be built in its place. While capitalism’s regular conflagrations and crises did indeed appear to open up the possibility of pushing history in a different direction, it also became depressingly clear that these opportunities were not solely the preserve of the political left. Gramsci’s imprisonment in Italy during the nineteen thirties resulted in part from the gains that had been made by the political right in the wake of the global economic crash. Gramsci looked at the world around him and at the great tomes written by leftist intellectuals and decided changes needed to be made. Now was not the time for baseless optimism. The comforting assumption that the inherent contradictions of capitalism would lead inevitably to a future socialist utopia was of little use to Gramsci as he watched the fault lines of Europe deepen from his prison window. The left, he believed, must accept the huge amount of work that needed to be done to politicise ordinary men and women and turn them away from the seductions of capitalism. Ideology and ideological domination needed to be rethought and rearticulated for a new era. Gramsci’s major contribution to the critique of capitalist ideology can be found in his extrapolation of the much older concept of hegemony. Traditionally, this concept had sought to capture the organisation and

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nature of leadership and control. Gramsci’s use of the phrase is slightly different and focuses for the most part on domination. In The Prison Notebooks, Gramsci was concerned with the ways that elites win consent for their rule. How were ordinary men and women encouraged to submit to a system that created huge wealth, but also desperate suffering and diverse forms of injustice? Gramsci looked at the development of the cultural field and argued that values, codes and cultural mores were inevitably shaped by those with social power in ways that encouraged the majority to form the view that the system is more or less permanent and basically just, and that the power held by the elite was for the most part legitimate. The normative culture, Gramsci argued, had a superficial diversity connected to social class. Men from the working class, for example, were encouraged to adopt cultural concerns that contributed to the status quo and benefitted capitalism. The same was true for other social groups, although the cultural concerns of these various groups were often quite different. Each group in its own way contributed to the reproduction of a system that, for Gramsci, served only the interests of the elite. Gramsci wrote in detail and with great skill about intellectualism and the role of intellectuals in educating the masses and ridding them of their illusions. However, despite the continued popularity of Gramsci’s critique of ideology, his thesis contains a number of omissions and simplifications. To cut straight to the heart of the matter, Gramsci assumed that the central problem of ideology is, in essence, cognitive. There is a reality underneath ideology that people cannot see because they are enmeshed in the meaning systems of capitalism. Their lives are filled up with tasks and their brains are filled with normative cultural concerns. They do not think about the forces that shape their experiences, attitudes, hopes and dreams. However, intellectuals can intrude upon the continuous reproductive of everyday life. Their role, as Gramsci saw it, was to educate the people and bring them to the realisation that diverse forms of human suffering have a shared root in the global capitalist system and the asocial exchange relation upon which the whole system rests. With the assistance of intellectuals, Gramsci believed people could move beyond ideology to see the world as it truly is. Once they do so, history will begin to move off in a different direction. This is

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a straightforward and seductive account of how we might change the world, but do people really discard long-held beliefs and cultural preoccupations when equipped with an alternative account of reality? Should we assume that, once the capitalist system and its harms and injustices are fully explained, ordinary men and women will detach themselves from the myths that sustain the system and commit to the fight for something better? What is missing from Gramsci’s work is an acknowledgement of the truly incisive nature of ideology. Capitalist ideology is complex and much more intrusive than Gramsci and many other leftist intellectuals assume. It moves beyond rationality to shape our dreams and desires. Is it possible to simply give up our desires when we become aware that they lead to negative consequences, or that they are not the product of our own rational calculation? Capitalist ideology, especially in its contemporary manifestation, is not simply about covering up reality with myth and popularising accounts of meritocracy, justice and freedom. It contains potent seductions and lures. The hypnotic power of these compelling forces cannot simply be dismissed as soon as we become cognisant of their reality. Knowing that advertisements exist only to sell does not necessarily render them completely ineffective. Becoming consciously aware that the pleasures of consumerism will quickly fade—and that we are all, in various ways, forced along a conveyor belt that requires us to buy, discard and then buy again in an endless, environmentally destructive cycle that enriches a tax avoiding oligarchic elite and immiserates low wage production workers in the developing world—does not necessarily diminish the pleasures of consumerism. Giving up smoking, junk food, alcohol or drugs is not simply a matter of becoming consciously aware that such things are harmful. Gramsci is absolutely correct to note that we live in an illusion. Much that we take for granted is illusory and prevents us from seeing reality. However, he omits the fact that we often cling on to our illusions, even when we know them to be so. Familiar illusions, we must recognise, often furnish us with a measure of comfort even when we understand their nature. To move away from what is familiar into an as yet unknown space that appears to hold promise but also appears strewn with a range of snares and pitfalls is not a simple or

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straightforward task. To move forward, we need to move beyond cognitivism and understand how ideology can shape our internal psychological life.

Althusser on Ideology Althusser’s account of ideological control developed in part as a response to Gramsci’s comprehensive and widely discussed work on ideology and culture. While a confirmed Marxist, Althusser dismissed Marx’s early humanist writing and, drawing upon key currents in French intellectual culture, instead advocated a structuralist reading of Marx. His work drew considerable acclaim. For Althusser, Marx was, once he had overcome his early youthful dalliance with humanism, principally concerned with objectively appraising the social structures that supported the capitalist system. While Althusser’s intellectual influence was considerable, he also attracted to the opprobrium of E. P. Thompson (see especially 1996)—a contemporary of Althusser who we discussed briefly above—and many others. Thompson rejected Althusser’s rather baroque high theory and gloomy assessment of humanity, and Althusser rejected entirely the historicism and empiricism of Thompson and other Marxist historians. Althusser considered Marxist humanism—by far the most influential branch of Marxism in Britain—to be philosophically moribund and hopelessly idealistic. Althusser’s account of ideological control centres upon the organisation and power of ideological state apparatuses (see especially Althusser 2014). Althusser’s account is more abstract than that offered by Gramsci, at least in part because Althusser sought to introduce elements of psychoanalytic theory—and other elements of continental thought popular at the time—into developing and diversifying Marxist critiques of ideology and political economy. Althusser followed Marx in focusing upon the processes that enabled capitalist society to reproduce itself. Capitalism requires the interminable reproduction of the forces of production, the relations of production and the conditions of production. Of course, actual labour power—the force of production—needed to be available in order to produce goods and services for sale. But this is not enough.

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Capitalism also requires the relations of production and the conditions of production to be endlessly reproduced. In short, if capitalism is to continue, it needs the social arrangements that surround the labour process to be in place. Workers must accept the wage form. They must be willing to toil for a wage and accept that the capitalist will take the surplus for himself, they must accept their dependence upon these exploitative arrangements, and they must understand the patterning of social life in relation to work to be natural and unproblematic. The social arrangements that allow the injustices of capitalist production to continue are the focus of Althusser’s critique of ideology. Althusser distinguishes between repressive state apparatuses and ideological state apparatuses. While both work to reproduce the prevailing status quo, repressive state apparatuses are concerned, in a rather direct and obvious way, with the subjugation of the working class and the reproduction of the existing social arrangements that allow the capitalist machine to continue to operate. The criminal justice system, for Althusser, acts to enforce the domination of the ruling class, and the same is true of the broader legal system, the government, the armed forces, the police and so on. Together these institutions form an expansive apparatus to repress the population and aid the process of capitalist reproduction. Ideological state apparatuses are more concerned with producing, circulating and enforcing a range of narratives that, in a slightly more subtle way, aid the reproduction of the social arrangements that make the reproduction of capitalism possible. Like the repressive state apparatuses, ideological state apparatuses have the ability to respond violently to insubordination, but the violence of ideological state apparatuses is essentially symbolic. Ideological state apparatuses do not need to physically repress an individual who challenges the prevailing order of things. Rather, such individuals can be attacked symbolically. Their identities and their perceived value as human beings can quite easily be destroyed through the targeted and strategic use of language. Ideological state apparatuses are for Althusser quite diverse and exist well beyond what we imagine is the usual remit of the state. Schools, churches, universities, the entertainment system and so on appear apolitical but function to reproduce what already exists. They circulate ideas and narratives that sustain the status quo, but they also disseminate a

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complex range of meanings that sit alongside these ideas and narratives and serve to justify and encourage our commitment to them. If we think about the narratives that surround educational attainment, we can begin to see clearly what Althusser is driving at. We strive for educational success to satisfy our parents, to move onto the next educational level and then into the world of work. We can gain a degree of pleasure from outcompeting our peers and inspiring the envy of others, and we can draw sustenance from a broad range of positive narratives about empowerment, achievement, self-improvement and the generally edifying character of education. We come to believe that, in committing to the processes of education and educational advancement, we are committing to processes that will, inevitably, improve our lives and make us free. However, Althusser would be keen to argue that these are small facets of ideology that reproduce the status quo and push our lives forward in a predictable manner. In pursuing educational attainment, we are not freeing ourselves at all. We are forcing ourselves deeper into the realm of ‘unfreedom’. We aspire to climb the social hierarchy rather than embracing ‘equality’. When we want to avail ourselves of the benefits of prestige and attainment, we have already accepted the system’s objects of desire. Attempting to progress personally through the social order lends legitimacy to the system. We accept and subscribe to the standard narratives that tell us upward social mobility is valuable and worthwhile, and that progress is possible for talented and hardworking individuals. Advanced education also equips us with practical and esoteric skills that can be harnessed by capitalists and used in the scramble for growth and market advantage. The supposed freedoms and personal benefits of educational attainment are, in Althusser’s account of capitalist ideology, merely positive associations that act to bond us all to the reproduction of the system as it stands. Althusser’s account of ideology, then, differs from that offered by Gramsci and Marx in a number of important respects. Althusser claims that we are always-already knee deep in ideology. Drawing upon the language of the capitalist system’s diverse, ideological support mechanisms is inevitable. We are, in effect, born into this language. We can do no other than accept the basic rituals and rules of the world as it is presented to us. Simply by responding logically to the world around

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us, we are inevitably drawn into—or, to use Althusser’s phrase, interpellated by—the social processes that sustain capitalist reproduction. We are the product of powerful social forces rather than free-willed agents capable of choosing our own abiding concerns and fashioning our own biographies. However, the most important feature of Althusser’s work on ideology, for our purposes at least, is his claim that ideology extends well beyond the realm of ideas. Althusser’s critique of ideology moves attention from minds to bodies. Ideology, Althusser maintained, is something that is enacted . We do not simply think in ways that sustain capitalism, every day we act to sustain capitalism. We discuss this crucial shift from mind to body in more detail below.

The Reversal of Ideology Ultra-realists (see especially Hall and Winlow 2015) have drawn on the work of Jacques Lacan, the famous French psychoanalyst, to build their account of human subjectivity. Lacan suggested that, to avoid the horrors of unsymbolisable experience, we attach ourselves to symbolic orders that equip us with the means of interpreting ourselves, our bodily experience and the world around us. Symbolic orders, for Lacan, are not rooted in truth. Rather, they are internally coherent meaning systems that give to us the comforts and pleasures of organised and commonly accepted interpretations of reality. Like others who form our community, we accept the central narratives of the symbolic order as ‘truth’, and so we are able to live reasonably orderly lives held in place by the existence of these ‘truths’. We grow into social roles and accept the meanings and interpretations that form the core of the symbolic order. From this foundation, ultrarealists, influenced especially by the work of Slavoj Zizek (2009), claim that we have hitherto misunderstood ideology. The basic framework of ideology and ideological control, which we can see clearly in the work of Marx and Gramsci, needs to be flipped on its head. For ultra-realists (see, for example, Winlow and Hall 2012; Raymen 2018; Lloyd 2019; Kotze 2019), standard critiques of ideology present ideology as a problem of seeing. In the work of Marx and Gramsci especially, ideology is presented as a system that prevents us from seeing and coming to terms with reality.

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The reality of capitalism, which concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a small elite, is disguised by an ideology that presents the general order of things as natural, just and the outcome of informed democratic oversight. From this perspective, the ruling ideology encourages us to believe that poverty is the result of laziness, that early death among the poorest results from their self-damaging but independent choices, that the wealth of the elite results from their boundless dynamism and talent, and that the system itself is meritocratic and managed not by elites but by officials given a mandate by the people. And, of course, the ideology of capitalism also contains powerful seductive qualities that allow members of the dispersed and fragmented contemporary working class to imagine themselves not as perennial losers but as potential future winners. Gramsci and Althusser tended not to focus on such matters, but it is clear that the allure of money and prestige, and the drive to have others envy our success, pushes us back towards capitalism’s vivid symbolism and interminable competition (see, for example, Hall et al. 2008). As Althusser knew, telling those at the bottom that anyone can make it to the top reinforces the legitimacy of the system and creates the human energy capitalism needs to reproduce itself. In our hearts, we may know that only a tiny number will make the journey, but the fact that some make it from the bottom to the top reinforces the conviction that effort, talent and determination will lead to success. If we display enough fortitude, fight our way free from our backgrounds and transform ourselves into a bona fide member of the elite, we will become perfect representatives of what is achievable and legitimise the system in the eyes of an attentive audience keen to follow in our footsteps. And, of course, popular culture invites us to dream of life among the super-elite, a life, we imagine, in which all our present frustrations will be wiped away and our fantasies will be made real. There is much value in the traditional Marxist account of capitalist ideology. At a fundamental level, it encourages us to think about our beliefs and commitments, about where they might come from and who they might serve. But does the traditional Marxist model, even with the slight adjustments and additions we have offered above, still offer a comprehensive treatment of the relationship between the capitalist economy and contemporary social life? Are we really denied access to

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reality and forced to accept an assortment of inter-connected myths about ourselves and our lives together? Certainly, the world we see around us today is radically different from that appraised by Marx, Gramsci and Althusser. Shouldn’t we build a new critique of ideology more in keeping with the times? For ultra-realists (see, for example, Winlow and Hall 2019), ideology does not prevent us from seeing reality. Rather, it ‘congeals around our neurological circuits’ (Hall and Winlow 2015) to equip us with a way of seeing reality. Ideology is therefore not a cloud that obscures material social processes, but rather the symbolic substance we draw upon to interpret the world around us. Ditching the standard rationalist/cognitivist account of myth and reality and drawing upon more complex and clear-sighted accounts rooted in psychoanalysis and the latest developments in neuroscience allows us to adapt the critique of ideology in important ways. In the work of Marx and Gramsci, the fundamental problem for progressive politics is that the working class don’t know that, in their everyday activities, they are contributing to the regeneration of the system that oppresses them. They can’t see the reality of this system, and they cannot see how, in their daily labours and leisure pursuits, they are enriching an antisocial, parasitic elite and aiding the continuation of structural injustice. But is this still true today? Do the masses really not know of capitalism’s negative effects? If we are honest with ourselves, we should be able to acknowledge that the population have a general understanding of capitalism’s dark side. We know that our attachment to consumerism is environmentally destructive and ultimately fails to yield the forms of satisfaction we might once have imagined. We know that men, women and children in the developing world toil under terrible conditions in order to create the goods that, for a brief time, appear alluring to us. We know that much of consumer culture is crass and driven forward by the grubby business of money-getting. We know that our cultural life has been popularised, consumerised and generally ‘dumbed down’. We know that our politicians are often vapid careerists, and that the political elites that appear to manage the economy are either unwilling or feel themselves unable to enact real change. We know that the global capitalist system cares not at all about the people and the natural environment over which it

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rides roughshod. We know that it is riven by deep injustices and that it inevitably experiences periodic crashes that can shatter lives and communities. We often know, in our heart of hearts, that meritocracy is a myth. We know that the oligarchs who exhort such a powerful influence upon our economy and society did not secure their riches with an irrepressible ‘can do’ attitude and a talent for identifying a gap in the market. Ultimately, we know what capitalism is and what it does to us. We know, but we do not want to know. We know, but we do not rise up to demand fundamental change. The crucial moment of realisation has passed, and nothing has changed. The problem of ideology is not that we do not know what capitalism is, and so continue to act in ways that benefit elites and aid the reproduction of the system. Rather, we are at least partially aware of what capitalism is and continue to act in ways that benefit the system. Ultrarealists take this a step further. The system’s core can often seem beyond our understanding and fully independent of our management or control, but in a very real sense at the pulsating centre of the system lies an accumulation of fetishistically disavowed actions that have allowed the system to rumble onwards, despite our knowledge of the deleterious consequences of its operation. Gramsci argued that intellectuals must educate the masses about the realities of the capitalist system. He assumed that once we knew reality, we would act to change it. However, he did not fully account for the adaptability of the capitalist system and the strange but powerful comfort we can find in illusion. Ultra-realists (e.g. Hall and Winlow 2015; Winlow and Hall 2019; Raymen 2019) have used the concept of fetishistic disavowal to illustrate why it is wrong to assume that knowledge always leads to productive action. Fetishistic disavowal is a psychological process that deals with our knowledge of uncomfortable truths. We often disavow knowledge that we find disconcerting, difficult or dangerous, or knowledge that in some way threatens to destabilise the general run of things. For example, we may know in our heart of hearts that our partner is having an affair. We may pick up little indications here and there: a secret phone call, an unexplained trip. However, quite often our knowledge of our partner’s infidelity is disavowed; that is, it is forced from conscious and pushed into the unconscious part of

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our minds where it can be quietly ‘forgotten’. We know of our partner’s infidelity, but, ultimately, we would prefer not to know. Our knowledge of this infidelity hurts and threatens to destabilise our lives. We immediately register the profound implications of acting on this disturbing knowledge. These implications may include the pains of divorce and child custody hearings. They may also involve leaving the family home, a precipitous decline in our living standards and significant reputational damage. There is also the emotional agony of rejection, the pains of comparison and anguished thoughts of our loved one in the arms of another. We tend to assume that if our partner were having an affair, we would want to know. However, quite often when that knowledge enters consciousness it is so disruptive that we choose not to know it. Disavowing our knowledge of the affair allows us to continue onwards. Pain can be avoided, or at least held at bay for a time. Years later, when the relationship has finally broken down, we may experience the return of our previously disavowed knowledge. How could we have been so stupid? All the signs were there. Why didn’t we act upon evidence of the infidelity? The answer to this question is straightforward but disconcerting. We knew about the affair, but at the time it was easier for us not to know. And so, we chose not to know it. Ultra-realists claim that the same process applies to our knowledge of the diverse harms that are an inevitable by-product of the capitalist system. For example, as consumers we are committed to doing what we can to help the environment. We recycle, avoid aeroplane travel, try to shop locally and things of that nature. We like to imagine that, by undertaking these actions, we are doing what we can to help the environment. However, if we are really truthful with ourselves, we can accept that all of these things mean nothing in the grander scheme of things. We know that without deep structural change nothing of any significance can be achieved. But despite knowing this, we continue to take consolation from our ostensible commitment to helping the environment. When we recycle, we are engaged in a fetishistic act. We know that this activity is ultimately meaningless, but still it yields a small measure of satisfaction. We imagine ourselves able to say that we are ‘good citizens’ and that we are ‘doing my bit’ to help the environment. In following the basic consumerist injunction to limit the negative effects of our

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consumption upon the planet, we are, in a way, encouraged to believe that we are no longer responsible. We can feel a measure of psychical repose, even when faced with environmental problems of huge scale, as we have done what we could. Like so many others, we know that truly fixing the problem requires more than we can give. And this is what Stan Cohen (2000) gets so wrong in his genre defining treatise States of Denial , still lauded as one of the greatest criminological texts ever written. It is not that we deny horror. We know of famine, simmering resources wars, rendition and torture. We know of the wilful destruction of the natural environment for short-term financial gain. We know that our democracies have been corrupted by money. We know perfectly well that even in a country as rich as Britain there are still many who struggle to feed themselves and millions more constantly teetering on the precipice of financial ruin. We do not deny the existence of these things. Rather, we tacitly accept them. We accept the existence of horror but imagine ourselves not complicit in it. We tell ourselves that we are against such things and that we have done what we can, and measure capitalism’s obvious downsides against what we imagine to be its significant upsides. We have donated to charity, paid our taxes and voted for those who promise to change things. We have done all that can be asked of us. Haven’t we? The broader political context is of course crucial. Our individualised, minor acts of environmental sensitivity by no means challenge the system as it stands. Rather, the opposite is true. Governments, the global energy industry and powerbrokers in the new financialised economy are not shamed into making the changes necessary to avoid catastrophe. The myriad acts of supposedly ethical consumers do not add up to a powerful force that can change our historical trajectory. Our individualised response to the huge threat of environmental change in fact contributes to the profound sense of paralysis and historical inertia that defines the way we live now. We know that our environment is changing at a terrifying pace, we know that buying locally sourced goods and avoiding single-use plastics won’t really fix the problem, and we grudgingly accept that our political leaders are for now incapable of acting in unison to genuinely change things. We appear locked on to this trajectory and incapable of responding to a threat of such magnitude

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it is difficult for us to truly comprehend. Within the coordinates of our present way of life, we can do no other than continue to shuffle closer to the precipice, wanting but unable to change. What can we do? Ultrarealists (see Winlow et al. 2015) argue that we await a genuine historical event that will change things, shattering the protocols of our present way of life. This event will reveal the absurdities of our current situation and encourage us to marvel at our refusal to change. Such an event would allow us to see and think beyond the horizon of acceptable knowledge, and act in ways that now appear impossible. A true historical event pushes history in a different direction. It transforms our understanding of what is possible. However, it is now perfectly clear that an event of this magnitude must emanate from a space beyond globalised parliamentary capitalism. We will not vote our way to concerted political action of climate issues, and we will certainly not change things with individualised acts of ‘ethical’ consumption. Protests will not shame our elected officials into concerted action. Only a true event can return us to history and allow us to act in ways that now seem impossible. We assume that acting prompts change, or at least that acting is orientated toward bringing about change. However, just like the spurned husband, we are all entirely capable of acting with great energy and purpose to ensure that nothing changes. Our small acts to help the environment are fetishistic in a precise psychoanalytic sense because they avoid fundamental issues, work to maintain the basic coordinates of our present way of life and generate a modicum of pleasure as we oscillate around our object of desire. The same is true of many progressive political movements today. They are not movements for fundamental change. They are movements that demand minor changes so that no fundamental changes need to take place (ibid.). Why?

Negative Ideology Capitalist ideology today has an obviously negative aspect. It continues to seduce us with images of individualised success, but it can no longer pull the wool over our eyes or blind us to suffering that follows in its wake. Its most vocal ideologues these days tend not to deny capitalism’s worst

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effects but instead pitch them as a price worth paying for capitalism’s mythologised benefits. Very few politicians, academics or businesspeople claim that capitalism can be positioned entirely within the category of ‘the good’. Rather, they pitch capitalism as the ‘least bad’ (ibid.; see also Badiou 2013). Capitalism, they acknowledge, is replete with problems, but at least it doesn’t kill people in the way that fascism and communism do. Capitalism concentrates wealth and power in the hands of the few, sure, but at least there are no concentration camps or gulags. Capitalist societies tend to involve a commitment to electoral democracy, and sure, there are problems with electoral democracy, but at least people are given the chance to vote. At least they don’t have an authoritarian dictator imposed upon them. Be careful what you wish for, political radicals are told. You may want to dispense with capitalism’s negative effects, but don’t let your desire for change drive you to abandon the basic precepts of Western civilisation. You are the beneficiaries of panoramic freedoms that will be quickly wiped out were we ever to abandon parliamentary capitalism. We are now living through an age that can be defined as ‘capitalist realism’. We know very well of capitalism’s problems and injustices, but we cannot imagine a preferable system that might be created in reality. Even strident oppositional movements tend to be against particular aspects of our present way of life, rather than for something that can be clearly named and understood. Capitalism’s diverse, incisive and potent ideological systems no longer attempt to peddle the myth that capitalism is just, fair and inclusive. Rather, these systems work incessantly to convince us that nothing better can be brought into being. While capitalist ideology was once, in essence, positive, telling us of the great benefits of capitalism, now it is increasingly negative, in that it focuses upon the task of convincing us that any attempt to make things better will inevitably make things worse.

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Conclusion Why should criminologists and zemiologists be interested in ideology? At the most obvious level, an account of ideology allows us to catch sight of the forces that encourage ordinary people to engage in practices that harm others and the natural environment and feel justified in doing so. If we apply the adapted account of ideology suggested by ultra-realists, we can also begin to come to terms with the forces that prevent us from joining with others to take urgent action to prevent or delay the most pressing dangers of our time. To move forward as a discipline, we must jettison the stolid empiricism of the mainstream and accept our role as intellectuals. We must get comfortable with abstract thought and dip into those aspects of our intellectual life we thoughtlessly discarded as postmodernism and the marketisation of higher education drove us to abandon the search for truth and instead focus on data collection and grant income. We must reject entirely our subservient relationship with liberal sociology and develop the confidence to dip in and out of diverse fields before developing and exporting our own ideas and intellectual frameworks. And perhaps most importantly, we must accept the burden of thinking and acting anew. We must accept that the answers we need are not always to be found in the dusty old texts that form our disciplinary canon. It is up to us. We must produce the forms of knowledge we need to live well with others and with nature now and in the future, and we must have hope that those who follow will do the same.

Further Reading • Terry Eagleton’s Ideology: An Introduction, published in 2007, is a wonderful place to start. • Hall and Winlow’s (2015) Revitalizing Criminological Theory is the foundation text for ultra-realists, and it contains a detailed account of the ultra-realist account of ideology. • Zizek’s edited collection, Mapping Ideology (Verso 1995), contains work from some of the foremost commentators on contemporary ideology.

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• Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (2005) are perfectly readable. • Winlow et al.’s (2015) Riots and Political Protest: Notes from the PostPolitical Present offers a more detailed investigation of the issues and ideas raised in this short chapter.

References Althusser, L. (2014). On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. London: Verso. Badiou, A. (2013). Ethics. London: Verso. Cohen, S. (2000). States of Denial . Oxford: Polity. Eagleton, T. (2007). Ideology: An Introduction. London: Verso. Engels, F. (2007 [1972]). Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. London: Pathfinder Books. Ferrell, J. (1995). Urban Graffiti: Crime, Control, and Resistance. Youth and Society, 27 (1), 73–92. Gramsci, A. (2005). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Hall, S., & Jefferson, T. (Eds.). (2006). Resistance Through Rituals. London: Routledge. Hall, S., & Winlow, S. (2015). Revitalizing Criminological Theory: Towards a New Ultra-Realism. London: Routledge. Hall, S., Winlow, S., & Ancrum, C. (2008). Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture: Crime, Exclusion and the New Culture of Narcissism. Cullompton: Willan. Kotze, J. (2019). The Myth of the ‘Crime Decline’ . London: Routledge. Lloyd, A. (2019). The Harms of Work. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Marx, K. (2013) Capital: Volumes One and Two (F. Engels, Ed. and S. Moore and E. Aveling, Trans.). London: Wordsworth Editions. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1965). The German Ideology. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Raymen, T. (2018). Parkour, Deviance and Leisure in the Late-Capitalist City. London: Emerald

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Raymen, T. (2019). The Enigma of Social Harm and the Barrier of Liberalism: Why Zemiology Needs a Theory of the Good. Justice, Power and Resistance, 3, 1. Thompson, E. P. (1975). Whigs and Hunters. London: Allen Lane. Thompson, E. P. (1996). The Poverty of Theory. London: Merlin Press. Winlow, S., & Hall, S. (2012). Rethinking Social Exclusion: The Dead of the Social? London: Sage. Winlow, S., & Hall, S. (2019). Shock and Awe: On Progressive Minimalism and Retreatism, and the New Ultra-Realism. Critical Criminology, 27 (1), 21–36. Winlow, S., Hall, S., Briggs, D., & Treadwell, J. (2015). Riots and Political Protest: Notes from the Post-Political Present. London: Routledge. Zizek, S. (2009). The Ticklish Subject. London: Verso.

4 The Assumption of Harmlessness Thomas Raymen

A Call to Take Pause It would appear that the study of social harm within criminology is in robust health. Since the late 1990s, the study of legal-but-harmful social, cultural, environmental, and political-economic practices has exploded. Social harm has been deployed as the conceptual bedrock for entire bodies of criminological research and their emergent ‘criminologies’, and there are both established and emerging scholars in our field who spend as much time—if not more—writing about the harms around housing, climate change, work, debt, leisure and consumerism as they do about crime or the criminal justice system. For those who advocate the potential for social harm to broaden criminology’s horizons, it is a concept which feels like an intellectually liberating breath of fresh air. As this volume demonstrates, some of the most pressing issues facing global T. Raymen (B) Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_4

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society are harms that not only lie beyond the present scope of legal prohibition but are thoroughly normalised and integral to the functioning of liberal capitalist political economy. Armed with social harm’s conceptual toolkit, criminologists can now roam free and have their say on these issues without having to manufacture some tenuous link back to crime or the criminal justice system in order for it to be deemed ‘proper criminology’ (White 2012). While the subject matter is often dark and troubling, there nevertheless seems to be a wave of excitement and invigoration among social harm scholars. Disciplinary boundaries feel more porous and less constraining—perhaps even less relevant or necessary—as zemiological research begins to feel more post-disciplinary than inter disciplinary. These are certainly positive developments for our field. Nevertheless, it is suggested that such positivity should be somewhat tempered. For it is the argument of this chapter that despite this pronounced growth of study, in both academia and everyday life the concept and language of harm itself is currently in a significantly underdeveloped state of disorder and ambiguity. With a few notable exceptions, this state of under-development is scarcely pointed out beyond casual disclaimers acknowledging that what constitutes social harm remains a matter of contention and that there remains work to be done in clarifying the parameters and principles of the concept by some as-yet-unidentified others. This absence of conceptual clarity does not seem to cause much alarm, nor is it experienced as a barrier to conducting empirical and theoretical research under the banner of ‘social harm’. This chapter, therefore, is a call to take pause in order to reflect on the extent to which the concept of harm actually is in an underdeveloped state of disorder, tentatively explore some of the reasons for this disorder, and some of its ensuing consequences. The chapter consists of three main sections. The following section, ‘The State of Harm’, will overview the current condition of the concept of social harm, both in terms of how it has been conceptualised in academia, how it is used and applied in everyday moral and zemiological discourse, and how it is common in the contemporary context to arrive at interminable moral and zemiological disagreements about key social issues. The second section, ‘Social Harm in an Era of Liberal

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Cynicism’, will reconsider the nature of the concept of social harm, and what is missing from existing conceptualisations situated within the contemporary cultural and political-economic context of postmodern cynicism in liberal capitalism. The third section will make the argument that such interminable moral and zemiological debates, operating within the cultural and political-economic context described in the preceding section, have coalesced to intensify an already-existing assumption of harmlessness which contests or dismisses the harmfulness of the vast majority of our socio-economic and cultural practices, or positions such harms as ‘necessary evils’ in order to keep greater catastrophic harms at bay.

The State of Harm In both academic and everyday life, we regularly use the language of harm to shed light on some of the most important social problems facing contemporary society, which is beset by crises on almost all fronts. In recent years, academics have discussed the systemic harms of contemporary work and employment practices (Lloyd 2018); austerity and neoliberalism (Cooper and Whyte 2017; Tombs 2019); speculative and privatised housing markets (Atkinson 2020; Madden and Marcuse 2016); leisure and consumer culture (Smith and Raymen 2016); climate change in the capitalist Anthropocene (Brisman and South 2014); indebtedness and the financial industry (Horsley 2015), the list goes on. Such confident and frequent use of the concept and language of harm would suggest that there exists some shared impersonal standard of criteria upon which we agree regarding what can and cannot be described as harmful; what can and cannot be considered right and wrong. But in fact, when we begin to probe and penetrate deeper, there remains a remarkable paucity of coherence or consensus around the conceptualisation and content of social harm. Tombs (2018), one of the foremost advocates of the concept of social harm, has nevertheless recently acknowledged the conspicuous absence of any clear agreement regarding the ontological, ethical or epistemological basis upon which we determine whether a particular phenomenon should be characterised as a

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form of ‘social harm’. Pemberton (2016) offers an even more concerning observation that perhaps what is most remarkable is the relative scarcity of genuine attempts to define social harm within the criminological and zemiological literature. Among those that exist, there remains deep disagreement over the ontological and ethical basis of social harm, and palpable concern and uncertainty over its conceptual parameters and the breadth of its application. We might choose to adopt Hall’s (2012) notion of a core-periphery model of harm, in which a set of universally agreed upon core harms co-exist alongside a more subjective and relativised periphery. However, as Hall readily acknowledges, there appears to be little consensus on which harms should be placed in which category, and where the line between core and periphery should be drawn or on what grounds. Typologies of harm have abounded since Hillyard and Tombs’ (2004) initial typology in Beyond Criminology. But again, as Hall et al. (2020) argue, while such typologies are important, they are of little use to us in defining social harm in the absence of an established set of ontological, ethical and epistemological principles which can ground the concept, making these typologies somewhat premature (see Gibney and Wyatt, Chapter 15 for new scholarship in this area). Within criminology, some have followed a borderline fetishistic attachment to hard-line social constructionism by declaring that ‘[l]ike crime, [social] harm is clearly a social construction’ (Millie 2016: 5), with no ontological reality whatsoever. Of course, claims that harm has no ontological reality would be dismissed out of hand by those individuals and families from across the world who experience the concrete reality of desperation and perpetual anxiety that stems from being indebted to legal yet hyper-exploitative high-interest moneylenders; or who suffer as a result of crippling austerity measures that stem from now debunked neoliberal notions that the state must raise taxes before it can spend and must ‘balance the budget’ (Fazi 2020; Mitchell and Fazi 2017; Tcherneva 2020). Therefore, it would seem that social harm certainly has at least ‘one foot in reality’ (Hall and Winlow 2015). In an effort to provide robust foundations, Lasslett (2010) has argued for a rigid ontological approach to conceptualising social harm. His approach suggests that the concept of social harm should be detached from the question of ethics entirely, limiting its application to those

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processes, structures and relations which disrupt or fail to preserve the organic and inorganic reproduction of human beings and their environment. Such an approach, it is alleged, avoids the muddy waters of relativism and allows criminologists and social harm scholars to remain more strictly focused upon the most truly serious forms of harmful practice which threaten the organic and inorganic reproduction of human life: exposure to toxic chemicals; the creation of food, water or vital resource scarcity; or the denial of access to vital medicines which help to preserve and reproduce the vital organic properties of the human body, and so on. While this approach certainly addresses and provides some ontological grounding to certain core harms, there nevertheless remain a much broader range of social practices and industries which, while perhaps more peripheral, we do in practice—and arguably should— call harmful. It is becoming widely acknowledged, for example, that the intensely comparative and envy-inducing culture of contemporary social media is cultivating widespread forms of depression, anxiety, and body dysmorphia among many individuals within society—particularly young people. Similarly, consumerism’s competitive-individualist and ever-changing sign-value system, which connects personal self-worth and identity to lifestyle and consumption habits, are contributing to destructive levels of personal debt, existential angst, and other financial and mental health issues (Horsley 2015; Raymen and Smith 2017). Can we deny that these practices are harmful and severely detrimental to the human condition and the social more generally, despite not necessarily threatening the organic and inorganic reproduction of all human persons? Can we only call such things harmful when they culminate in suicide or self-harm? Therefore, while Lasslett’s (2010) approach should be commended for trying to establish an idea of the core harms upon which criminologists should focus, it remains conceptually inadequate as it severely constricts its broader conceptual application and negates its deeper critical potential—two qualities which were seen as social harm’s strongest features—due to rather Tappanian concerns of ‘damning as criminal almost anyone he pleases’ (Lasslett 2010: 1). Other approaches have been more expansive, conceptualising social harm as the compromising of ‘human flourishing’ or some future ideal ‘good’ through the systemic or interpersonal denial of access to basic

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pre-requisites for such flourishing. Yar’s (2012) approach, for example, grounds human needs, human flourishing, and social harm within a theory of recognition. Following the philosopher Hegel’s notion of the master-slave relation, Yar argues that we are not independent selfsubsistent entities as presented in standard liberal discourse. Rather, identities are always socially interdependent and reliant upon their recognition by the other. This recognition is a fundamental need for human well-being. As he writes: The individual comes to know himself, to recognise himself as a being with particular attributes or properties, through the acknowledgement conferred by an ‘other’. An individual’s sense of worth remains mere ‘subjective self-certainty’, and hence uncertain of itself, unless that sense of worth (or ‘idea-of-self ’) is affirmed by others. (Yar 2012: 57)

Yar identifies three elemental forms of recognition which, he argues, ‘establish at a fundamental anthropological level the ‘basic needs’ that comprise the conditions of human integrity and well-being (what Aristotelians call ‘flourishing’)’ (Yar 2012: 59 see also Chapter 10 by Lloyd and Chapter 10 by Kotze in this volume). These forms of recognition are ‘love’, ‘rights’ and ‘esteem’. ‘Each’, Yar argues, ‘corresponds to a basic element that is required to secure the subject’s integrity in its relation to self and others…From this viewpoint, social harms can be understood to comprise nothing other than the inter-subjective experience of being refused recognition with respect to any or all of these dimensions of need’ (Yar 2012: 59). Similarly, Pemberton (2016) adopts a Rawlsian approach arguing that social harm constitutes the compromising of human flourishing through the systematic denial of access to basic human needs like healthcare, education, safe working practices, and so on (Doyal and Gough 1984, 1991). Lasslett (2010) critiques such approaches for being fundamentally rooted in ethics, rather than ontology. They are normative approaches, rooted in an ‘ethical conception of man’, and therefore commit what Lasslett describes the ‘fateful error’ of confusing harm with injustice. Pemberton and Yar’s approaches are indeed fundamentally bound up with ethics. By positioning human flourishing as their foundations, they

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instantly create a distinction between the individual as they happen to be and a ‘higher’ state of the individual as they could be with the basic pre-requisites to human flourishing in place. If we agree with the moral philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre (2011: 63) and his description that ‘ethics is the science which is to enable men to understand how they make the transition from the former state to the latter’, then Pemberton and Yar’s respective approaches certainly fall into this bracket. Where Lasslett and I differ is that the present chapter does not necessarily perceive the central role played by ethics in Pemberton’s account as a ‘subjective flaw’ that corrupts the otherwise ‘objective’ concept of social harm. As will be expanded upon later, ethics is an unavoidable and indispensable facet of the concept of harm. The problem with Pemberton and Yar’s approaches is that ethics has arguably been given insufficient attention, and has instead been an unacknowledged, inherited, and therefore under-scrutinised element of their conceptualisations of social harm. Therefore, Pemberton and Yar’s approaches are not problematic because they root social harm within a fundamentally ethical notion of human flourishing. Rather, it is that they fail to elaborate on the content of what constitutes human flourishing, thereby leaving it relatively open-ended and failing to emphasise the necessity of a collective and positive notion of liberty and human flourishing which pushes past liberalism’s negative ideological attachment to sovereign individualism. While Pemberton and others (Hillyard and Tombs 2017) have claimed that a human needs approach to the concept of social harm does indeed work from this position of positive liberty and actively addresses the problems with negative liberty, their argument is erroneous. It fails to understand that such a conception of positive liberty, reminiscent of the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin (2002), buttresses the individual’s negative liberty, rather than directly challenging it. While theories of human need claim to espouse a notion of positive liberty (Doyal and Gough 1984, 1991), what this really amounts to is a slightly more ambitious, welfare-oriented, and socialistic brand of negative liberty with a different name. It extends the traditional negative liberties of the right to life; freedom from torture; freedom of expression and so on to include ‘human needs’ of equal access to physical and mental health services; education and personal development; and employment, among others.

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However, this does not constitute a radical departure from the moral philosophy of liberal individualism. The term ‘human flourishing’, is employed in such a way as to deprive it of its original meaning and remove it from its context as part of a wider Aristotelian scheme in which human persons, social roles, and social practices possessed a collectively understood telos: a purpose and perfected state of being towards which we are constantly striving. But within this social harm literature, the criteria for human flourishing are very much left open for the individual to decide, allowing the term to work within the confines of liberal individualism quite comfortably. Under this framework, therefore, positive liberty is defined as the provider of basic material needs and services for individuals to enact their individual freedom to behave according to their sovereign view of ‘human flourishing’. To thrust a particular conception of human flourishing, a particular type of life which is deemed ‘good’ upon the individual is, within the liberal universe, to ‘sin against the truth of…man’ (Berlin 2002: 174–175) and begin down the slippery slope to totalitarian horror. Positive and negative liberty thus collapse into one another, and Pemberton’s needs-based ‘human flourishing’ approach is left in its individualised and pluralistic form. This opens up questions regarding the limits to these pluralised notions of human flourishing; what happens when one individual’s flourishing conflicts with and potentially harms another’s; and in the event of such a conflict, whose human flourishing is privileged and why, plunging us into a Nietzschean scenario in which discussions around what constitutes social harm and whose human flourishing has been compromised becomes a manipulative clash of wills. Similarly, in everyday life moral and zemiological debate has become increasingly hysterical and fundamentally interminable (MacIntyre 2011). Take the examples of mass tourism, zero-hour contracts and the gig economy, and debate over certain political movements and the so-called culture wars. Climate change activists condemn the environmental harms of mass tourism and the threat it poses to the long-term survival of humanity, in addition to the intrusive impact upon local communities, culture, and the exploitation of indigenous populations of tourist destinations (Smith 2019; White 2019). Advocates from the

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tourism industry typically respond by emphasising the economic benefits for tourism-dependent regions and the consequences of its absence, while also invoking the moral language of individual freedom to travel and explore and the pro-social language of the multicultural tolerance and awareness fostered by global tourism. On the field of work, leftwing commentators denounce the growth of the gig economy and the widespread use of zero-hour contracts for their precarity and low-pay, the oppressive nature of such employment and the inequalities it generates. Immediately, the gig economy and employers who use zero-hour contracts counter with the same language of ‘liberty’, emphasising the flexibility this offers to students, single parents, or artists and musicians who benefit from a less traditional structure of employment. They are also quick to point out that the service economy accounts for more than three-quarters of Britain’s GDP and is therefore immensely beneficial to the overall health of the economy and the nation (Lloyd 2018). On the field of politics and culture, activists attack the expression of certain political opinions as hostile forms of prejudice which are symbolically hurtful to particular groups and should not be tolerated, while their opponents respond by claiming their views to be a legitimate political position that should be permitted to free expression and debate and that the suppression of their voices constitutes a form of social harm itself (Fisher 2013; Nagle 2017). Any reader who has watched breakfast-time news segments, late-night politics shows, or been masochistic enough to express an opinion on Twitter will be familiar with such interminable debates. What makes these debates interminable is not just that they go on and on, but that they seem incapable of finding any resolution. As MacIntyre (2011: 9) points out, this is because the starting points of their arguments—their founding normative and evaluative premises— are so conceptually incommensurable that ‘we possess no rational way of weighing the claims of one against another’. In the examples of tourism and zero-hour contracts, premises which invoke equality and long-term security and survival are entirely at odds with those that invoke individual liberty and the threat of immediate, widespread, and severe economic catastrophe. In the example of a controversial political opinion, the claim of personal pain and emotional distress is matched

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against claims of the right to freedom of speech and thought. In the case of rival social harm perspectives, one side views harm as rooted in the objective ontological materiality and survival of the subject, community, planet and so on, while the other views social harm as a more expansive, nuanced concept rooted in ethics. Things become even more confusing when premises which one previously argued against— such as principles of individual freedom, moral sovereignty, and free speech—are subsequently invoked to support one’s position on a different issue of contention, something which is extremely common within social sciences (Fisher 2013). In our current society of liberal pluralistindividualism, it is the absence of any shared means to arbitrate between these rival premises that makes such arguments appear interminable. As MacIntyre (2011: 9) observes, ‘[f ]rom our rival conclusions we can argue back to our rival premises; but when we do arrive at our premises argument ceases and the invocation of one premise against another becomes a matter of pure assertion and counter-assertion. Hence the perhaps slightly shrill tone of so much debate’. This dearth of conceptual coherence contradicts the confidence with which the language of harm is used . It suggests that, in reality, the idea of harm currently possesses no such agreed upon criteria or standard and is asserted somewhat arbitrarily, as incommensurable first premises are chosen based upon individual or collective self-interest; friendship; biography; inherited political allegiances; or, as the sentimentalist moral philosophers would have it, by an intuitive ‘moral sense’ (Eagleton 2009). This is the precise view expressed by Millie (2016: 5) when he writes ‘what I consider harmful behaviour may be quite different from what you call harmful, and it may change depending on context […] there may be differences in what we perceive as harmless wrongdoing as well as wrong-less harm’. This is what moral philosophers would describe as an emotivist approach to harm in which the meaning beneath a declaration that something is immoral or harmful is simply the expression of already-held arbitrary preferences. To call something harmful is to say, ‘I disapprove of this, do so as well’ (MacIntyre 2011: 12). While true emotivists or relativists would accept that evaluative moral arguments are always subjective and arbitrary, MacIntyre’s argument—and one that equally applies to the language of harm—is that this theory

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of meaning has been abandoned in favour of a ‘cogent theory of use’ . There are scarcely any thoroughgoing relativists, even among those who accept some variant of relativism. Rather, ‘[w]hen we see gross injustice, we react with confidence, we punish those who harm others, and we do it because we are sure that doing so is right, not just legally right, but morally right—and not just morally right from our own peculiar point of view’ (Lutz 2012: 81). Despite this absence of shared criteria, zemiological judgements are still uttered as if they refer to some impersonal standard or shared Truth, in ‘the attempt of one will to align the attitudes, feelings, preference and choices of another with its own’ (MacIntyre 2011: 28). In this regard, contemporary criminology, and the relatively new movement of zemiology carries on undeterred. We find ourselves in the strange position of frenetically producing countless empirical studies which document and describe myriad forms of social harm, while ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room that there is a striking lack of social or academic consensus regarding the parameters and ontological and ethical basis of a concept which is—and arguably always has been—a foundational starting point of the discipline1 (see Boukli and Kotzé 2018).

Social Harm in an Era of Liberal Cynicism The growth of interest in a social harm approach resulted in the publication of the edited collection, Beyond Criminology (Hillyard et al. 2004). As the first collective effort at rethinking the boundaries, parameters and very existence of criminology through a social harm lens, it is frequently regarded as the seminal text in the development of a social harm approach within criminology. It has already been emphasised by 1 A couple of clarifications are in order here. Firstly, the author by no means exempts himself from such comments. My work to-date has used the ostensibly self-evident concept of social harm as a starting point to facilitate critical study of the most normalised forms of leisure and consumption. In doing this work, I became aware and uncomfortable with the somewhat flimsy conceptual foundations upon which my research was built. On what basis could I claim that the leisure practices, consumption habits and cultures I was looking at were genuinely harmful? The present argument, therefore, is a product of self-critique and conversation with my own work, as much as it is with the work of others.

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many scholars, including the editors of Beyond Criminology, that it would be misleading to position the text as a unified and coherent project. However, the one issue which did seem to unify the broad range of positions found within the text was the unsatisfactory nature and perceived deficiencies of the concept of crime. Many reasons are given within Beyond Criminology for why the concept of crime fails to cover the full range of socially mediated harms that an individual or community can experience. However, first and foremost among these was the idea that crime ‘has no ontological reality’ (Hillyard and Tombs 2004). The concept of crime is a socio-legal construction, and the categorisation of various behaviours as crime, in addition to their policing and prosecution, are informed by various subjective interests of power. Consequently, one of the many perceived benefits of utilising the concept of social harm was that it could push beyond the socially constructed nature of the concept of crime to access a more objective measure of harm that transcended the relativising power relations involved in the concept of crime. However, in certain respects, this has arguably led to a failure to adequately comprehend the nature of the concept of social harm and embrace the necessity of ethics that lies at its core. When scholars have embarked on an attempt to conceptualise social harm, the question which often seems to inform their efforts is: ‘What is social harm?’ Pemberton (2016) uses this precise language when reviewing the various attempts at defining social harm and attempting to provide a definition or conceptual framework of his own; acknowledging that ‘up to this point, it remains difficult to discern what ‘social harm’ actually is’ (Pemberton 2016: 18; emphasis added). To begin with such a question would seem to be an obvious starting point. However, the phrasing of the question embeds within it an extremely important and foundational philosophical assumption, namely the assumption that the concept of social harm possesses a pure, objective, a priori ontological reality. It is spoken as if the objective essence of ‘harm’ exists somewhere out there in Plato’s realm of Ideal Forms (Hall et al. 2020), waiting to be grasped and articulated into an elegant, indisputable, and timeless definition that captures harm’s pure ontological reality and subsequently resolves all of our uncertainty. Yet earlier, in the very same chapter, Pemberton (2016:

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13) rightly acknowledges that the social harm approach should avoid advocating a false ‘value-free’ position and that the values which inform and underpin the concept of social harm should be ‘laid bare’ so they are open to scrutiny. In order to comprehend the nature of the concept of social harm, we arguably have to ask a different question than ‘what is social harm?’. Namely, what are we doing when we are trying to define, conceptualise, and identify social harm? If we set aside for one moment all the different theoretical and philosophical approaches to social harm, their underlying ethical and political-philosophical frameworks, and strip the concept down to its most basic and broadest level, we are arguably doing three things when identifying and conceptualising social harm. Firstly, we are attempting to identify and ward off the most immediate mortal and existential threats of death, pain, and suffering, whether that be to our individual person, our community, our environment, or our entire species or some other non-human species. Secondly, we are imagining and desiring some ultimate ‘good’ in the future—an ideal state of things for ourselves as individuals, our community, our nation, or the environment and so on—and identifying the behaviours, structures, and processes which actively corrode, undermine, or act as a barrier to this ideal. For evidence of this claim, we do not need to look any further than the existing approaches to social harm in criminology and zemiology. One or both of these features are present in all of the most substantive and influential attempts to conceptualise social harm (Gibney and Wyatt 2020; Hall 2012; Hillyard and Tombs 2004; Lasslett 2010; Pemberton 2016; Raymen 2019; Yar 2012). But in all of these situations, what we are doing above all else is exercising a judgement —even in the most seemingly clear-cut cases. Social harm is an inherently evaluative and dialectical concept which functions as part of an historical sequence. As an evaluative concept, it is only intelligible and fully functional when it follows on the back of established criteria that is shared by the general population by which we evaluate a given social role, practice, process, or form of behaviour. To say that someone, something, or some group of people have been harmed is really to say that something has gone wrong with that person, thing, or group of people. But in order to establish that something has gone wrong there

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must be, by necessity, a shared and agreed upon goal, purpose, or ideal state of things that the person, institution, or social practice is working towards or trying to retain. For example, in order for the statement that the present government is ‘harmful’ to be at all intelligible, there must be some collective idea of the virtues, purpose, and responsibilities of a ‘good’ government, which can act as a benchmark and a frame of reference against which the alleged ‘harmful’ government is measured and condemned. The question of harm, therefore, is first and foremost a question of the collectively understood goals and purposes of various creatures, social roles, and practices in society. It is for this reason that I have argued, both here and elsewhere (Raymen 2019), that part of our difficulty with the concept of social harm can be located in the profound absence of a shared idea of the Good (Badiou 2001), and the refusal to treat human lives and their social roles teleologically as possessing a collectively understood goal, end, or purpose—an ultimate Good. As Pemberton (2016: 32) has acknowledged, ‘we gain an understanding of harm exactly because it represents the converse reality of an imagined desirable state’. While social harm is a concept that must evolve and be carefully revised alongside changes in social reality, it nevertheless must possess at its core a coherent and collective notion of the Good or the telos (the word collective cannot be emphasised heavily enough), which can act as a benchmark against which we can evaluate various social practices and behaviours to make claims of ‘harm’ socially intelligible. As the likes of Hall et al. (2020) and MacIntyre (1984) argue, relativism dies when we begin to deliberate and establish consensus around the proper ends and purpose of social roles, practices, institutions, and human life more generally. However, discussions of ethics and moral and political philosophy are virtually absent in the social harm literature, despite being a consistent presence within such works. Moreover, as a society long guided by liberal principles which have privileged individual choice and pluralism over shared goals and ends, this is precisely the vision that we lack. We lack a common conception of the human and social good, a clear and rational basis for determining what that common good might be, or grounded understanding of ethics that extends beyond negativistic rights-based ethics is surely worth conceiving in order to determine what

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can be genuinely conceived of as social harm (MacIntyre 2011). The ultimate good is held to be that of negative liberty: an open-ended, pluralistic and criterionless notion of ‘freedom’ which is simply the absence of constraint other than law and private conscience. It is clear that we live in a time of deep discord in which discussion about our shared ends and goals is more imperative than ever. But such deliberations are antithetical to postmodern liberalism’s fundamental principles. In lieu of such deliberations and in order to avoid any excessive infringements upon the individual’s economic or cultural sovereignty, political liberalism has put in place procedural rules and legalistic standards—such as human rights—to firmly establish the allegedly neutral ‘ground rules’ for ‘fair play’ between a plurality of individual freedoms in open competition with one another in the economic and cultural arenas (Rawls 1971). These are a set of a priori ‘evils’ which effectively eliminate harm’s inherently dialectical nature and in doing so, compromise the concept’s robustness and intelligibility. In liberal societies, ‘evil is that from which the Good is derived, not the other way around’ (Badiou 2001: 9). The good is merely the absence of these a priori evils. But in a society of widening divisions and inequalities in which there is a growing sense of decline, decay, and a belief that life is and will continue to be worse than it was before, such claims are struggling to hold water. Furthermore, in establishing such a priori evils, political liberalism has largely prohibited any fundamental rethinking of these procedural rules. ‘In the name of neutrality that only liberal ground rules can secure’, Pabst (2019: 111) writes, ‘debates about the common human good and the shared ends of human flourishing have been banished from the court of public political discussion’.2 Discussion of the collective Good has been replaced by legal rights and pessimistic economic contract; and we are told that in such a diverse society, when it comes to matters of values and ethics we can only agree to disagree and be satisfied to allow everyone the privilege of their individual choice. Consistent with its latent pessimism, liberalism has shed its originally hopeful and utopian clothes in favour of a garb more appropriate to its true nature as the ‘realm of lesser evil’ (Milbank 2 It should also be noted that the adoption of this kind of allegedly ‘neutral’ language does nothing to solve the problem of relativism but, in reality, exacerbates it. For more on this, see MacIntyre (1984) and Lutz (2012: 176–179).

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and Pabst 2016; Winlow 2012). In our liberal society, there is no shared good, for this is always perceived as a mere front for despotic power (Fawcett 2014). Therefore, as I have argued elsewhere, it is not merely that a consensus on what we consider to constitute harm is difficult to come by, but that the cynical individualism of postmodernist liberal capitalism fundamentally precludes any such consensus being reached (Raymen 2019).

The Assumption of Harmlessness Social harm’s definitional paralysis, along with Western society’s longstanding attachment to the negative freedom of liberal individualism and the more recent postmodern culture of cynical non-belief, have coalesced to create the ideal conditions for the preservation and flourishing of what I describe as liberal capitalism’s assumption of harmlessness. The assumption of harmlessness is not new. On the contrary, it was central to seventeenth-century political arguments advocating for the expansion and embrace of nascent capitalist markets developing at the time.3 As Hirschman’s (1977) historical research documents, the predominant intellectual and political opinion among leading intellectual figures was 3 One could take the assumption of harmlessness back further to the primitive social practice of human or animal sacrifice. Cultural anthropologists have identified that sacrifices were performed to ward off greater evils such as the wrath of Gods, who were seen as life-giving and life-taking deities and were therefore appeased with sacrifices of people, animal, or the destruction of crops in an attempt to win the favour of the Gods, cheat death, and achieve immortality (Becker 1975; Dupuy 2014). Similarly, Ehrenreich (1997) traces the practice back further to when humans were prey, prior to their evolution into confident and dominant hunters (Harari 2015). She argues that pre-hunter humans are likely to have operated as scavengers, feeding off the kills of larger predators and, when preyed upon themselves, would often sacrifice a member of the group—perhaps an outsider or invalid—to a predator to ensure the safety of the rest of the group. Like Gods, predators were life-giving and life-taking creatures, which Ehrenreich suggests partially explains the tendency for particular animals to represent Gods in primitive or ancient societies. To fail to perform these sacrifices was to invite disaster on the group. Today, however, our deity is arguably ‘the market’. Just as ancient and primitive societies performed sacrifices to see how the Gods would respond, it is common to hear contemporary politicians and financial and business elites trying to anticipate how ‘the market’ will ‘react’ when deciding on whether to enact particular policies or make investments. ‘The market’ is spoken of as a sentient, ethereal, and almost supernatural entity that is unpredictable, its desires unknowable, and holds our lives in its hands.

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that economic self-interest and the individualised pursuit of private gain was perceived as the most effective antidote in restraining the violent ‘passions’. The atomisation of individuals, the creation of mutual indifference, and the cultivation of calculating subjectivities geared towards a selfish and individualistic pre-occupation with personal affairs—what Frances Hutcheson described as the ‘calm desire for wealth’ (Eagleton 2009)—was embraced as a means of putting an end to the lust for power, fame and grandeur that was perceived as driving the civil strife between feudal lords and the foreign wars of monarchs at the time (Hirschman 1977). Hirschman (1977: 132) notes that, peculiar as this argument may seem in the present context, ‘Capitalism was supposed to accomplish what was soon to be denounced as its worst feature’. In the minds of these intellectuals, the impoverishment of social life and the violence of capitalist economy was to be put in service of the good as a means of containing ‘real’ physical violence. Dupuy (2014), building on Hirschman’s historical research, argues that the capitalist economy therefore contains violence in both senses of the word. The economy has a certain violence within itself—the aggressive, individualistic, morally ambivalent and at times destructive pursuit of capital accumulation and socio-symbolic competition. This original violence, through a process of self-exteriorisation, also ‘contains’ violence in the other sense of keeping real physical conflict at bay (Dupuy 2014), and is thus transformed into the good itself. With all of our hindsight on the ills of liberal capitalism, we may look back astonished as to how we could have ever taken seriously the claim that capitalism could contain violence or despotism. To do so, however, would display a lack of self-reflection on our current political-economic and cultural context. In the cynical and fatalistic era of ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher 2009)—in which liberal capitalism is positioned as the leastworst of all political-economic systems and all alternatives are dismissed as doomed to economic catastrophe and totalitarian disaster—it is not unreasonable to argue that this assumption of harmlessness is as clearly identifiable and functional as ever, albeit in a slightly different way. At this stage, readers might object that such a claim is obviously invalid. How can there be an assumption of harmlessness in contemporary society? After all, do we not constantly read and hear stories about

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the impending ecological consequences of our travel and consumption habits? Are we not witnessing calls for more careful scrutiny of the advertising practices of the gambling industry or the legitimacy of FixedOdds Betting Terminals (FOBTs)? Do we not see documentaries on TV exposing the hyper-exploitative employment practices of popular retailers who produce our clothes and ship our online purchases? However, it is this acknowledgement that is a central pre-requisite to the contemporary assumption of harmlessness; an assumption which is established, quite paradoxically, upon an initial acknowledgement of the harm experienced by others that is to be subsequently disavowed (Žižek 2008). Indeed, we are permitted—even encouraged—to express a sentimentalist woe at the worst excesses of our political-economic system. We can make calls for a more humanist commercialism that truly cares about the planet, and champions awareness-raising about world hunger, gender equality and so on (Eagleton 2009; Žižek 2009). This is the default setting of many contemporary celebrities, politicians and business elites who are among capitalism’s greatest beneficiaries. At the level of thought and speech, we can openly acknowledge that we are not true believers in capitalism (Žizek 1989). But at the level of action, such thoughts and concerns must never intrude too far upon economic competition and the negative freedom of the sovereign individual to the extent that they demand transformative political-economic action, meaningful prohibition, or inspire genuine collective consideration of the ends of life. The freedom of the sovereign individual must not be threatened or constrained, and the obscene real of liberal capitalism’s competitive individualism must be tempered but not suffocated (Forrester 2019). As an economic system, capitalism cannot function under the extreme poles of anarchic individualism or genuine political or ethical pacification (Hall 2012). Therefore, the initial acknowledgement of harm described above is followed quickly by a series of defensive caveats. The assumption of harmlessness functions by first daring harm to be named and acknowledged, only to incite one of the interminable zemiological disagreements mentioned earlier in the chapter which dismiss claims to the inherent harmfulness of a given practice or activity. To use one example, if one were to demand the abolishment of the gambling industry and the prohibition of gambling due to rises

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in addiction, indebtedness, suicide and other problems, one would be likely to immediately encounter rebuttals such as: ‘Well not all people become problem gamblers, so why should everyone—including myself— be prohibited from gambling?’; ‘It’s their individual choice, nobody is forcing them to gamble’; or, even better, ‘People will gamble regardless. Is it not better that the practice is regulated? After all, the gambling industry contributes huge benefits to the economy and employs lots of people. They give huge sums of money to various charities and donate money to help those with gambling addiction’. As a perfect example of Fisher’s (2009) notion of capitalist realism, the reduction of the maximum stake on Fixed-Odds Betting Terminals from £100 to £2 was delayed by then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Phillip Hammond, citing the need to mitigate the loss of up to 21,000 jobs estimated by a report written on behalf of the gambling industry by accountancy firm KPMG. Similarly, when suggesting radical political-economic reforms and behavioural change to try and address climate change or attempting to institute a job guarantee programme to address poverty and unemployment, the questions that often arise are not whether this is the right thing to do but ‘can the economy afford it?’ Is it too great an impingement upon people’s individual liberty? Can governments afford to institute a job guarantee programme or a Green New Deal (Mitchell and Fazi 2017; Tcherneva 2020)? Can we absorb the loss of the fossil fuel industry? What will happen to those nations and cities who are so heavily reliant upon our tourism? In attempting to reduce carbon emissions by scaling back global tourism, are we not condemning these already-deprived nations to further economic peril? The ideological assumption of harmlessness, therefore, denotes the way in which contemporary liberal capitalism ‘contains’ harm in both senses of the word in precisely the same way Hirschman and Dupuy describe. It is acknowledged that there is a certain degree of harm within various social and economic practices—indeed within the system itself. But this harm, it is claimed, is the ‘price of freedom’. It is deemed necessary and put in service of the good. It develops the economy, it generates jobs and keeps people fed, it develops wealth which facilitates charitable organisations. It keeps at bay the greater harms of economic collapse, of intensified global poverty, or the power of the state or other authorities

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to have a say on how we live our lives or enjoy our leisure time (Hall and Winlow 2018). This brings added meaning to Badiou’s (2001: 9) comment that in liberal capitalist societies, ‘evil is that from which the good is derived’. Badiou, of course, meant that liberal societies imagine the Good as the absence of a set of a priori evils. However, reading Badiou through Dupuy, we can suggest that our idea of the Good is equally derived from the presence and acceptance of other ‘lesser’ but necessary harms or evils. It contains ‘evil’ (or harm) in both senses of the word. Consequently, this completely hamstrings our ability to denounce certain practices as harmful with confidence. There is a nagging tendency to let them off the hook as a ‘necessary evil’. The COVID-19 pandemic provided the perfect example of this. At the height of the pandemic, Amazon was being heralded as saviours and described in some quarters as the ‘new red cross’ (Lee and Nilsson 2020) for their role in the distribution of essential goods and keeping people entertained and their spirits up with various consumer items during lockdown. This is despite the fact that Amazon’s CEO and major shareholder, Jeff Bezos—already the world’s richest person—was amassing unprecedented wealth4 at a time of significant economic hardship for millions, while workers in his company and its various subsidiaries toil in slave-labour conditions. Similarly, corporations such as Google and Apple—both of whom have serious zemiological question marks—were drafted into help with plans for the development of contact tracing apps in different countries around the world. ‘They’re evil’, we might acknowledge, but in times of crisis corporations with masses of wealth and resources are treated as a source of ‘life power’ (Becker 1975), with the wealth and resources to steer us through the darkest hours. In World War II, corporations such as Ford and General Motors were similarly heralded for their assistance in the war effort (Herman 2012), just as world-leading corporations like Tesla will inevitably position themselves as the saviours of humanity in the fight against climate change. Psychoanalytic theory is also instructive when looking at the assumption of harmlessness, particularly Lacan and Žižek’s return to Freud and 4 Reports suggest that as of mid-April 2020, Bezos had increased his net worth by $24bn since the beginning of the pandemic in January 2020.

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his conception of the superego. The common understanding of Freud’s superego is that it is the site of ethical regulation and prohibition. It exists in opposition to the raw instinctual drives, hedonism, and excesses of the id which are unmediated by social pressure or custom, and attempts to keep them in check through community laws, ethics, and customs which are internalised by the subject and function as a chief internal regulatory mechanism through inflicting a psychic guilt on the subject. Lacan’s argument, however, is that this image of the superego as the site of ethical regulation is too simplistic. On the contrary, Lacan argues, the superego bombards us with conflicting messages. In order to fit in with the laws and customs of our community, we might have to act in deeply unethical ways. For instance, we might be caught between messages to live a good and ethical life, while experiencing the pressure to achieve wealth and fame which involve taking actions which are fundamentally contradictory to those messages. No matter what we do, we find ourselves experiencing a perpetual sense of guilt, unable to satisfy the demands of the superego, which continually asks more of us (McGowan 2020). This is what Žižek (2002) describes as the reorientation of the cultural superego. Rather than the superego being a site of austere, ethical, and almost Protestant prohibitions, the fundamental injunction of the superego in consumer capitalism is ‘Enjoy!’ The contemporary superego commands us to enjoy, hedonistically indulge, and transgress traditional symbolic laws and customs. Nowadays, Žižek argues, the superego is more likely to inflict guilt on the subject for failing to indulge our desires, capitalise on an opportunity, or allow ourselves to forgo certain experiences and pleasures because we have succumbed to other ethical injunctions or responsibilities, demonstrated by widespread use of the popular acronym ‘FOMO’ (Fear of missing out). In some respects, we can position the reoriented contemporary superego as the quintessential reflection of the assumption of harmlessness. Subsequently, the assumption of harmlessness has become embedded within our everyday language and subjectivities. We hear it in commonplace assertions such as ‘well, there’s no harm in that’, or in rhetorical questions such as ‘what’s the harm?’ or, ‘why shouldn’t I do that?’ This is because the ideological assumption of harmlessness has a dual-purpose.

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It serves not only to justify the existence of harmful industries or government practices and shield them from intense scrutiny; but also, to protect ourselves from the traumatic realities of harm which our most mundane social practices and normalised consumer pleasures are either based upon or produce. As Žizek (1989) has established, we are not the Marxian subjects of ‘false consciousness’, unaware of the truth of our actions and practices. Who does not know, or at least suspect somewhere deep down, that our enjoyment of some new fashion product or electronic commodity is predicated upon the suffering of slave labourers working in sweatshops in some part of the world? When stories of these tales are revealed in the media, the immediate response is one of a total lack of surprise. We know that we are contributing to climate change and violently transforming local communities and the environment when we travel abroad on holiday to far-flung tourist destinations. At the level of thought, capitalism allows dissent, encourages us to decry the vulgarity of capitalism and declare ourselves as not among its true believers, so long as we act as if we believe by continuing to work, shop, holiday abroad and so forth. The structure of the ideological assumption of harmlessness—working in conjunction with liberal postmodernism and capitalist realism’s cynical rejection of all alternatives—further facilitates this disavowal. It grants us the means to act as if we did not know and thereby enjoy these products and lifestyles without guilt becoming an overwhelming and paralysing force.5 Consequently, when confronted with questions about the legitimacy of a particular practice or action, the assumption of harmlessness inspires rhetorical questions which are the quintessential example of liberalism’s negative politics: ‘why shouldn’t I be allowed to own

5 It is important to note, however, that in many cases such ‘knowledge’ has little impact upon our enjoyment of the commodity, the gentrified space, or the tourist destination. This is why exposés on the brutal realities of how particular industries produce, distribute, and dispose of their commodities in immensely harmful ways scarcely generate the widespread behaviour change they desire without additional incentives or prohibitions. As Kuldova (2019) points out, we know that the shirt or the dress we have just bought has no immanent or magical qualities. They are simply clothes made of basic materials which are produced in environmentally harmful ways by borderline slave labour in some far-flung corner of some far-flung country. But nevertheless, this is not how they actually appear to the consumer. In spite of this knowledge, they still seem to contain certain magical qualities.

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multiple vacant properties?’ ‘Why shouldn’t I go on three luxury holidays a year?’ ‘Why shouldn’t gambling be an accepted leisure industry?’, ‘What’s the harm?’ This is not simply a semiotic coincidence. It is a habit of language that is a product of the assumption of harmlessness and the negative ideology of liberal individualism. When such questions are formulated in the obverse positive way—why should people be permitted to own multiple vacant properties? Why should people go on three luxury holidays a year? Why should the gambling industry be an accepted leisure industry?—we begin to move into the more teleological realm of considering the proper goals and ends of life, social roles and social practices, and what it is to live a Good life. The assumption of harmlessness is designed to pre-emptively prohibit these kinds of questions and deliberations; favouring a negative, open-ended and criterionless notion of individual freedom and moral sovereignty that has little consideration of the wider social body beyond the interests of the self. In the absence of the telos and genuine deliberation about shared goods and ends, this stage of liberal capitalism’s ideological assumption of harmlessness functions similarly to Popper’s falsification principle. One need only find an example to contradict the statement that a particular practice or industry is inherently harmful in order to falsify it entirely, irrespective of the vast swathes of evidence to suggest that the statement is true. While it is acknowledged that certain harms do occur, these are deemed to be individually and circumstantially specific, rather than systemic to the practice or institution itself. Or, if they are indeed systemic, they are outweighed on-balance by the ‘good’ deeds performed by the industry. At its essence, whatever social practice is under scrutiny is declared essentially harmless and remains in place almost by default. To return to gambling as an example, we simply require piecemeal reform, better regulation around the advertising of gambling, technological constraints upon games and gaming machines, more awareness campaigns around the risks of gambling and so on. In fact, those who wish to abolish the gambling industry might risk stigmatising those who gamble! There is no need to challenge the destructiveness and validity of liberalism’s primacy upon negative individual freedom. No need to confront the obscene real of capitalism too closely or deliberate too

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deeply over what should be the proper shared goals and ends of life. We just need to develop better tools to identify those who are vulnerable and at risk and develop strategies that can mitigate the worst excesses of their problems. Rather than being recognised as symptoms of deep social problems that are to be resolved by ambitious theoretical work that attempts to re-imagine a different ethical, political and economic basis for society, social harms have become transformed into risks to be managed (Beck 1992). Subsequently, the assumption of harmlessness inspires a fetishisation of post-political piecemeal harm-reduction and harm-minimisation. The use of the term ‘fetish’ here is deliberate and important. In psychoanalytic theory, the fetish always covers over a lack and sustains a fantasy. In this scenario, the fetish of piecemeal harm-reduction covers over the lack of an alternative political-economic or ethical vision for the transformation of the way things are, and sustains the fantasy of an active and socially progressive society trying to improve the lives and wellbeing of its citizens, despite the fact that piecemeal harm-reduction really amounts to a ‘stodgy conservativism’ and preservation of the status quo (Badiou 2001). It is an example of a post-political interpassivity. As Dean (2005) explains, when we are interpassive, something else—the fetishised object—is active on our behalf. We think and convince ourselves that we are being active, when in reality, by allowing the frantic activity of the fetish to act in our stead, we are being passive. Academics will be familiar with this feeling when printing articles or buying books and putting them on our shelves. In doing so, we interpassively feel that we are productively engaging with the academic literature, despite the knowledge that in reality, we are not going to have the time to read them for many months, if ever. The assumption of harmlessness similarly instigates the frantic and interpassive production of descriptions of harm and harm-reduction studies which fetishistically serves to foreclose what is really necessary: deep ethical, philosophical, and political thinking which can provide the foundations for imagining and reconstructing a society on such a basis that these harms would be impossible. Under these conditions, it is no surprise that so much academic focus and research funding within the social sciences is geared towards demonstrating ‘impact’.

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Closing Remarks As Hall (2020) has written, history is a series of continuities and discontinuities. However, it has been the contention of this chapter that the assumption of harmlessness has been a significant historical continuity which was vital to the establishment and reproduction of capitalism throughout modernity up to the present day. Few would argue that we are living through a vitally important historical moment. Our society is one which faces myriad crises and harms on all fronts. We are blighted by crises in such crucial areas of social life such as housing, climate change, work, indebtedness, mental health, drug abuse, and food and water security; and we live in a world characterised by subjectivities that are intensely competitive and individualistic, narcissistic, and display a palpable hostility towards any form of social, political, moral or religious authority (Milbank and Pabst 2016; Winlow and Hall 2013). The whitehot intensity of the culture wars has seemingly never been greater. On all sides of these arguments, traditional hierarchies of harm are being inverted entirely, and pillars such as the presumption of innocence are casually tossed aside on the toxicity of social media. There are instances in which very real inflictions of harm—such as taking away individuals’ livelihoods, hurling streams of personal abuse through social media ‘dogpiles’, and verbal and physical threats—are being positioned as legitimate responses to the mere expression of an opinion that upsets a particular group of people (Nagle 2017). Moreover, when we are witnessing the widespread use of moral language to defend the preservation of social practices, industries and institutions that threaten lives, corrode the social, and jeopardise environmental stability and general human well-being, it is clear that something has gone very wrong at the deepest moral, philosophical and ideological core of our society. This, to borrow once more from MacIntyre (2011), is an extremely disquieting suggestion indeed, but it is one from which we cannot turn away. We must face up to the cold reality that at the precise moment in which we need that ever-elusive coherence around the concept of harm, there seems to be only intensifying confusion and uncertainty with regard to the grounds on which we can call certain practices as a genuinely harmful presence which should be extinguished from our

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society altogether, rather than merely circumstantially problematic and in need of regulation and reform. Progress in this area is certainly built off the back of hard empirical graft, documenting the various harms people experience. But it is equally reliant upon a deep moral and political-philosophical enquiry that has been largely avoided within the social harm literature. Above all, however, we must overcome the current political and cultural landscape of liberal postmodernism’s cynicism and pluralistic individualism, which would dismiss any universal principles out of hand and preclude the formation of consensus that could give the concept of harm some meaningful ethical and ontological grounding.

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5 Global Harms and the Natural Environment Rob White

Introduction Global environmental harms are generated by systemic pressures on the world’s ecology. These pressures include global warming due to humangenerated carbon emissions, the super-exploitation of natural resources through global systems of transportation and worldwide chains of production and consumption, and the substitution of ecologically benign farming practices with those that reduce resilience and biodiversity such as standardised mass agricultural and pastoral production. This chapter deals with harms that affect non-living entities such as rivers, mountains and oceans, and living entities such as humans, nonhuman animals, plants, and ecosystems (White 2018a). Consideration of the non-human environmental entity, as well as humans, incorporates discussion of individual landscape features, specific living entities R. White (B) University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_5

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and particular ecosystems. Any particular ecosystem is made up of both abiotic components (air, water, soil, atoms and molecules) and biotic components (plants, animals, bacteria and fungi) (Merchant 2005). When destruction, degradation or diminishment of these occurs outside of legally provided means and in a manner deemed in environmental law to be criminal, then harm can be said to have occurred. However, many environmental harms are perpetrated in the course of ‘business as usual’. This means that they are frequently legal. For critical green criminologists, environmental harm is also measured by ecological impact and not solely or just in relation to the law, a position that distinguishes it from more conventional green criminology (White 2018b). This sub-branch of criminological research and scholarship is comprised of distinct theoretical approaches that collectively deal with environmental, social and animal rights issues. Among its primary considerations are the nature and dynamics of environmental crimes and harms (that incorporate wider definitions of crime than that provided in strictly legal definitions) and eco-justice (the valuing of and respect for humans, ecosystems, non-human animals, and plants). It includes work that spans the globe (Arroyo-Quiroz and Wyatt 2018; Goyes et al. 2017; Sollund et al. 2016; South and Brisman 2013; White and Heckenberg 2014). As critical green criminology highlights, important insights can be gained by studying environmental harm from the point of view of ‘crimes of the powerful’ (White 2018b). For instance, the carrying out of eco-crimes is largely propelled by transnational corporations that, in pursuit of private profit, systematically consume, harvest, contaminate and destroy the living Earth and its inhabitants. From this perspective, the problem of environmental harm is thus construed as structural and systemic rather than individual and sporadic. It is both intentional and highly organised. For the past five hundred years, our planet has become a battleground where plunder of resources and the pollution of the planet has been rampant. The result of this is inexorable movement toward a substantially altered ecological state. As this chapter outlines, three trends in particular are destroying ecological balance and general environmental

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wellbeing—climate change, threats to biodiversity, and contamination of air, water, and land. Environmental harm on this scale demands responses, large and small, that address the key underlying issues that contribute to eco-injustice. Preventing ecocide—the systematic destruction of the environment— means resisting such abuse and, ultimately, transforming the status quo (van der Velden and White 2021). In other words, the time and space for business as usual must be radically curtailed if social and ecological justice is to be achieved. Basic survival is at stake.

Why a ‘Harm’ Perspective? There are important limitations in relying solely upon legal definitions of criminality when discussing environmental harm. This section discusses why this is the case, in the process of outlining different dimensions of harm, such as those related to time, mobility and scale, that are specific to environmental issues. Environmental crime is typically defined on a continuum ranging from strict legal definitions (e.g. a criminal offence) through to broader harm perspectives (e.g. actual and potential environmental damage). From a criminal justice perspective, the distinction between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ goes to the heart of why environmental crime tends to be undervalued in law. Consider, for example, the terms illegal logging, illegal fishing, illegal trade in animals and plants, and illegal mining: Of note is the consistent use of the preface ‘illegal’ in the listed activities constituting environmental crime, a preface not regularly employed when describing other categories of crime. This reflects the fact that some component or level of these activities is still condoned and that it only becomes illegal once a set boundary has been passed. The tipping point of illegality contrasts environmental crimes with other established criminal offences. (Bricknell 2010: 4)

To put it differently, the label of environmental crime tends to be applied to specific activities that are otherwise lawful or licensed (e.g.

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cutting down of trees, pulling fish from the ocean). The critical question, therefore, is what criteria are used to substantiate specific claims that something is harmful and whether it is harmful to the extent that it warrants the application of the label ‘criminal’. A fundamental premise of critical green criminology is that environmental crime in fact needs to be defined and studied in relation to the extent of harm, as measured by ecological and eco-justice criteria, and not solely on the basis of legal definitions. There are two reasons for this. First, much existing environmental harm is perfectly legal. Harm to the environment is, in many situations, considered to be acceptable because it is an inherent consequence of industrial and natural resource extraction activities which are seen to provide significant economic benefits (e.g. pollution is allowed under license or authorisation and is simply treated as an externalised cost of doing business) (Bell and McGillivray 2008). Second, reliance upon strictly legal definitions of crime sidesteps fundamental matters of social power and sectional interests and the reflection of these in legal definitions. Accordingly, a more expansive definition of environmental crime within critical green criminology includes environmental-related harms facilitated by the state, as well as by corporations and other powerful actors. This is because these institutions have the capacity to shape official definitions of environmental crime in ways that allow or condone environmentally harmful practices. For instance, the state is frequently a perpetrator of environmental harm, both directly and by granting legitimacy to ecologically destructive acts on the part of large companies. This is especially evident in industries such as open-cut mining, clear-cutting forestry and shale-oil fracking. Critics argue that ecological (e.g. the balance of nature) and ecojustice (e.g. intrinsic rights of nature) criteria warrant significant weight in deciding the normative status of environmentally harmful acts or omissions as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (White 2018a). Laws do not always get the calculus right (Lin 2006), especially when powerful industries dominate the political landscape. For critical green criminology, environmental harms, regardless of legality, all need to be closely scrutinised since the measurement and definition of harm frequently resides in the hands of powerful interests. The activities surrounding these may well be

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considered ‘criminal’—from a social harm perspective—depending upon situation and specific analysis. The analytical focus on social harm has tended to highlight three important issues: social harms are ubiquitous precisely because they stem from and are ingrained in the structures of contemporary societies; they are generally not caused by intentional acts as such, but result from the omission to act or societal indifference to suffering and exploitation; and they are entirely preventable in that the consequences of certain social actions or inactions are generally foreseeable (Pemberton 2016). What makes a social harm ‘social’ is the fact that it does not stem from natural causes (e.g. a cyclone or earthquake causes environmental harm). It is intrinsically caused by humans. It is humans, in concert, who are responsible for the harm. How they do so, however, is a social process involving relations of power, domination and resistance (White 2013). Acknowledging the ambiguities and contested nature of environmental harm signals several dimensions of harm that warrant close attention.

Wider Definitions Critical green criminology adopts ‘harm’ definitions of environmental crime that extend the scope of analysis to consider harms associated with legal activities, such as the clear-cutting of old-growth forests and the negative ecological consequences of new technologies such as the use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture (e.g. reduction of biodiversity through extensive planting of GM corn). In a similar vein, one can consider the criminological aspects of climate change from the point of view of human contributions to global warming (e.g. carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants), and the criminality associated with the aftermath of natural disasters (e.g. incidents of theft and rape in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans).

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Environmental Victims Environmental harm can also be distinguished on the basis of who or what precisely is being harmed or victimised. For example, environmental victimisation has been defined as specific forms of harm associated with human injury (Williams 1996). But even conventional laws allow for a modicum of protection for the non-human. This is reflected in legislation pertaining to endangered species (e.g. particular animals such as tigers and elephants) and to conservation more generally (e.g. in the form of national parks and marine sanctuaries). However, natural objects such as rivers and forests tend to lack legal rights (and agency or volition) and so must rely upon humans to bring actions to protect them. This, too, is changing in some parts of the world, as demonstrated by specific rivers and mountains in New Zealand being granted legal personhood, under the stewardship of government and local Maori communities.

Classification Systems The most common environmental crimes, as legally defined, fall into two broad categories: natural resources crimes (e.g. trees and animals), and pollution crimes (e.g. toxic waste). Environmental harms can be also categorised as ‘green’ types of environmental crime, that refers to ‘natural resource’ crimes, such as deforestation; ‘brown’ types, linked to ‘pollution’ including the dumping of waste; and ‘white’ types, that consist of ‘science-based’ crimes such as the use of animals for experimental research purposes (White and Heckenberg 2014). There are other ways to categorise environmental crime as well. For example, environmental harms can be analysed in relation to taking from nature (e.g. natural resource extraction involving fishing, wildlife harvesting, and logging); adding to nature (e.g. contamination of freshwater); and altering nature (e.g. genetic modification of crops). How acts and omissions are described or conceptualised shapes how observers view the activity and inform, and how they respond to environmental crimes and harms.

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Time and Environmental Harm The detection and origins of some types of environment-related harm may be unclear due to significant time-lags in the manifestation of the harm. It is important, for example, to acknowledge the notion of cumulative effects, such as the way in which dioxins (a highly toxic substance) accumulate in fish over time. It also refers to the cumulative impact of multiple sources of pollution, for example, where there are a high number of factories in one area (such as locations along the US-Mexican border). Diseases linked to asbestos poisoning may surface many years after first exposure, and this, too, provides another example of the long-term effects of environmental harm. Persistent use of pesticides in particular geographical areas may also have unforeseen consequences for local wildlife, including the development of new diseases among endemic animals.

Transference and Mobility of Environmental Harm Much environmental harm is intrinsically transnational since it is by nature mobile and easily subject to transference. In regard to air pollution, for example, 2015 saw the worst ever smoke haze over Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, extending to Thailand and the Philippines. This was caused by illegal fires started in peatland and forest on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island and the Indonesian part of Borneo. Another example is electronic waste (e.g. computers, mobile phones) which contain toxins such as lead, mercury and other chemicals that can poison waterways if buried or release toxins into the air if burned. Much of this waste ends up as transfers from rich countries to the poor under the guise of ‘recycling’ (Bisschop 2015). Moreover, while some environmental harms can be determined by investigating ecological degradation and destruction of place-specific environments (such as clear-cutting of forests), others require a mapping of movements from place of origin to place of destination (such as the international trafficking of plants and non-human animals).

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Geography of the Harm There is a myriad of different types of environmental harms, some of which are common across the surface of the planet, others which are specific to particular locales, regions and countries. Environmental harm occurs at varying levels of geographical scale. An example of local-level environmental crime is polluted city waterways (e.g. contamination of drinking water in Flint, Michigan). By contrast, there are issues that are specific to particular regions of the world. For example, huge tropical forests are found in the Amazon, an area that encompasses countries such as Brazil, Colombia and Peru, and in South-East Asia, spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar, amongst other countries. For these regions, deforestation is a key ongoing issue. At the global level, issues such as plastics pollution in the oceans and climate change are matters that affects us all, regardless of where we live. One way in which to interpret environmental harm is to view it through the lens of the concept of ecocide. The term ‘ecocide’ emerged in the late 1960s in response to the impact of war on the environment and since then has been used in reference to the negative impacts on environments under peacetime as well as wartime conditions (Gray 1996; Higgins et al. 2013). The concept has been used to refer to the extensive damage, destruction to or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, and includes both natural (e.g. pest infestation of an eco-system) and anthropogenic (i.e. as a result of human activity) causes for the harm (Higgins 2012). Recently the concept has also been applied to the global scale insofar as the consequences of climate change are planet-wide, transformative and catastrophic (White 2018c). Discussions of ecocide describe an attempt to criminalise human activities that destroy and diminish the wellbeing and health of ecosystems and the species within these, including humans (Higgins et al. 2013). Climate change and the gross exploitation of natural resources are undermining existing ecosystems and habitats. This is the essence of ecocide. A key defining feature of crimes of the powerful is that such crimes involve actions (or omissions and failures to act) that are socially harmful and carried out by elites and/or those who wield significant political and social authority in the particular sectors or domains of their influence.

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Such harms are inseparable from who has power, how they exercise this power, and who ultimately benefits from the actions of the powerful. There is a close connection between ecocide and crimes of the powerful. It is because of the link between environmental harm and power that critical green criminology adopts an approach, as mentioned previously, that: provides an umbrella under which to theorise and critique both illegal environmental harms (that is, environmental harms currently defined as unlawful and therefore punishable) and legal environmental harms (that is, environmental harms currently condoned as lawful but which are nevertheless socially and ecologically harmful). (White and Heckenberg 2014: 13)

One aspect of this focus is to orient study toward exposing activities that cause significant damage to the environment. Another equally important aspect is to explicitly address and respond to behaviours and activities that are particularly destructive of ecology and species. Both endeavours involve attempts to shift community thinking away from active or tacit acceptance of acts (and omissions) that are environmentally harmful, to seeing these as morally wrong, as illegal and/or as criminal. Both similarly involve active engagement with the world around us.

Climate Change Among the most evident and growing global environmental harms are those related to climate change (Agnew 2011; White 2018c; Kramer 2020). Before exploring how and why climate change is occurring, it is useful to explain specific terms used to describe aspects of planetary heating. For instance, global warming describes the rising of the earth’s temperature over a relatively short time period. For the last 12,000 years of earth history, known as the Holocene period, the average temperature of the world hovered around 15 degrees. During this time diverse human civilisations were established and flourished. Since the industrial revolution

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some two hundred and fifty ago, however, the earth’s temperature has risen rapidly due to the effect of greenhouse gases which trap heat close into the planet. Over the last two decades, average temperatures have increased at an unprecedented rate leading to fundamental changes in the formerly stable Holocene climatic conditions (van der Velden and White 2021). Climate change describes the inter-related effects of this rise in temperature: from changing sea levels and changing ocean currents, through to the impacts of temperature change on local environments that affect the endemic flora and fauna in varying ways (e.g. the death of coral due to temperature rises in seawater). Weather is the name given to the direct local experience of things such as sunshine, wind, rain, snow and the general disposition of the elements (Lever-Tracy 2011). The science of climate change demonstrates that global warming is not only real and escalating but is primarily due to anthropogenic (or human) causes (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2018). The urgency and reality of climate change are eloquently conveyed each time data is released on global heating trends. The last major IPCC Report was released in 2014. Since then, the world has gotten hotter as temperatures continue to rise (World Meteorological Organization 2020; see also IPCC, 2013, 2018). The effects of global warming are manifest in climate disruption, involving high impact and extreme weather events. Table 5.1 summarises those that occurred during 2019. It is not only the weather that is affected by global warming, however. Inevitably there will be consequences for humans and their environs as well. Again, the evidence on this is clear. As temperatures rise, so too will risks and harms. These affect all life on the planet as well as non-living environmental entities such as rivers and mountains. A series of key risks have been identified by the IPCC (2014‚ 2013, 2018). These include increased damage from wildfires, heatrelated human mortality and increased damage from river and coastal urban floods. They include a distributional shift and reduced fisheries catch potential at low latitudes; compounded stress on water resources; increased mass coral bleaching and mortality; reduced crop productivity

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Table 5.1 High impact events of 2019 Heat and cold waves

Precipitation

Heavy rainfalls and floods

Tropical cyclones

Severe storms

Drought

Wildfires

Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and UK—record heat Japan experienced two heatwaves; extreme heat in India and Israel Australia had an exceptionally hot summer; record heat in Argentina and Chile US-Canada border (Montana) as well as Vancouver had significant cold spells Unusually dry conditions with low precipitation in Australia, Central America, Southwest Africa, and Southwest Europe Precipitation deficit in India – Unusually high precipitation amounts in central USA, northern Canada, northern Russia, and southwest Asia India monsoon seasons – Floods in Cameroon, central USA, Côte d’Ivoire, eastern Canada, Ethiopia, north-eastern Australia, Indonesia, Iran, Kenya, Nigeria, northern Argentina, Somalia, South Sudan, southern Brazil, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uruguay Tropical cyclone activity globally in 2019 was slightly above average in both the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere, with extreme cyclone season in the North Indian Ocean France, Greece, Italy, and Spain—extreme rainfall and high winds Widespread severe thunderstorms and associated dust storms in India and Pakistan USA experienced its most active tornado season since 2011 Southeast Asia and southwest Pacific (Australia, China, China-Laos border, Greater Horn of Africa, northern Thailand, southern Africa) Low river levels in Poland and Serbia Above-average fire year in Alaska, Australia, Bolivia, Indonesia, Siberia, and Venezuela

Source drawing from World Meteorological Organization (2020) WMO Provisional Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2019. WMO

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and livelihood and food security; and the loss of livelihoods, settlements, infrastructure, ecosystem services and economic stability. Other risks include spread of vector-borne diseases—the global coronavirus pandemic illustrating just how quickly future risks can translate into present harms. The risks and threats to eco-systems, humans and flora and fauna are considerable and growing. The damage caused by global heating is already being felt in the form of extreme weather events, increased competition for dwindling natural resources, outbreaks of disease and viral infections, further extinctions of species, and intensification of social conflict (Crank and Jacoby 2015; US Global Change Research Program 2018; Watts et al. 2017; White 2018c; Heydon 2020). Social inequality and environmental injustice will undoubtedly be the drivers of continuous conflicts for many years to come, as the most dispossessed and marginalised of the world’s population suffer the brunt of food shortages, undrinkable water, climate-induced migration and general hardship in their day-to-day lives. The scientific evidence has established that global warming is not ‘natural’. Critical criminologists argue that it is mainly due to the continued collusion of political leaders with the fossil fuel industries and other degraders of the environment. Global warming is primarily generated by the activities of governments and corporations that rely upon or involve pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Collectively these forces are diminishing emission controls and environmental protections, burning forests and fracking oils, and in some instances encouraging violence against Indigenous peoples and local farmers (White 2018c; Kramer 2020; Heydon 2020). Even with foreknowledge of consequence, greenhouse gas concentrations are continuing to reach new highs (UNEP 2019; WMO 2020). Yet, in the midst of these increasing greenhouse gas emissions, ‘Global fossil fuel consumption subsidies increased by 50% over the past 3 years, reaching a peak of almost US$430 billion in 2018’ (Watts et al. 2019: 1836). Thus, governments are using public taxpayer monies to fund activities that are directly causing the problems which in United Nations forums they profess they want to diminish. In regard to climate change, therefore, the main culprits are nationstates and companies. As the UN Human Rights Council has pointed

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out, while the problems are epic and urgent, the response has been appalling. In its summary statement for the Climate Change and Poverty report (A/HRC/41/39-17 July 2019), the Council critically observes that: In Brazil, President Bolsonaro has promised to open up the Amazon rainforest for mining, end demarcation of indigenous lands and weaken environmental agencies and protections. China is moving to end reliance on coal, while exporting coal-fired power plants abroad and failing to implement its regulations for methane emissions at home. In the United States of America, until recently the world’s biggest producer of global emissions, President Trump has placed former lobbyists in oversight roles, adopted industry talking points, presided over an aggressive rollback of environmental regulations and is actively silencing and obfuscating climate science. (UN Human Rights Council 2019: 8)

The net result has been a broad shift in government administration away from the public interest and in favour of specific private industry and firm interests. Global warming is preventable. Climate change is not immutable. But powerful interests are making it inevitable.

Threats to Biodiversity The second and related major threat to the planet’s health is loss of biodiversity. Biodiversity is generally defined as the variety of all species on earth. It refers to the different plants, animals and micro-organisms, and their genes that together make up life on the planet. It also includes reference to the terrestrial (land), marine (ocean) and freshwater (inland water systems) ecosystems of which they are a part. The threats to biodiversity are occurring at a rapid pace and the principal pressures directly driving biodiversity loss are either constant or increasing in intensity (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2010). Changes to an ecosystem through human intervention occurs through manipulation, contamination or destruction of these components (e.g. through mining or land clearance or use of pesticides). According to the

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United Nations, there are five principle threats to biodiversity (UNEP 2013). These are: • the unsustainable harvesting of natural resources, including plants, animals and marine species; • the loss, degradation or fragmentation of ecosystems through land conversion for agriculture, forest clearing, etc.; • invasive non-native or ‘alien’ species being introduced to ecosystems to which they are not adapted, i.e. where they have no, or not enough, predators, to maintain an ecological balance; • pollution; and • climate change. There are complex reasons why these threats emerge as they do, and they are interlinked in a variety of ways. Reduction in species includes both non-human animals and plants. This is significant insofar as complex ecosystems depend upon the interaction between all species, and any change will impact upon overall functioning. For example, when it comes to trees and species that inhabit forests, 13% of the world’s total forest area is under formal protection and almost 75% of forests are covered by a national forest programme. Yet, despite progress in the regulatory sphere, and net gains in forest areas in Europe and Asia, total loss of forest cover during the first decade of the 2000s still averaged around 13 million hectares per year. Most deforestation is occurring in tropical forests, with substantial biodiversity impacts: ‘Although the global rate of net forest cover loss has slowed, partly due to the expansion of plantations and to natural forest restoration, forest biodiversity loss continues to occur disproportionately since the highest levels of deforestation and of forest degradation are reported for biodiversity-rich natural forests in developing countries’ (UNEP 2011: 48). Net losses are especially significant in South America, SouthEast Asia and Africa. Recent events in the Amazon (2019), featuring widespread fires, many of which were deliberately lit, makes the situation even more worrying. All of this is compounded by large-scale timber trafficking, which is likewise exacerbating the threats to biodiversity (Cao 2017).

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Deforestation and species reduction are not only solely the outcome of logging, legal or illegal. Land clearance is also due to agricultural exploitation, cattle farming, mining, oil and gas installations, and hydroelectric dams (Khagram 2004; Boekhout van Solinge and Kuijpers 2013; Mol 2017). Deforestation is linked to civil wars, armed conflicts and citizen resistance (Brisman et al. 2015; Cao 2017; Arroyo-Quiroz and Wyatt 2018). In these contexts, the ecological impact of logging and land clearance transcends the legal-illegal divide insofar as vast amounts of forest are destroyed in many different locations—from Peru and Brazil, Liberia and Sierra Leone, to Indonesia and Mexico. The motivations, objectives and practices may vary depending upon the social context and specific industry interests, but the result is further depletion of many different kinds of trees and variety of forests. The rise of ‘flex crops and commodities’ also have negative impacts on biodiversity (Borras et al. 2013). These refer to a single crop/commodity that is highly valuable precisely because of its multiple characteristics and uses. Typically, a flex crop straddles multiple commodity sectors—that is, it can be used as food, feed, fuel, and other industrial commodities. This makes flex crops very attractive to growers and buyers around the world. For example, the profitability of biofuel production is leading to large scale palm oil and soybean plantations in places such as Indonesia, Brazil and Colombia. This has resulted in the clearing of rainforests and in some instances forcing of Indigenous people off their lands. Mol (2013: 254) critically observes the result of this in Colombia: The gift of palm oil to the world leaves the people and the environment of the tropics with contaminated soils, groundwater, and rivers; habitat destruction; ecosystem disturbances; the loss of flora and aquatic and animal species; and processes of displacement and emplacement that inflect a whole range of physical, psychological, social, and cultural consequences upon local communities.

The four key flex crops are maize, oil palm, soybean, and sugarcane. Important producers and exporters of flex crops and commodities include, for example, Argentina for soya, Malaysia and Indonesia for palm oil, and Vietnam for fast-growing trees (Borras et al. 2013).

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Multi-purpose crops exacerbate the push toward fewer varieties being planted. Species reduction is also associated with ease of production, distribution and marketing. For instance, there is a trend toward monoculture (e.g. growing all the same variety of potatoes or apples) since uniformity means ease of cultivation and harvest, translating into higher profits. New agricultural and pastoral technologies reinforce this broad tendency toward simplification. The global political economy of genetically modified (GM) organisms provides a case in point. Countries that have been reluctant to adopt GM crops have been subjected to intense pressures to do so (Walters 2011). Simultaneously, transnational corporations have been aggressively appropriating genetic resources and their derivative products through the use of patents, thereby diminishing the ability of local farmers and communities to engage in ecologically sustainable practices (Mgbeoji 2006; Goyes and South 2016). Biopiracy and GM technologies are eroding plant genetic and species diversity. From the point of view of biodiversity more generally, it is notable that in 2019 it was reported that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history (IPBES 2019). The ramifications are catastrophic, and the outlook does not look good. And that is without even considering the extent and geographical reach of water, air and land pollution that is devastating the planet. Environmental collapse is occurring across many different fronts, and time is rapidly running out to prevent ecocide on a grand scale.

Pollution and Waste Pollution is an entrenched problem that is causing pervasive global harms to the natural environment. The main causes of pollution are directly linked to existing techniques and processes of production (e.g. agriculture, mining, manufacturing), consumption (e.g. waste disposal), transportation (e.g. internal combustion engine of cars, trucks and buses) and war (e.g. use of depleted uranium in armaments). Pollution is therefore generally ingrained in everyday practices and systems. The

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emergence of e-waste (computers, mobile phones, etc.) has only added further to existing waste management problems (Bisschop 2015). Today, air, land and water pollution are negatively affecting individuals and communities in every corner of the globe. Although specific acts of pollution may not be illegal and allowed to occur under license, the harms of pollution, legal and illegal, are manifold. The problem of air pollution, for example, basically impacts upon humans in ways that fundamentally undermine their health and wellbeing and is associated with millions of premature deaths worldwide each year (Walters 2010). Children are particularly vulnerable to its devastating adverse health effects because of their immature and developing immune systems. Other factors are at play as well. For example, they are also exposed to higher concentrations of traffic-related pollutants than adults (Heydon and Chakraborty 2020). Air pollution stems from the release of chemicals and particulates into the atmosphere, includes such substances as carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide, and is clearly evident in the form of city smog. Indoor air pollution is also a concern, particularly in developing countries where cooking and heating with biomass fuels (agricultural residues, dung, straw, wood) or coal, producing high levels of indoor smoke that contain a variety of pollutants damaging to health (World Health Organisation 2013). Land (or soil) pollution occurs when chemicals are released into the soil, including heavy metals such as lead and cadmium and pesticides, which can kill living bacteria in the earth or contaminate all life within the soil (including plants and non-plant creatures). Agriculture and mining stand out as two of the most polluting activities along with the burgeoning extractive and resources industries and the use of chemicals. Corporations are increasingly mining ever deeper into the earth to extract mineral reserves, burying some of the world’s most hazardous waste deep in the ground (e.g. radioactive waste), ruthlessly exploiting local people, and degrading local lands through mega-mining (White and Heckenberg 2014; Hulme and Short 2014; Gutierrez-Gomez 2017; Weinstock 2017). Water pollution occurs when contaminants, such as untreated sewerage waste and agricultural runoff containing chemical fertilisers, poison and alter existing surface and ground waters. It is a growing global

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problem (Brisman et al. 2018). Surface run-off transfers contaminants from one place to another and harmful chemicals which are suspended in the air get dissolved in rainwater and pollute the soil when they come to the earth’s surface in the form of acid rain (Naik 2010). The scope of water pollution extends from small-scale ponds, to inland waterways, to estuaries, to lakes and rivers, and to the world’s oceans. Sea currents transfer pollutants and wastes around the globe. Of particular concern is the accumulation of plastics in the world’s oceans (see Smith and Brisman’s Chapter 10, this volume). The harms resulting from extractive industries like mining are of particular concern (Ruggiero and South 2013; Zabyelina and van Uhm 2020). These include harms stemming from environmental degradation and contamination. In some circumstances mining ventures create toxic sites, and thus produce the conditions for contaminated communities, with significant detrimental consequences for local habitats and human residents. In many countries, for example, there is presently much consternation and controversy over the environmental impact of ‘fracking’, a technique that involves using chemicals to extract coal-seam gas (Cleary 2012; Hernandez 2018). Amongst other issues, a major concern is that hydraulic fracturing fluids used to fracture rock formations contain numerous chemicals harmful to human and environmental health, especially if they enter drinking water supplies. As noted in Australia, the industry has the potential to: contaminate underground aquifers; produce billions of litres of unmanageable saline waste water that will yield millions of tonnes of salt and threaten farmland, river systems and wetlands; overlay an extensive network of access roads and pipelines; accelerate climate change by leaking methane gas into the atmosphere; trigger earthquakes; depress land values; and imposing a crippling cost across the economy by doubling or even tripling the price of domestic gas. (Cleary 2012: 23–24)

The main protagonists in the fracking debate in Australia are, on the one side, coal and gas companies, and on the other farmers, tourism

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operators and environmentalists. Profit and power are the key determinants in these debates, as is the extent of community mobilisation and politicisation of the issues. Importantly, the search for increasingly scarce natural resources is taking companies to new frontiers of mineral and gas exploration and technical exploitation—from the Arctic Circle to remote Amazon locations. This involves problematic environmental risks. For example, there are hazards and dangers associated with activities such as drilling in deep-offshore locations (as evidenced by the demise of the BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico) and coal-seam fracking (as evidenced by pollution of artesian water); that is, new methods of extraction carry with them new dangers and new potential harms, particularly if poorly regulated (Hanson 2011; Hulme and Short 2014; Bradshaw 2015).

Conclusion When thinking about destruction and degradation of the natural environment, it is essential to consider these from the point of view of harm, not just criminality. Indeed, this is a central political thrust of critical green criminology, which aims to foster research and action that is oppositional to powerful elite interests and transformational in its pursuit of social and ecological justice (White 2018b). There are sound reasons why this is the case. The criminality related to corporate crime (large businesses and industry conglomerates), state crime (government agencies and officials), and state-corporate crime (collusion between companies and states) must come to the fore in discussions of global harm and the natural environment. The biggest contributors to carbon emissions, environmental destruction and ecological contamination are large companies, state-owned corporations and the pro-industry policies of nation-states. This ensures that environmental harm occurs in the pursuit of ‘normal’ business outcomes and involve ‘normal’ business practices. It is rarely portrayed as crimes against the planet but rather as simply the cost of commodity production and consumption. In the end, however, there is

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a price to pay, and that cost is terrible and high for ordinary people, plants and non-human animals, rivers, landscapes and ecosystems. Global environmental harms impact on every facet of our lives. They destroy habitat, kill rivers, take the tops off of mountains, pollute air, land and water, and fundamentally alter the chemistry and atmosphere of the planet. They are also interrelated and interconnected. This applies to the links between climate change, threats to biodiversity and pollution, as it does to other types of environmental harms. For example, mining can have substantial impact in regard to greenhouse gas emissions; the Alberta Tar Sands project in Canada is notorious for its huge contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, because of the enormous size and the open-cut methods of the mining operations (Klare 2012; Smandych and Kueneman 2010; Heydon 2020). Similarly, cutting down trees also has a direct bearing on global warming. For instance, it has been estimated that deforestation accounts globally for about 12% of total human-caused greenhouse gas emissions (Greenpeace 2014). Deforestation not only involves the cutting down of trees but also frequently the burning of forests as part of converting land for other uses such as agriculture and biofuel plantations. On the other hand, there is an association between climate change and specific environmental harms such as air pollution, that exacerbate existing health problems. An estimated 4.2 million premature deaths every year globally are linked to ambient air pollution, mainly from heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and acute respiratory infections in children. New models estimate that fossil-fuel-related greenhouse gas emissions account for about 65% of the excess mortality rate attributable to air pollution. Furthermore, climate and weather strongly affect where and when air pollution occurs. Weather systems influence the movement and dispersion of air pollutants in the atmosphere through the action of winds, vertical mixing, and precipitation, all of which are likely to alter in a changing climate. Air pollution, stratospheric ozone depletion, persistent pollutants and climate change are interlinked problems. (WMO 2020: 27)

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Global warming makes things worse. Environmental harms thus have a compounding effect. Each reinforces the damage and destruction of the other. The result puts us all in peril.

Further Reading • Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). (2019). The IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Paris: IPBES. This report documents the incredible rate at which species extinction is occurring. It provides detailed description of the 1 million species that are on the verge of extinction and the continuing threats to biodiversity around the globe. • Kramer, R. (2020). Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. This book provides an in-depth examination of four specific statecorporate climate crimes. In doing so, it describes and explains what corporations in the fossil fuel industry, the US government and the international political community did, or failed to do, in relation to global warming. • White, R. (2013). Environmental Harm: An Eco-Justice Perspective. Bristol: Policy Press. This book outlines a conceptual framework consisting of three interconnected justice-related approaches to environmental harm: environmental justice (humans), ecological justice (the environment) and species justice (non-human animals). Examples and illustrations are drawn from many national and regional contexts, and globally.

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References Agnew, R. (2011). Dire Forecast: A Theoretical Model of the Impact of Climate Change on Crime. Theoretical Criminology, 16 (1), 21–42. Arroyo-Quiroz, A., & Wyatt, T. (Eds.). (2018). Green Crime in Mexico: A Collection of Case Studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bell, S., & McGillivray, D. (2008). Environmental Law. London: Oxford University Press. Bisschop, L. (2015). Governance of the Illegal Trade in E-waste and Tropical Timber: Case Studies on Transnational Environmental Crime. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Boekhout van Solinge, T., & Kuijpers, K. (2013). The Amazon Rainforest: A Green Criminological Perspective. In N. South & A. Brisman (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology. New York: Routledge. Borras, S., Jr., Franco, J., & Wang, C. (2013). The Challenge of Global Governance of Land Grabbing: Changing International Agricultural Context and Competing Political Views and Strategies. Globalizations, 10 (1), 161–179. Bradshaw, E. (2015). “Obviously, We’re All Oil Industry”: The Criminogenic Structure of the Offshore Oil Industry. Theoretical Criminology, 19 (3), 376– 395. Bricknell, S. (2010). Environmental Crime in Australia. AIC Reports Research and Public Policy Series 109. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Brisman, A., South, N., & White, R. (Eds.). (2015). Environmental Crime and Social Conflict: Contemporary and Emerging Issues. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Brisman, A., McClanahan, B., South, N., & Walters, R. (2018). Water, Crime and Security in the 21st Century. Too Dirty, Too Little, Too Much. London: Palgrave. Cao, A. N. (2017). Timber Trafficking in Vietnam. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Cleary, P. (2012). Mine-Field: The Dark Side of Australia’s Resources Rush. Collingwood: Black Inc. Crank, J., & Jacoby, L. (2015). Crime, Violence, and Global Warming. London: Routledge. Goyes, D., Mol, H., Brisman, A., & South, N. (2017). Environmental Crime in Latin America: The Theft of Nature and the Poisoning of the Land . London: Palgrave. Gray, M. (1996). The International Crime of Ecocide. California Western International Law Journal, 26, 215–271.

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Greenpeace. (2014). What Does the IPCC WGII Report Say on Forests? Greenpeace Briefing. www.greenpeace.org. 31 March 2014. Goyes, D., & South, N. (2016). Land-grabs, biopiracy and the inversion of justice in Colombia. British Journal of Criminology, 56 (3)‚ 558–577. Gutierrez-Gomez, L. (2017). Mining in Colombia: Tracing the Harm of Neoliberal Policies and Practices. In D. Goyes, H. Mol, A. Brisman, & N. South (Eds.), Environmental Crime in Latin America: The Theft of Nature and the Poisoning of the Land . London: Palgrave. Hanson, A. (2011). Offshore Drilling in the United States and Norway: A Comparison of Prescriptive and Performance Approaches to Safety and Environmental Regulation. Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, 23, 555–575. Hernandez, A. (2018). Shale Gas Extraction, Energy Reform, and Environmental Damage. In A. Arroyo-Quiroz & T. Wyatt (Eds.), Green Crime in Mexico: A Collection of Case Studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Heydon, J. (2020). Sustainable Development as Environmental Harm: Rights, Regulation, and Injustice in the Canadian Oil Sands. London: Routledge. Heydon, J., & Chakraborty, R. (2020). Can Portable Air Quality Monitors Protect Children from Air Pollution on the School Run? An Exploratory Study. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 192, 195. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s10661-020-8153-1. Higgins, P. (2012). Earth Is Our Business: Changing the Rules of the Game. London: Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers Ltd. Higgins, P., Short, D., & South, N. (2013). Protecting the Planet: A Proposal for a Law of Ecocide. Crime Law and Social Change, 59 (3), 251–266. Hulme, K., & Short, D. (2014, April). Ecocide and the “Polluter Pay” Principle: The Case of Fracking. Environmental Scientist, 23, 7–10. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2013). Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis: Summary for Policymakers. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2014). Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report, Approved Summary for Policymakers. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2018). Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5C. Summary for Policymakers. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). (2019). The IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Paris: IPBES. Khagram, S. (2004). Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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Klare, M. (2012). The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company. Kramer, R. (2020). Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Lever-Tracy, C. (2011). Confronting Climate Change. London: Routledge. Lin, A. (2006). The Unifying Role of Harm in Environmental Law. Wisconsin Law Review, 3, 898. Merchant, C. (2005). Radical Ecology: The Search for a Liveable World . New York: Routledge. Mgbeoji, I. (2006). Global Biopiracy: Patents, Plants and Indigenous Knowledge. Vancouver: UBC Press. Mol, H. (2013). “A Gift from the Tropics to the World”: Power, Harm, and Palm Oil. In R. Walters, D. Westerhuis, & T. Wyatt (Eds.), Emerging Issues in Green Criminology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mol, H. (2017). The Politics of Palm Oil Harm: A Green Criminological Perspective. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Naik, A. (2010). Causes of Pollution. Buzzle. 22 October 2010. [Accessed 13 January 2012]. Pemberton, A. (2016). Harmful Societies: Understanding Social Harm. Bristol: Policy Press. Ruggiero, V., & South, N. (2013). Toxic State-Corporate Crimes, Neoliberalism and Green Criminology: The Hazards and Legacies of the Oil, Chemical and Mineral Industries. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2(2), 12–26. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. (2010). Global Biodiversity Outlook 3. Montreal: SCBD. Smandych, R., & Kueneman, R. (2010). The Canadian-Alberta Tar Sands: A Case Study of State-Corporate Environmental Crime. In R. White (Ed.), Global Environmental Harm: Criminological Perspectives. Devon: Willan Publishing. Sollund, R., Stefes, C., & Germani, A. (Eds.). (2016). Fighting Environmental Crime in Europe and Beyond . London: Palgrave Macmillan. South, N., & Brisman, A. (Eds.). (2013). The Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology. London, UK: Routledge. United Nations Environment Programme. (2019). Emissions Gap Report. Geneva: UNEP. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). (2011). UNEP Year Book: Emerging Issues in Our Global Environment. Nairobi, Kenya: UNEP.

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United Nations Environment Programme UNEP. (2013). Threats to Biodiversity. http://www.unep-wcmc.org/threats-to-biodiversity_52.html. Accessed 4 September 2013. United Nations, Human Rights Council. (2019). Climate Change and Poverty: Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, A/HRC/41/39-24 June–12 July 2019. Agenda Item, 3, 1–19. US Global Change Research Program. (2018). 2018 Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II: Report-in-Brief. In: D. Reidmiller, C. Avery, D. Easterling, K. Kunkel, K. Lewis, T. Maycock, & B. Stewart (Eds.). Washington, DC: US Global Change Research Program. van der Velden, J., & White, R. (2021). The Extinction Curve: Growth and Globalisation in the Climate Endgame. London: Emerald Publishing. Walters, R. (2010). Toxic Atmospheres: Air Pollution, Trade and the Politics of Regulation. Critical Criminology, 18, 307–323. Walters, R. (2011). Eco Crime and Genetically Modified Food . New York: Routledge. Watts, N., Adger, W. N., Ayeb-Karlsson, S., Bai, Y., et al. (2017). The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change. The Lancet, 389, 1151–1164. Watts, N., et al. (2019). The 2019 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change: Ensuring That the Health of a Child Born Today Is Not Defined By a Changing Climate. The Lancet, 394, 1836–1878. Weinstock, A. (2017). A Decade of Social and Environmental Mobilization Against Mega-Mining in Chubut, Argentinia Patagonia. In D. Goyes, H. Mol, A. Brisman, & N. South (Eds.), Environmental Crime in Latin America: The Theft of Nature and the Poisoning of the Land . London: Palgrave. White, R. (2013). Environmental Harm: An Eco-Justice Perspective. Bristol: Policy Press. White, R. (2018a). Ecocentrism and Criminal Justice. Theoretical Criminology, 22(3), 342–362. White, R. (2018b). Critical Green Criminology. In W. Dekeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology. New York: Routledge. White, R. (2018c). Climate Change Criminology. Bristol: Bristol University Press. White, R., & Heckenberg, D. (2014). Green Criminology: An Introduction to the Study of Environmental Harm. London: Routledge.

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Williams, C. (1996). An Environmental Victimology. Social Justice, 23(4)‚ 16– 40. World Meteorological Organization. (2020). WMO Provisional Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2019. WMO. World Health Organisation. (2013). Children’s Environmental Health: Air Pollution. http://www.who.int/ceh/risks/cehair/en/. Accessed 22 June 2013. Zabyelina, Y., & van Uhm, D. (Eds.). (2020). Illegal Mining: Organized Crime, Corruption and Ecocide in a Resource-Scarce World . London: Palgrave.

Part II Methods for Studying Harm

6 On Researching Harm: An Ultra-Realist Perspective Justin Kotzé

Introduction The concept of harm occupies an increasingly salient position within criminology’s research agenda as a number of recent publications demonstrate (see, for example, Hall and Winlow 2015, 2018a; Kotzé 2019; Lloyd 2018a; Raymen 2019a; Smith and Raymen 2018). Receiving renewed interest following ‘criminology’s zemiological audit’ (Hall and Winlow 2018a: 123), and the subsequent zemiological turn within criminology (Raymen and Smith 2019a), scholars have harnessed the concept of harm to expose capitalism’s inherently zemiogenic core (Hall et al. 2020). Accordingly, as Raymen (2019a: 134) points out, following Hillyard and colleagues (2004, 2007), the concept of harm may prove to be ‘one of the most potentially potent and transformative concepts currently available to the social sciences’. Yet for all the traction gained since the J. Kotzé (B) Criminology and Criminal Justice, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_6

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start of the twenty-first century there are still a number of barriers that prevent us from actualising this potential. Perhaps chief amongst them is the lingering tendency to arbitrarily separate the study of ‘crime’ and ‘harm’ and perpetuate false alternatives between criminology and zemiology (Kotzé 2018). Not only is this conceptually inaccurate, but it is empirically unproductive as it compounds rather than resolves the problem of researching harm. This chapter builds upon the author’s previous work (Kotzé 2018, 2019) which suggests that an antidote to the partial paralysis pervading the study of harm might be found in developing a more integrated approach between criminology and zemiology. Towards this end, the chapter draws on the new theoretical framework of ultra-realism to explore how this emergent paradigm can facilitate such an approach. In doing so, the chapter hopes to demonstrate how ultra-realism can help us overcome many of the problems associated with researching harm.

Mediating the Other of the Real As I have already noted, there remains a debilitating tendency to arbitrarily separate the study of crime and harm by positioning criminology and zemiology as false alternatives (Kotzé 2018). Continuously misidentified and reduced to a series of simplistic signifiers, criminology and zemiology are often cast as inherently polarised and competing projects. Driven by a limited understanding of the Greek word zemia, this casting has encouraged both analytical and empirical inertia, precluding a more holistic exploration of the multifaceted and often interconnected forms of legal and illegal harm that damage our planetary and social wellbeing (Kotzé 2018). Yet, ‘nowhere in zemia’s genealogy is there to be found any support for the imposition of artificial boundaries or false dichotomies between crime and harm, or between criminology and zemiology’ (Kotzé 2018: 101–102). In fact, quite the opposite is true. A closer reading of zemia actually implies a more integrated approach. As we shall see a bit later on, ultra-realists tacitly employ this closer reading and consider criminology’s fundamental question to be driven by a concern

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for the most pressing zemiological issues, both legal and illegal (Hall and Winlow 2015, 2018b). Indeed, it can be argued that ultra-realism embodies the essence of a more integrated approach between criminology and zemiology precisely because it works to dispense with bouts of fierce ‘topical guardianship’ and harness the potential synergies that exist between them (Kotzé 2018). However, we must be cautious here. Whilst it is a mistake to draw artificial lines in the sand, it is equally erroneous to view criminology and zemiology naïvely as collegial neighbours. This is because the neighbour is always a stranger, and the stranger is always a kind of enemy (Eagleton 2009). Rather than simply assuming the form of the imaginary other with whom a mirror-like relationship is possible, the neighbour constitutes the ‘Other qua Real, the impossible Thing’ with whom no symmetrical dialogue is possible (Žižek 2005: 143). The neighbour as the Thing means that beneath the surface ‘there always lurks the unfathomable abyss of radical Otherness’ (Žižek 2005: 143). Therefore, by unreflectively viewing criminology and zemiology as neighbours in an attempt to avoid polarisation, we risk exacerbating rather than alleviating existing tensions. So long as each remains to the other, the Other of the Real Thing, no reciprocal exchange is possible between them (Žižek 2005). Accordingly, whilst Hillyard and Tombs (2017) are unerringly correct in noting that more needs to be done in order to explore and establish the relationship between criminology and zemiology, this evidently requires the intervention of a pacifying mediator (Žižek 2005). That is to say, a third agency to which both defer. The position being advanced here is that ultra-realism can act as this mediating third. The extant literature certainly demonstrates that ultrarealism is fully capable of mediating this relationship, and in doing so facilitate a more integrated approach between criminology and zemiology. Indeed, the very ‘ingredients’ that comprise the new ultra-realist position actually necessitate a reconnection between crime and harm (Kotzé 2019). The position’s chief architects make it clear that ultrarealism is committed to confronting ‘neoliberal capitalism’s worldwide zemiological environment full in the face’ and exposing its various criminogenic effects (Hall and Winlow 2018b: 54). They acknowledge that restricting our object of research to legally defined ‘crime’ is both

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inhibiting and unhelpful (Hall and Winlow 2018b). However, it is also acknowledged that some ‘crime’ does in fact represent an experience of real harm (Winlow and Hall 2016). Fundamentally, then, ultra-realists argue that we ‘should include but also transcend current legal definitions of “crime”…without assuming that all current legal definitions have no relation to real harm’ (Hall and Winlow 2015: 89–90). Lloyd (2018a: 5) drives the point home particularly well by noting that: …from an ultra-realist perspective, the negative motivation to harm accounts for the systemic violence of capitalist political economy while the positive motivation to harm fills a crucial gap that elucidates the subject’s willingness to inflict harm on others.

In other words, the fundamental harm at the capitalist system’s generative core has the probabilistic causal tendency to precipitate harmful events and absences that fall on either side of the legal divide (Hall and Winlow 2018a; Lloyd 2018a). This is a crucial consideration when defining the legitimate object of study for harm research precisely because, as Hillyard et al. (2004: 2) have already pointed out, ‘it makes no sense to separate out harms, which can be defined as criminal, from all other types of harm’. Accordingly, ultra-realism is capable of acting as a suitable mediating third precisely because its adherents observe this central premise, ‘crime’ and ‘harm’ ‘can always be looked at in the same analytical frame’ (Smith and Raymen 2018: 65, original emphasis). Ultra-realism, as the underlying framework that supports a more integrated approach, thus centralises both ‘crime’ and ‘harm’ in such a way that reflects an understanding of the centrality of both these concepts to criminology and zemiology (see Kotzé 2018). For some, this amounts to an attempt at harmonisation which Copson (2018) argues actually risks impoverishing both criminology and zemiology as much as drives for polarisation does. Copson’s concern here is that collapsing one perspective into the other serves to deny meaningful debate in relation to how social problems may be effectively recognised and addressed. However, Copson (2018) appears to confuse harmonisation with what Archer (1995) calls ‘elisionism’. Whereas harmonisation

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involves a process of collating parallel narratives, elisionism is characterised by the conflation of two elements in an attempt to create ‘one new thing’, and in doing so negates any kind of dialectic between the two (Porpora 2007). By collating the parallel narratives of criminology and zemiology via the intervention of the mediating third, we may actually promote rather than negate dialectical debate precisely because the presence of the pacifying mediator makes reciprocal exchange possible (Žižek 2005). In this way, Copson (2018) arguably misidentifies the risk inasmuch as harmonisation may prove less problematic than either polarisation or the temptation to misidentify criminology and zemiology as neighbours qua imaginary other. Indeed, it is a commitment to the latter position more so than attempts at harmonisation that risk stalling the dialectic because, as Žižek (2005) points out, no unmediated reciprocal exchange is possible with the Other of the Real which lies beneath this misidentification. What this brief discussion has hopefully demonstrated is that ultrarealism can function as the theoretical and empirical framework supporting a more integrated approach towards the study of crime and harm by reviving rather than stalling the dialectic between criminology and zemiology. Movement towards such an approach is salient for research on legal and illegal harm because it helps to overcome the initial barrier of false dichotomies and artificial disciplinary boundaries brought about by what Copson (2018: 52) astutely identifies as ‘academic identity politics’. Moreover, in its capacity as the fundamental third, ultra-realism can help us address a range of other issues that serve to problematise research on harm and impede its potential utility. Accordingly, it is to a discussion of some of these broader issues that this chapter will now turn.

Ultra-Realism Qua Third Ultra-realism is undoubtedly becoming increasingly popular and has recently formed the basis of a number of scholarly endeavours, including the development of a deviant leisure perspective (Hayward and Smith 2017; Kotzé 2018). However, for those unfamiliar with ultra-realism,

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it may be instructive to offer here a very brief outline. Ultra-realism is a complex theoretical framework and empirical project that ultimately seeks to dig beneath the surface-level description of abstracted empiricism in order to shed light on experiential lived realities of crime and harm (Hall and Winlow 2018b). It is useful to think of this complex paradigm in terms of the constituent components, or ‘key ingredients’, which comprise it (see Kotzé 2019). Although space precludes a detailed exposition of these here, suffice to say that ‘at the core of ultra-realism lies an original account of contemporary subjectivity as it acts in its socioeconomic context’ (Winlow and Hall 2019: 26). Whereas conventional readings of subjectivity often cast the subject as either inherently good or evil, ultra-realism eschews belief in a natural human essence (Lloyd 2018b). Drawing upon a transcendental materialist interpretation of subjectivity (see Johnston 2008), ultra-realism views the subject as a non-essential void capable of both good and evil (Lloyd 2018a, b). In contrast to traditional philosophy’s view of the relation between the material and the ideal-symbolic, this new perspective views the former as permanently malleable and the latter as rigid and durable (Kotzé 2019; Winlow and Hall 2013). In somewhat simplified terms, whilst the ideological sociosymbolic system is characterised by an enduring rigidity, our material body is malleable and specifically hardwired for a certain degree of dysfunctionality (Johnston 2008; Winlow and Hall 2013). Evolution has equipped us with a plastic brain which is capable of shaping and reshaping itself in relation to our worldly experiences (Johnston 2008). As we interact with the social world around us, our neuronal substrates receive experiential feedback, which then modulates changes to both the structure and functionality of the brain (Wakeman 2018; see also Kotzé 2019). Accordingly, the brain is literally ‘sculpted by the contents of experience’ (Johnston 2008: 203). Human subjectivity therefore arises from a material starting point, but then transcends this material origin as the subject interacts with the social world and is therefore irreducible to its initial materiality (Lloyd 2018a). If the non-essential subject is shaped by the experiences of the social and material reality of the world, it is important for us to understand the context of that world. More to the point, we must try to

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understand the causative effects of depth structures, specifically of political economy and ideology (Lloyd 2018b). For this task, ultra-realism draws upon its influential antecedent critical realism. According to critical realism, there are three layers or ‘domains’ of reality: the real, the actual and the empirical. The domain of the real refers to the underlying generative mechanisms, structures and relations which possess the probabilistic causal power to produce phenomena in the actual domain (Kotzé 2019). The actual domain refers to what eventuates when the probabilistic causal tendencies which reside in the real are enacted, shaping experience at the empirical level (Kotzé 2019; Winlow 2019). These experiences are encountered either directly or indirectly by individuals in the empirical domain. Even this rudimentary exposition makes it clear why ultra-realism places so much emphasis upon creating causal chains that connect all three domains of reality. Winlow (2019: 54) sums this up nicely by noting that: Rather than simply describe harms, these harms must be identified as the outcomes of actual social processes, which in turn must be attached to the generative mechanisms that, ultimately, produce the various harms experienced by ordinary people.

Such emphasis further affirms ultra-realism’s utility as a mediating third. Here we find a commitment to investigating both the negative and positive motivation to harm which manifests in both legal and illegal forms (Hall and Winlow 2015). The generative mechanisms that Winlow (2019) refers to reflect a negative motivation to harm which can perhaps be considered a product of what Žižek (2009) calls systemic violence. This is the violence that is inherent to the social conditions associated with the smooth functioning of global capitalism, which automatically creates ‘excluded and dispensable individuals from the homeless to the unemployed’ (Žižek 2009: 12). These are striking examples of what we might term legal harm. The crucial point, however, is that these products of systemic violence are intimately connected to various forms of illegal harm, which in some cases emanate from a positive motivation to harm. That is to say, from a subjective enactment of what ultra-realists call ‘special liberty’, which

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is essentially an anti-ethos that emboldens the subject to risk harm to others in the pursuit of self-interest to which they feel entitled (Hall and Winlow 2015; Lloyd 2018a). Thus, as I have noted elsewhere (Kotzé 2018: 97), ‘“crime” and “harm” are interactive and integrative bilateral processes’. When determining the ‘proper’ object of study for research on harm, we must therefore consider the interrelationship between negative and positive motivations that produce both legal and illegal harms. We must be animated by a concern for both the systemic harms inflicted on communities and the subjective harms committed by individuals on others (Lloyd 2018a). The importance of this for researching harm cannot be overstated. It is helpful, therefore, to understand both the positive and negative motivation to harm as products of our dominant sociosymbolic order, which, in its current configuration, has a tendency to generate particularly harmful subjectivities. Indeed, as Lloyd (2018a) points out, the active solicitation by the subject into the prevailing norms, values and dispositions oriented towards competitive individualism, self-interest, envy, anxiety and greed means that the motivation to act will manifest in particular ways, such as a willingness to inflict harm on others in the pursuit of self-interest. By understanding the interrelationship between the configuration of the current sociosymbolic order and subjective motivation, we can begin to bring subjective manifestations of crime and harm into focus as symptoms of capitalism’s systemically zemiological environment (Hall and Winlow 2018b). Ultra-realists are committed to exploring and explaining this zemiological field and its multifaceted complexity, a commitment that demands a return to reality and the drive to represent it truthfully (Winlow 2019). By now it is perhaps clear how ultra-realism can facilitate a more integrated approach towards the study of crime and harm by acting as a mediating third. Its contemporary account of subjectivity and the way in which this relates to the broader socioeconomic context of neoliberalism enables ultra-realism to comfortably explore both systemic and singular harms. That is to say, the systemic yet often legal harms perpetrated by those ‘“up there” in the corridors of power in business and post-political administration’ as well as the subjective or singular, and often illegal, harms perpetrated ‘down there’ by those who ‘take advantage of the system’s disrupted

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spaces’ (Hall and Winlow 2015: 108–109). In this way, ultra-realism qua third has a crucial role to play in helping to formulate an antidote to the partial paralysis pervading the study of harm. However, if the antidote is to prove potent enough, we must also consider the ontological, methodological and political difficulties of researching harm.

The Issue of Defining Harm Research on harm has grappled with clarifying its object of study since its inception. Indeed, Yar (2012: 59) notes that the concept of harm is beset with ambiguities and a lack of specificity that leaves the concept devoid of ‘the very same ontological reality that is postulated as grounds for rejecting the concept of crime’. The initial problem facing the study of harm is therefore one of definition, or more specifically, the absence of a shared consensus of what makes something harmful (Yar 2012). This lack of consensual specificity makes identifying what the focus of harm research should be rather difficult, as without a firm conceptual basis from which to start one is left skirting the borders between the overly nebulous and the overly restrictive (Hall 2015). Finding ‘harm’s’ ontological reality has therefore animated a number of scholars to attempt to provide the concept of harm with a firm ontological anchorage grounded in the reality of our times (Kotzé 2019). Initial forays into needs-based perspectives seemed a reasonable starting place since it quite uncontentiously implied that harm resulted from a denial or non-fulfilment of basic needs essential for human well-being (Pemberton 2007). Taking this a step further, Yar (2012) utilises Axel Honneth’s (1996) recognition-theoretic to try and remedy ‘harm’s’ ontological deficit. Here three dimensions of need are identified as essential conditions of human integrity and well-being; these are love, rights and esteem. Accordingly, social harm for Yar (2012: 59, original emphasis) ‘can be understood to comprise nothing other than the inter-subjective experience of being refused recognition with respect to any or all of these dimensions of need ’. This initial grounding of the concept of harm in the refusal of recognition arguably begins to offer us some conceptual clarity

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and perhaps offers a crucial step in the right direction towards unifying ‘harm’ as a working category (Hall 2015). However, as a number of ultra-realists have identified, there are some issues with grounding the concept of harm using the Hegelian notion of social recognition. Chief amongst them is the fact that our current socio-economic context precludes us from using this concept inline with Hegel’s original formulation (Hall 2015). This is because the original conditions of social interdependency which framed the master-slave dialectic have been dramatically altered (Hall 2015; Kotzé 2019). In simple terms, capitalists no longer require the mass of labourers they once did because, as Žižek (2011) points out, the global economy now requires only 20% of the world’s population to perform all necessary work, rendering the other 80% permanently surplus to capitalist requirement. And so, social recognition is no longer compulsory and has become little more than an arbitrary choice loosely associated with the preservation of negative rights (Hall 2015; Kotzé 2019). Therefore, as I have argued elsewhere (Kotzé 2019), the revival of inter-subjective recognition is not sufficient to alleviate the myriad social harms of the zemiological field. Rather, this must be accompanied by a renewed emphasis upon positive rights. That is to say, attention needs to be directed towards ‘providing the socio-structural conditions conducive to the exercise of one’s social recognition’ (Kotzé 2019: 78). However, this requires nothing short of a new sociosymbolic order framed around values of mutuality, love, fairness, co-operation and respect (Lloyd 2018a). The emphasis placed on the creation of a new sociosymbolic order is crucial here, because, as Raymen and Smith (2019b) rightly point out, drives to affirm a commitment towards the implementation of positive rights within the existing order simply amount to a slightly more ambitious brand of negative rights. In practice, this equates to what Whitehead (2018: 92) refers to as ‘tinkering at the edges’, a tweak here and nudge there that provide the appearance of change so that nothing actually has to change. Firmly rooted in the circuitry of liberalpostmodernism where notions of the ‘good’ are privately defined in the absence of any final adjudicating authority (Raymen 2019a), even positive rights have the potential to manifest into harmful practices in the name of competitive self-interest (Lloyd 2018a). Within the culture

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of emotivism we now inhabit, ‘moral and evaluative judgments reflect nothing more than the expressions of individuals’ myriad arbitrary interests and preferences’ (Raymen 2019a: 140). In the absence of a shared concept of ‘the Good’, the liberal-postmodern subject is free to engage in a manipulative clash of wills with others in an attempt to elevate their privately defined conceptions of the ‘good life’ as they pursue their private interests and preferences (Raymen 2019a). Far from amounting to some ethical responsibility for the other, such interests and preferences are attuned to the highly competitive and destructive logic of the market (Lloyd 2018a). Accordingly, the locus of harm does not necessarily exist in the denial of positive or negative rights that impede human flourishing. Rather, it is the absence of a shared conception of ‘the Good’—and the concomitant freedom to enact privately defined notions of the ‘good life’, which simply accord to the values of the dominant sociosymbolic order—that constitutes this hitherto elusive locus. What continues to impede research on harm is thus a continued misidentification of harm’s initial locus. Whilst much harm research ‘remains trapped within the confines of liberalism’s ideological understanding of freedom’ (Raymen 2019a: 148–149), ultra-realism reverses conventional readings of the ontology of harm. Inline with what has already been discussed, ultra-realists contend that harm is not a product of widening social inequality. Instead, social inequality is a product of the liberal-postmodern subject’s willingness to inflict harm on others as they attempt to elevate the self above all others in the competitive yet hyper-conformist drive for distinction (Hall and Winlow 2018b). From this perspective, then, Raymen’s (2019a) contention that we must abandon attempts to define social harm as an a priori concept rooted in the transgression of liberal freedoms is perhaps less contentious than it may first appear (Raymen and Smith 2019a). The ultra-realist twist in approaching the ontology of harm is therefore to ‘pursue a notion of “the Good” from which an understanding of social harm can be derived’ (Raymen and Smith 2019a: 122). This pursuit in and of itself is not necessarily novel, yet what sets it apart is that it has untethered itself from liberalism’s ideological understanding of freedom and reconnected with teleological ethics (see MacIntyre 2011).

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Space precludes a detailed synopsis of this developing theory of ‘the Good’, but suffice to say that the absence of a shared conception of ‘the Good’ is conducive to harm in a number of interconnecting ways. Amongst these, Raymen and Smith (2019a) identify the stagnation of current conceptions of harm rooted in the presence of things as they are. That is to say, couched in terms of promoting both negative and positive rights within the dominant sociosymbolic order. Harm research couched in these terms remains oriented towards plastering over cracks in the system rather than shacking its fundamental foundations. As we shall see in the penultimate section, far from constituting any deliberate political strategy of subversion (Copson 2018), this simply amounts to hyper-conformity. Similarly, Raymen and Smith (2019a: 123) also identify the way in which the pluralistic individualism associated with liberal-postmodernism ‘combines with the competitive individualism of consumer capitalism to cultivate subjectivities willing to harm others in the pursuit of their own desires’. Within this context, perpetrators of both legal and illegal harm are able to either fetishistically disavow the harms they inflict on others or simply do not experience their actions as harmful (Raymen and Smith 2019a). After all, such harmful practices conform to, rather than deviate from, liberal-capitalism’s Symbolic Law (Hall and Winlow 2015). There is evidently still much work to be done in developing a theory of ‘the Good’, but this initial ultra-realist pursuit has already done much to help us identify the locus of harm. From here, we can begin to orient research on harm towards this locus and focus our empirical lens upon both the negative and positive motivation to harm. Indeed, as Lloyd (2018a) rightly points out, research on harm must make the willingness to act its object of analysis.

Methodological Challenges The methodological challenges associated with researching harm are numerous. Beyond the difficulties of identifying and refining the research focus, the conventional pool of strategies, designs and methods that tend to be favoured by large funding bodies are seldom appropriate

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for researching harm. This is partly because the area of inquiry is quite often associated with exploring the causative nature of absences rather than discrete incidents or events capable of being remedied by minor policy tweaks. The issue is further compounded by the unsettled conceptual condition of the subject itself. From an empirical point of view, the collection of unanimously relevant data on harm is arguably almost completely precluded by the lack of consensus around what actually constitutes harm. As alluded to previously, this is symptomatic of the pluralistic individualism associated with the broader culture of emotivism (Raymen 2019a). What this means in practice is that whilst the ultra-realist schema provides for the researcher a degree of conceptual clarity, the concept of harm retains its amorphous texture in the minds of those with whom we research harm. Let us look at an example that is particularly illustrative here. Human overpopulation continues to threaten the very viability of our planetary well-being. However, if we were to argue that we could begin to mitigate this by limiting or capping the number of offspring one produces (Davis et al. 2019), we are likely to be met with staunch resistance since this is thought to impinge upon the freedoms of the sovereign individual. This is captured particularly well in Ron Howard’s (2017) film adaptation of author Dan Brown’s Inferno, where the chief antagonist decries our reluctance to act now to save our future, ‘“…outrages! Violation of my rights, invasion of my privacy, don’t tell me what to do”. And still, we keep attacking our own environment’. To give another example, despite structurally induced unemployment constituting a particularly pervasive form of systemic violence, even some of those who find themselves in this difficult position ‘wouldn’t class unemployment as being harmed’ (Kotzé 2019: 106). This certainly demonstrates the contested nature of the field of study with which harm research concerns itself. Ultra-realism can help us navigate this tricky methodological terrain. Whilst its empirical project is, relatively speaking, still in its infancy, it can draw generously from the methodological moorings of its influential antecedent critical realism (Kotzé 2019). Indeed, methods such as in-depth qualitative interviews that are conceptually informed by the critical/ultra-realist schema have the potential to generate a plethora of rich data, from avowed zemiological experiences to tacit and even

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fetishistically disavowed knowledge of both legal and illegal harms (Kotzé 2019). Because there is a disjuncture between what critical realists call the intransitive and transitive objects of science, our knowledge of the world is somewhat partial and fallible (Sayer 2000). That is to say that whilst there is a real world ‘out there’ that exists independently of what we know about it, it is possible to gain some knowledge of this world even if that knowledge is not always correct. However, not all knowledge is equally fallible (Danermark et al. 2002). Indeed, as previously noted, individuals with whom we research harm may have and act upon partial and fallible views of zemiological experiences and their wider contexts. Views which, equipped with conceptually advanced qualitative methods, we can begin to unpack and help subjective experience to see outside of itself (Hall et al. 2020; see also Kotzé 2019). Collaboratively, then, these direct or indirect empirical experiences can be connected to their fundamental causes located in the real (Winlow and Hall 2019). At the core of ultra-realism’s empirical project is a commitment to dig beneath the surface of abstracted empiricism and relativist emotivism to identify and bring into shaper relief what Hegel called the ‘concrete universal’ (Winlow and Hall 2016). That is to say, ‘the small components of the totality that can be taken to be representative of the totality itself ’ (Winlow 2019: 54). As we have seen, individuals encounter a myriad of zemiological experiences as concrete universals but cannot always connect these subjective experiences to the external structures and processes that produce them (Hall et al. 2020). The aim, therefore, is to produce knowledge of experiential events and absences that connect all three domains of reality by investigating zemiological experiences and identifying conceptual concrete universals, which are generalisable at the theoretical or analytical level (Hall et al. 2020; Hall and Winlow 2018b). To do this, Hall and Winlow (2018b) suggest establishing networks of ethnographic researchers committed to generating rich and conceptually advanced qualitative data from multiple positions. Raymen’s (2019b) ethnographic study of parkour, deviance and leisure in the late-capitalist city and Ellis’s (2016) ethnography of men, masculinities and violence are perhaps emblematic of this empirical commitment. These immersive studies certainly conform to conventional readings of the ethnographic approach in that they both contain

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many of the traditional hallmarks, such as prolonged stints of participant observation and a number of in-depth qualitative interviews (Bryman 2012; Hobbs 2006). However, this should not be taken to mean that ultra-realism’s empirical project is confined to this particular reading of ethnography. On the contrary, some ultra-realist studies with harm as a salient focal point have adopted what might be described as a more ‘loose’ ethnographic approach (see Kotzé 2019; Lloyd 2018a). This ‘looser’ approach is much more in keeping with Caulfield and Hill’s (2014) interpretation of ethnography as a broad approach to research that obtains detailed description via in-depth, or what they also call ‘ethnographic’, qualitative interviews and/or observational techniques. From this point of view, either method can be used singularly or collaboratively to gain detailed description of aspects of the social world (Caulfield and Hill 2014). This is a salient point because as Hobbs (2006: 101, emphasis added) reminds us: Description resides at the core of ethnography, and however this description is constructed it is the intense meaning of social life from the everyday perspective of group members that is sought.

Ethnography is thus an extremely broad church that can make use of a whole host of methods in numerous configurations to elicit rich description (Hobbs 2006). The crux of the matter is that the ethnographic backbone of ultra-realism’s empirical project should not be understood as being synonymous with strict traditional readings of ethnography. That is, where the term is reserved only for studies where participant observation makes up a significant percentage of their methodological genome. Rather, it should be understood as much more free-flowing, concerned ultimately with explaining the world as it is and with brutal honesty (Hall and Winlow 2016). The fundamental upshot is that ultra-realism’s empirical project, with a ‘loose’ ethnographic approach at its core, can help us to navigate what is undoubtedly a tricky methodological terrain set against the backdrop of emotivism. In its role as a mediating third, ultra-realism is evidently capable of helping us overcome some of the ontological and methodological challenges that have hitherto impeded research on harm. Yet there is still the

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issue of the politics of harm to consider if the ultra-realist antidote is to be effective at stimulating and mobilising the transformative potential of harm research. Accordingly, it is to this final obstacle that this chapter now turns.

The Politics of Harm If harm research is to stand any chance of seriously enacting its transformative potential, it must move beyond the current tendency towards reformist critique and return to what ultra-realists call depth critique (Winlow 2019). Driven by the constant imperative to be ‘policy relevant’ (Winlow 2019), a great deal of harm research is oriented towards a bio-political commitment to engage in little more than piecemeal harmminimisation (Raymen 2019a). Far from stimulating transformative potential, this sort of tinkering at the edges simply serves to maintain the pretence of democratic accountability (Winlow 2019). The zemiological conditions stimulated by capitalism continue to generate a plethora of legal and illegal harms, not in spite of such critique, but precisely because such critique acts to provide only the appearance of change which simply allows the system to trundle on unchanged . This reformist critique is often predicated on the idea that ‘doing something is better than doing nothing’ (Whitehead 2018: 91), yet, as has been demonstrated elsewhere, this logic is complicit in perpetuating rather than ameliorating harm (Kotzé 2020). Rather than identifying and tackling the locus of harm, a significant proportion of today’s harm research merely points, in a manner resembling simple gesture politics (Hall and Winlow 2015), towards the symptoms of capitalism’s smooth functioning. We must dig deeper if we are to identify harm’s causal chain. Indeed, as Winlow and Hall (2016: 84) note, ‘we cannot begin to speak about the amelioration of harms without a realistic appraisal of our current situation and the forces and processes that underlie it’. Harm research must therefore be charged with providing agentic action with the knowledgebase required to realise its transformative potential (Winlow and Hall 2016). In other words, it must concern itself with developing knowledge of depth structures and generative processes rather than simply providing

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various interest-groups ideological ammunition with which to elevate ‘their harms’ above others on the zemiological scale (Hall et al. 2020). Extreme caution must be taken to avoid harm research simply becoming the stimulus for interpassive gestures that help shore up the capitalist system rather than shake its foundations (Kotzé 2020). Admirable as they may first appear, espousals of policy tweaks here and there aimed at mitigating the worst excesses of our zemiogenic conditions simply provide the appearance that the system is being held to account and can slowly but surely be reformed (Winlow 2013). Quite simply, by engaging in reform critique rather than depth critique, harm research risks conveying that one may become an activist and engage in campaigns for change‚ actively seek reforms and feel free to think that change is possible, so long as we never abandon the current system (Winlow and Hall 2019). However, as ultra-realist research has demonstrated, moving beyond the current system towards a new sociosymbolic order is precisely what is needed. Those who research harm should not shrink from the task of exploring and explaining the world as it is and should certainly not feel ‘compelled to identify the green shoots of progressive social renewal in the dust of a decaying global neoliberal order’ (Winlow and Hall 2019: 25). A misplaced commitment to this imperative constitutes one of the most salient impediments to the transformative potential of harm research. Indeed, harm should not be considered an aberration of the system that can be obviated by minor policy tweaks. Instead, it should be acknowledged that harm is ‘integrated in the system’s dynamic core and reproduced in its conventional culture and subjectivity’ (Hall 2015: 130). Ultra-realism can help us realise this acknowledgement and facilitate a return to depth critique, and in doing so refocus harm research towards an investigation of both the negative and positive motivation to harm. With this comes a reorientation of the politics of harm away from its contemporary concern for identifying policy tweaks that can be made within the system, towards identifying the means of creating a new sociosymbolic order. Whilst there is much to do in this respect, perhaps a good place to start is by removing the limits of what can be thought, researched and said that the imperative to be ‘policy relevant’ enforces on us (Winlow 2019).

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Conclusion: Implications for a Less Harmful Society As this chapter has tried to demonstrate, ultra-realism gives us a firm footing for researching harm. In its capacity as a mediating third, ultrarealism facilitates a more integrated approach towards the study of crime and harm by reviving the dialectic between criminology and zemiology. Indeed, the core ingredients that comprise this emergent paradigm demand a reconnection between legal and illegal harm and therefore eschews the casting of criminology and zemiology as false alternatives. However, we must be equally cautious to avoid unreflectively viewing the two as collegial neighbours, that is to say as neighbours qua imaginary other, with whom unmediated dialogue is possible. As we have seen, this view risks exacerbating rather than ameliorating existing tensions. Such tensions must be assuaged if the transformative potential that resides within the concept of harm is to be fully realised, a task to which ultra-realism is evidently well-suited. Moreover, towards this end, ultrarealism provides both a theoretical and empirical framework that can help those interested in researching harm overcome various obstacles that have hitherto impeded the potential utility of harm research. As Raymen (2019a) has already noted, this potential is incredibly important for the transformative potency of the social sciences. However, if harm research is to offer any meaningful implications for a less harmful society, it must free itself from the contemporary commitment to reformist critique and return to depth critique. Far from constituting a deliberate political strategy of subversion, the former actually helps to fortify the current system’s zemiological tendencies by simply plastering over the cracks. Admirable as such ameliorative attempts might appear, they succeed only in providing the appearance of change which, as counterintuitive as it may seem, actually ensures that nothing will change precisely because it maintains the pretence of capitalism’s self-critique (Kotzé 2020). Ultra-realism may not be able to open up an all-seeing God’s eye view of the world (Hall and Winlow 2015), but it certainly can provide those interested in researching the multifaceted complexities of harm with the tools to help inform the creation of a less harmful society.

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Further Reading • Boukli, A., & Kotzé, J. (Eds.). (2018). Zemiology: Reconnecting Crime and Social Harm. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. This edited collection is a useful source for those interested in exploring the complex relationship between crime and social harm, and between criminology and zemiology. Scholars of all levels are likely to find something of value in the original essays contained within this volume. • Hall, S., Kuldova, T., & Horsley, M. (Eds.). (2020). Crime, Harm and Consumerism. London: Routledge. Principally aimed at exploring the relationship between crime, harm and consumer culture, this book is a must-read. The collection offers a number of original ideas and fresh perspectives, in addition to a number of informative case studies that are certain to prove useful. • Lloyd, A. (2018). The Harms of Work: An Ultra-Realist Account of the Service Economy. Bristol: Bristol University Press. This is an excellent starting place for those interested in exploring the emergent ultra-realist paradigm and how it can be applied to harm research. Lloyd’s work is both clear and accessible without shying away from engaging with difficult ideas and concepts crucial for understanding today’s social world.

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7 Visual and Sensory Methodologies to Explore Environmental Harm and Victimization Lorenzo Natali

Introduction Over the last three decades, green criminology has become known on an international level as a multifold theoretical perspective that extends beyond the boundaries of criminological tradition to become a theoretical laboratory for thinking about environmental issues in the richest and broadest meaning of the word (South et al. 2013; see also Brisman and South 2020). In this field, a broad definition of environmental crime prevails, encompassing also those dimensions of damage, injustice and social harm often neglected by criminal law and by the criminal justice system (Lynch and Stretesky 2003; Natali 2010; White 2011; see also Barton et al. 2007: 205–206). As Mackenzie and Green state (2009: 5), the notion of harm has become a salient issue of contemporary critical L. Natali (B) School of Law, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_7

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criminology. In particular, if social harm may be considered as a conceptual tool useful for understanding a series of social problems, then a broader notion than the one covered by the concept of ‘crime’ is necessary and the theoretical horizon of green criminology is an important context for understanding a range of social and environmental harms. Visual criminology may be defined as ‘the study of ways in which all things visual interact with crime and criminal justice, inventing and shaping one another’ (Rafter 2014: 129; see also Brown and Carrabine 2017a). The is to develop its own theoretical and methodological approaches, suggesting new visual ways of exploring and critically analyzing social and power relations, harm, suffering and justice in the criminological field (see also Brown 2014: 181). Visual research methods in criminology embrace both doing research ‘about’ images— where the focus is on the visual dimensions of the social and cultural worlds of crime—and conducting research ‘with’ images—where visual images are used as a heuristic tool in order to explore more thoroughly specific criminological contexts (Beirne 2015; Brown and Carrabine 2017a‚ b; Ferrell 2020; Ferrell et al. 2015: 228–235; Greek 2009; Natali 2016; Van de Voorde 2012). In the specific field of green criminology, other scholars have contemplated visual representations of environmental harms (Brisman 2017, 2018; Natali 2013a; Natali and McClanahan 2017, 2020). However, the use of visual mediums for gathering data on environmental harms, rather than just as a subject of analysis, remains mostly unexplored. As Van de Voorde (2012: 215) notes, ‘the use of visual ethnographic analysis is a novel approach in criminology whereby images, instead of being mere illustrations, actually engage readers/viewers in a genuine analytical investigation of the visual.’ Through the dialogue between these criminological perspectives, the chapter suggests the new horizons that are made available for criminologists who study socio-environmental harms by the development and application of visual and sensory methodologies. After a discussion of photo elicitation, a visual technique for doing green criminological research, the chapter analyzes a special form of mobile methodology, called itinerant soliloquy, for a green criminology open to the sensorial dimension of environmental harm. The conclusion notes the potential of a visual and sensory methodology to sensitize scholars, practitioners and

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policy-makers to the need to change some taken-for-granted views about our relationship with the environment and to empower communities, citizens and those who suffer socio-environmental harms.

On Social and Environmental Harm During my empirical research in green criminology, I used sensory and visual techniques of qualitative research in order to explore the experiences of environmental victimization and the socio-environmental harms related to them. As such, this research is based partly on Williams (1996), who started considering environmental victimization in the field of green criminology and as a part of ‘critical victimology’ that focuses on harms to the environment and people’s health. More generally, according to Hillyard and Tombs (2004), focusing on ‘harm’ rather than crime offers several advantages, many of which resonate with the impacts of environmental pollution and climate change. Firstly, focusing on harm could potentially include the often legally ambiguous activities that foster environmental damage, as well as those already covered by civil and administrative systems (Natali and Hall, in press). A second crucial point is that the social harm approach allows the consideration of ‘mass harms’ covering large areas and large numbers of victims. Traditional criminology has struggled to fully embrace the concept of mass victimization, while the social harms approach challenges the still-individualistic conceptions of crime based on notions of risk. Thirdly, viewing the world through the lens of social harm can allow for the identification of harms produced through processes which take place over time—such as environmental phenomena—whereas ‘crime’ tends to focus on discrete acts, events and consequences (see Tombs 2019).1 Finally, an advantage of

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More specifically, Tombs (2019: 62) indicates: ‘the ability of a social harm lens to capture the range of harmful consequences that follow from any specific event; to capture the various dimensions of social harms; to explore how these unfold ; to note that these unfold in ripples, initially and perhaps most intensely within a specific time and place [...] but then disperse geographically and longitudinally. Further, these harms do not exist nor unfold in a discrete sense – they are layered , they interact – often complexly – thus producing new or heightened levels of harm through their synergistic effects.’

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applying the social harm approach in this field is that it allows for consideration of consequences to non-human animals from environmental degradation, again in contrast to the highly anthropocentric concept of criminal victimization (see White 2008). While it might be difficult (with regards to legal systems) and perhaps even unhelpful to seek a precise definition for environmental harms, there is ever clearer evidence that, criminalized or not, such harms are pervasive and significant issues in today’s world. One of the main aims of the social harm theoretical perspective is an improvement in social justice (Hillyard and Tombs 2004).2 Regarding this aspect, some authors observe that this reference is too vague and without a useful normative definition of social harm (Garside 2013: 228). Using a visual metaphor, we can imagine social harm as a photograph: Like any other image, it can never speak by itself (Barthes 2000 [1980]). It is only through the interpretative and pluralistic processes that give shape to the public and academic debate about it that this ‘image’ will really define itself. Ultimately, any conception of harm must be founded on a conception of man, on what is considered ‘harm’ and on what is being harmed. Following this idea, it seems necessary to configure a concept of social harm that would take into account its inevitable evaluative and axiological dimension—on the scientific, political and legislative level. Despite these critical points, it seems useful to remember that the Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria described harm to society as the ‘real measure of crimes’ (Beccaria 1764). From this point of view, the notion of social harm is particularly crucial in the field of green criminology because the harms associated with the environment are essentially ‘lawful but awful’; they are systemic and routine; and they are hidden by legal definitions that obscure their identification (White 2011: 122). Paying attention to the processes of environmental victimization can help in realizing that social harms affect real, flesh and blood persons, and that they are real , even if environment and collective victims often seem invisible (Davies et al. 2014). More importantly, as Hillyard and Tombs 2 From this perspective, the different forms of justice upon which Green Criminology focuses— environmental justice, ecological justice and among species justice (see White 2011)—may be defined as the absence or diminution of particular forms of socio-environmental harms.

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(2004: 20) argue, ‘harm’ can primarily be defined as such by those who have experienced or witnessed it—as in the case of direct and indirect environmental victims: The point is that if we are attempting to measure both the nature and the relative impact of harms which people bear, it is at least reasonable to take some account of people’s own expressions, and perceptions, of what those harms are! Thus a field of inquiry is (partially) defined by people’s understandings, attitudes, perceptions and experiences rather than preordained by a state.

But how can we then access the perspective of those who have experienced socio-environmental harms in the first person? In the next sections, I suggest that a sensory and visual methodology can help to make environmental victims’ narratives and experiences more visible.

An Example of Green Visual Criminology ‘With’ Images: Photo Elicitation The visual materials employed during a green criminological approach ‘with’ images may be those produced and then selected by the researcher or by the participants—a technique known as ‘photo elicitation.’ As Harper (2001: 16) explains, photo elicitation is ‘a process of organizing interviews around photographs’ (see also Rose 2012: 304–317). The assumption is that the meaning of the image rests in the mind of the viewer (Becker 1974; Holm 2008: 328; Pauwels 2011: 12). Pauwels (2017: 67) remarks that ‘many types of images can be used (still and moving, paintings or drawings, etc.).’ More importantly, visual images can be incorporated into the interviews to elicit and probe meaning— as a tool for the interviewer to delve deeper into the participants’ visual and verbal narratives. This technique generates a kind of visual verstehen creating a deeper unity between the subjects interviewed and

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the researchers (Harper 1988)—one favoring the sharing and creation of multiple—even conflicting—versions of reality.3 Specifically, in previous work, I suggested that photo elicitation proves useful in enhancing the active role of social actors and in placing their perceptions in the context of the social and cultural worlds in which they are embedded, starting directly from the perspectives of those with specific environmental experiences. In the context of qualitative research on environmental victimization, I created a photographic collage of Huelva (Spain)—a town overwhelmed by industrial contamination— and showed it to several inhabitants of the place (Natali 2010). This resulted in a number of different narratives about socio-environmental harms. In particular, photo elicitation allowed the narratives to develop around a ‘now and then’ with reference to the creeping environmental disaster and led the participants to reflect on the extent of contamination from a different perspective. As Auyero and Swistun (2009: 15–16) maintain, when studying the experiences of pollution by those who live in degraded environments, one needs to pay attention not only to what certain businesses and those who manage them ‘are’ and ‘do in reality,’ but also one should explore how people perceive those activities and their consequences, the extent of their knowledge about them, how they feel and think about their environment, and how they make sense of it. From this perspective, it was not important for me to know what the photographs really represented: The main focus was on the meanings that the interviewees connected to those images—the symbolic and emotive ‘lenses’ that directed their visual perspectives. Thus, the photographic collage worked as a paned window—with surfaces sometimes transparent, sometimes opaque and ambiguous—opening on to the social perception of pollution and the socio-environmental harm considered.

3 ‘Photovoice’ is a specific type of photo elicitation used in participatory action research (PAR) (Harper 2012: 188–206)—a qualitative research methodology which emphasizes collaborative participation of researchers and local communities in co-producing knowledge. Photo-voice is a visual method of participatory action research conceived by Wang (2006) in the 1990 s and is characterized by participants who are asked to take photographs of themes relevant to their daily life, to reflect on their community’s concerns, to expose ‘social problems.’ The goal is to ignite social change by making the voices of the participants in the research heard in the political sphere in order to orient policy decisions and to improve practices.

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The idea of using visual images in order to conduct interviews was proposed for the first time by John Collier (1967), who offered a number of reasons for (and considerations for when) introducing this novel element into an interview. First, interaction and collaboration between interviewer and interviewee can be or become more fluid. On some level, the interviewee allows himself/herself to be questioned by the photographic images, rather than by the interviewer. The interviewee may not feel controlled by the interviewer—the former is the one looking and says what he/she sees and feels about the images, thereby enhancing an active and reflexive role during the interpretative process (see also Harper 1988). Second, the use of photographs generates unique data not obtainable through verbal questions. In fact, photographic images offer the observer the opportunity of speaking about images in more than one way—in both a rational/argumentative way and an emotional/evocative one. Third, the use of photographs can catalyze a personal interpretative process—one that transcends what is visible to the researcher. In spite of their self-evidence—their ‘proof ’ of reality—images can be interpreted in various ways and thus generate potentially conflicting meanings (Barthes 2000 [1980]). It is thanks to this polysemy of visual images that it is possible to investigate more deeply the perspective of the participants (Harper 2012: 155–187). Furthermore, with photo elicitation, the photograph serves as a means for activating an interpretative process of the visual and symbolic content of the perceived reality. It is here that the visual image deploys one of its most significant capabilities—inviting the participant and the researcher to encounter and interpret symbolically and emotionally visual representations of environmental crime and harm. The nature of photography ‘entails an objective representation (a mechanical record of something factual) and a subjective interpretation (a representation of the paradigm in which it was constructed) with meanings ascribed to the image by the photographer and the viewer’ (Van de Voorde 2012: 212, emphasis in original; see also Ferrell and Van de Voorde 2010: 41–42). So, a qualitative interview with images can capture the paradox typical of environmental phenomena: They are socially defined and described but at the same time they are real (Brisman and South 2014; Natali 2013b). A

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visual approach within green criminology contributes to this cultural and scientific undertaking in its own unique way. In addition to these considerations, photography is useful to document a bygone time (Harper 2012: 167). When one wants to investigate the social perception of environmental contamination and catastrophe, the use of photographs in the interview allows one to introduce into the conversation the historical dimension of the phenomenon and, with it, the collective memory of the inhabitants of the area in question, granting broader narrative potential about the various ways of feeling, living, remembering and seeing the socio-environmental history of a particular place. From this perspective, the choice of a method—in this case, photo elicitation—is linked directly to the idea of a criminological imagination (Young 2011; White 2003; see also Ferrell et al. 2015) capable of connecting the individual biographies and the historical and cultural frame in which they are located. Finally, the use of visual dimensions makes it possible to place more value on an important facet of environmental harms—their spatial dimension(s). Reflecting upon our mode of perceiving the environment and its possible destruction implies, in fact, recognition of the concrete space (a place) of which we are part. Each social actor is also, or perhaps above all else, a ‘spatial’ actor, one who moves in a physical, not just symbolic, space. Many techniques are already employed to take into account this dimension and these include experiments with a higher level of creativity, such as the ‘itinerant soliloquies’ that I will describe in the next section.

Beyond the Visual: For a Sensory Methodology? The strategy of data collection described ensured for me access to the wide variety of ways of seeing the polluted environment, reconstructing an articulated range of personal visions about it. However, as visual criminologist Michelle Brown (2017) elucidates, ‘[t]he turn to the visual is indicative of a larger turn to the sensory that brings back the material, physical, affective and embodied experiences of harm, control, injustice, and resistance’ (see also McClanahan and South 2020). Following this

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direction, another technique I have employed in order to investigate the individuals’ social perception of environmental harms and victimization is a special form of mobile methodology that I called ‘itinerant soliloquy’ and that aims at exploring the physical and multi-sensorial dimensions linked to the personal experience of a place. The itinerant soliloquy is partly inspired by the explorations of visual anthropologist Andrew Irving (2011) and is intended to decipher ‘how spaces become places’ (Brisman and South 2014), in the concrete complexity of the dynamic relationship between social actor and living space (see Natali and Budó 2019). Specifically, in my research, the participant was asked to take the researcher to a place that had something to do with his/her perception of the socio-environmental harm in the city where she/he lived. The participant was then asked to walk around the place and verbally express the stream of consciousness (thoughts and emotions) that might arise during the walk. Moreover, they were also asked to take photos so as to include in the narrative flux some expressive forms similar to the ones used during the ‘photo elicitation’ described in the section above. The spoken soliloquies of the participants were recorded and their movements in the space/place filmed from a distance. In essence, what becomes significant and central during the itinerant soliloquy is not only ‘seeing’ but also, and above all, ‘being in the world’—enhancing a kind of ‘democracy of the senses’ (Back 2007). Every observer is immersed in the disorder of the real world, in its synesthetic chaos/messiness (see also Robins 1996: 34), and his/her observations and narratives are always embedded in a specific experiential context—in a real and true ‘web of life’ (Degen and Rose 2012)—quite far from the ideal of a detached and impersonal observation, often at the center of traditional scientific methods (Blumer 1969; Irving 2011). The thought motivating the planning and the experimentation of this technique is based on the conviction that the cognitive dimension, even if amplified by the use of visual dimensions, is not sufficient to capture the sense of our relationship with the environment (see also Brown and Carrabine 2017b: 8). If what happens depends on where it happens, it is necessary to think of methodological approaches that might help

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in interpreting the phenomena investigated in a complex and multisensorial way (Ingold 2000; Pink 2008; O’Neill 2017). More precisely, the itinerant soliloquy can be defined as a technique which tries to enhance the reflexive and experiential richness arising from the coming together of walking, observing, interpreting, reflecting and narrating—to oneself and to others—opening the socio-criminological imagination to new forms of reflexivity and research in the field. Furthermore, considering that the perception and the interpretation of places crossed during an itinerant soliloquy are deeply tied to the self, to the social mindscapes (Zerubavel 1999) and the story of a single social actor, this approach enhances the uniqueness of the multiple, and often oxymoronic, points of view on the human–environment relationship. In this way, our self becomes a space of reflexivity, crossed by sounds, voices and images coming from different places and times. Finally, sensory and visual methods certainly represent a challenge for the ethical practices that should always accompany social research. Besides the most evident questions linked to informed consent, to the principle of confidentiality and anonymity, to the law concerning copyright and ethical codes (Wiles et al. 2011), the personal and ethical position of the researcher is what represents the crucial point. In particular, my proposal is inspired by an ethic and a responsibility of ‘caring’ consonant with collaborative and participatory research and orientated by a dialogic reflexivity. This approach suggests the importance of negotiating in the field the limits to be respected so that, in that context and with those participants, the practices adopted will prove ethical. In order to give greater concreteness to the theoretical and methodological considerations explored so far, I present some excerpts taken from a research on personal experiences of environmental victimization that I have been carrying out for the last ten years and more. The narrative fragments of the itinerant soliloquies shown below were realized in Huelva (Spain) in May 2015. Huelva, a highly polluted town in Southern Spain, represents a case study that is extremely useful to the deepening of the perception of the environmental pollution of a territory following production activities that go back in time. Huelva, in fact, is a town highly polluted by an imposing industrial plant built in the early 1960 s, encompassing a large number of corporations. The hub

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Fig. 7.1 Aurelio as he walks describing to himself the landscape he is crossing. Still image taken from the video of the itinerant soliloquy (Natali 2015)

was built next to the town, in what could be defined as its ‘backyard’ (Natali 2010). What Ulrich Beck (2007: 54) calls ‘organized irresponsibility’ captures both the seriousness of the pollution of the territory and the absence of an answer by the authorities to this grave situation. In spite of its being a worrying scenario, it seems that it remains surprisingly invisible—for the state, for the law and for a large section of the local population. This fact urges us forward, with a question: What is really happening in Huelva? In order to answer this question, in my research I invited the participants to choose the places that in some measure echoed their biographical experiences tied to the social-environmental harms deriving from the environmental contamination of the town. The first soliloquy presented here is that of Aurelio (aged 60, retired) who takes an active part in the problem of pollution in Huelva, having a leading role in the association Mesa de la Ría—a social movement fighting for the gradual reclamation of the polluted areas. Aurelio chose to realize his itinerant soliloquy along the road which runs along both the Tinto River and the industrial area. The visual paradoxes of the place form the background to his self-narrative (Fig. 7.1).4

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The ría de Huelva … my ria [estuary] … place of meetings … places of life, of exchange …How much I love the ría, such a wonder … I feel as if the Phoenician ships were arriving … as if the Roman galleys were approaching … entering into this wonderful natural space, where cultures meet … this ría which certainly is the place where those cultures met, where the Phoenicians traded … with Tartars … where the Romans came to collect their great wealth, but where they also brought theirs … where Muslims established their settlement there … just there, the isla Saltés … the great Muslim encampment, where the cultures, the languages, the knowledge were exchanged … this is the ría de Huelva, this is the wonder I admire … it enchants me … but one must also keep in mind that this is the life … that here also it come to exchange, here also it comes to give and receive … this species of the gulf of Cadiz return right here and here, in these waters, takes place the exchange … they lay eggs, are born, go away and return … for thousands of years, this fantastic ría that is the Odiel river … at Huelva … Onuba, as the ancients called her, Onuba … a place where I find myself, where I perceive … a place where I find many explanations that bring sense to my world … I love the ría de Huelva … […] the place where Columbus prayed to ask for good luck on his journey … and he left from here, from this place I am seeing just now … it’s wonderful … I love it … it’s something that makes me feel … it gives me a shot of life … these historical events in which it is possible to see how human being become ever greater with the passage of centuries … well, of those past centuries …

In Aurelio’s narrative, this ‘before’—also present in the memory of many of the inhabitants of Huelva—appears in sharp opposition to what is now there, the reality of the industrial plants. The contrast awakens in him a readiness to claim rights and fight for them. …I am not very happy with what has happened in the twentieth century … everything has its history, naturally … but the twentieth century does 4

The participant often speaks in the third person using his own name instead of ‘I’ or ‘me’ when he talks to himself as he considers the ‘imagined’ listener—including himself—as a symbolic point of reference to whom he tells the story of their relationship with the polluted environment. This dimension of the internal conversation—or soliloquy—is well described by the notion of ‘phantom community’ (Athens 2007), to whom any narrator turns when telling his/her own story.

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not convince me… ah, dear me, how much exploiting, how much the folly in this twentieth century … this twentieth century that has given us what we see down there, this is what makes me sad … what we see down there, is what has changed this land, this estuary, this rich history of Huelva … and what has sunk it into the most absolute misery, that is what we have now … The twentieth century … this is what has brought … the barbarisms of the twentieth century … two wars, a superindustrialization … what is called, in inverted commas, ‘human progress’ … in Huelva this is what we have … these are the results of the industrialization of the ’60s, someone, beyond good or evil, decided to install those chemical plants here … and the wonder which is the ría de Huelva, the meeting place of life and culture, becomes a grave full of pollution, full of death and in a place where this earth is plundered … the natural resources are exploited here, but there are no returns … and to this land nothing is given, they take everything … here … and leave nothing … well, do they really leave nothing, Aurelio? Certainly they leave something… they leave waste, 120-130 million tons toxic waste discharged there in the swamps of the river Tinto … and what is discharged in the sea bed … this is what they leave us … here is where it can be seen … the twentieth century … all this wonder of the estuary of Huelva becomes an immense heap of dung full of millions of tons of toxic waste that are there, on the sea bed of this estuary …

The awareness and the sense of social and environmental injustice that emerge reach their apex at the sight of one of the industries that are considered the main one responsible for the pollution of the territory of Huelva. From here begins a ‘soliloquy’ which, starting from the tragic dilemma employment/industrial plants versus health/environment, and meeting ‘along the way’ the sense of disgust for what can be seen and perceived, becomes a sense of deep sadness for the destiny of Huelva: Here is Fertiberia, creator of work places according to them, really creator of death, has produced the greatest ecocide in Europe and perhaps in the whole world … a swamp that they have filled with waste at the entrance to a town and that nobody has tried to stop, here they all take it for granted, unconsciously … I think that this photo could be … [takes a photo: Fig. 7.2]

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Fig. 7.2 Avenida Francisco Montenegro, Huelva (author: Aurelio 2015)

… the usurpation of Huelva … photo, some photos, how many times will we have to denounce this outrage? What more can we do? Dear God … how can such an aberration be tolerated in the twenty-first century, when one presumes the European environmental norms to be among the strictest? And this has already been denounced in Europe, to the government of the state, to the local government, to the town council, but until when will all this be allowed? Till when? It makes me feel immensely sad … my God … We should start thinking about something that would make us have more pleasant thoughts because any time one goes by here, Aurelio, you feel disgust … an immense disgust … and even if you keep looking at the ría you cannot ignore what’s there, on the other side … what has been done and what is still being done … my God … “mi Huelva tiene una ría”, the song says … [he sings]

When Aurelio arrives at Punta del Sebo—the beach where before the industrial pollution the inhabitants of Huelva used to go to bathe—and, thanks to the memory of an experience of collective mobilization evoked by this meaningful place, he introduces into the narrative flow the further

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dimension of historic memory, which brings him nearer to the ‘territorial claims’: This space is authentic recent history … this is just where public bathing was …where people used to go and bathe … where they arrived on a little train … and spent their holidays with the water and the sea … on the river, here … at the confluence of the Tinto and the Odiel … Oh, I remember the great Garbanzada, 11 years ago … this month of October … where all the people of Huelva came to say that they no longer wanted the industrial plants … let them be taken away … they did not want any more pollution, let it be eliminated! Thousands of people here, and who took notice? I am remembering all those who went to Galicia when there was the black tide of the Prestige in 2002 … even the Germans came to save the beaches and the Galician coast polluted by the oil spill … what I say is: why don’t they come here? Why do they not come to Huelva to save us? Why do they not come to clean our coasts? Our estuaries, our swamps … why do they not come? Why does Huelva have to be the great ignored? Why does Huelva have to be this space towards which nobody shows any respect? It’s is very hard … this. It’s very hard … I ask myself … I think it goes back to when the English worked the mines and lorded it as if they were in the middle of Africa … and it does not mean that if it had happened in Africa it would be justified, it would be wrong anywhere … but here they were in Europe, exploiting natural resources in Europe … but nothing … here they have exploited all this … […] … let’s take the last photo and go home, Aurelio, what do you think? … because for today the walk has been enough … … well done … let’s go…

Naturally, the perception of the contaminated place and of the socioenvironmental harms linked to it is colored by the biographies of those who have lived those experiences personally, like Aurelio. The memories are full of things and people belonging to unique and personal experiences. They are narratives which could be defined ‘transitive’ in the sense of being mediators between the interior world of the social actor and the ecological context where she/he is, condensing peculiar meanings and atmospheres. The following participant is Rebeca (aged 30, teacher) and, with her itinerant soliloquy, she chose to go to the Río Tinto wharf (Fig. 7.3).

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Fig. 7.3 Rebeca taking a photo on the wharf of the Río Tinto. Still image from the video of the itinerant soliloquy (Natali 2015)

… the structure of the wharf is wonderful … Huelva is one of the best places where to stay … and look … I have a picture of my sister’s wedding here … things were very different … millions of memories here … great celebrations … fireworks right here at the side … and everyone in town would enjoy this walk … well, feelings are conflicting … they are twosided … because on one side there is the preciousness of this site … and on the other the pain for what is left … and now that you walk about here what do you feel? Work in progress … what do you see? Again works … I’ll take a shot [Fig. 7.4]…

The walk through the same place on the part of different social actors can arouse unique thoughts and emotions which cannot be reduced to the environment that is the ‘stimulus’ of the narratives (see also Irving 2011: 35). A sense of resignation makes Rebeca reflect on the apathy present in the experiences of the inhabitants of Huelva. She asks herself how it would be possible to awaken a feeling of rebellion against all this when even a serious accident that recently happened to some of the workers in the plants has not managed to change the immovable passiveness of the social conscience and of the institutional responses:

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Fig. 7.4 View of the wharf of the Río Tinto, Huelva (author: Rebeca 2015)

So many years of fighting and it seems to me we have gone backwards … perhaps then there is nothing left but to resign oneself. I don’t know what will happen to all that’s been built here when the sea will say: ‘I’ll take back this place which is mine’… because all these buildings are built on the swamps … the other day there was an earthquake and one of my colleagues told me everything has shifted a little … and when the sea will say ‘I’ll be back’ I don’t know what will happen to half of Huelva … which takes up more and more the space of the sea … Well, here we have again the plants and I wonder how those three workers who had that accident are … And is this not bad enough? That there isn’t a burn unit at the hospital in Huelva? And that you might just die along the road from Huelva to Seville? And having the chemical Pole right here … with all the danger it represents … and is this not bad? Truly, what happens here really is that blood does not burn … three burned men … what a disaster … … ah, today I really feel negative and pessimistic! Well, I start hoping again when I see, as now, children around here … a hope that all this might be recovered and that they might really enjoy it … in the end it is not so difficult … it’s enough to have better laws for industries …

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give value to all this and stop the powers, who are normally corrupted, from taking decisions … yes, I prefer to keep this thought of hope.

Whether this victimization was perceived as equal or differentiated, the theme of injustice emerged all the more forcibly in the reflection that what was happening in Huelva would not have happened in another place—the recurring question being typical of any (collective) victim: Why us? Why right here, in our ‘backyard,’ and not somewhere else? Other participants addressed more directly those experiences of environmental injustice linked to the deprivation of a right, namely that of being able to enjoy healthy surroundings, not dangerous or threatening to one’s well-being. The crucial point for such reflections is the conviction that the experience of injustice is rooted in our biography, in our lives and within a socially constructed and structured context (Natali 2010; see also Pemberton et al. 2019). If, in such a perspective, it is true that communities do not possess a metaphysical concept of justice— or even of environmental justice (Halsey 2004)—capable of generating consensus as to what is right and what is wrong, then they could consider the personal experiences of injustice, including environmental ones, and the opposition to these injustices as a key starting point (Zagrebelsky 2006). While individuals may not all agree with others’ perceptions of what is injustice or harmful, they should at least be able to recognize what represents injustice or harm for people. Indeed, it is because we are all suffering subjects that even in today’s fragmented and multicultural society, we can still identify categories of undesirable patterns of behavior and achieve a certain agreement about some basic questions such as: Who suffers? Who is in need of protection? Who is the victim? (Rorty 1989). Coming into contact with a personal experience of injustice sometimes leads one to fight against the injustice suffered, as in the cases reported above. Albeit in different forms, questioning oneself about the origins of an injustice transforms the meaning of one’s own relationship with oneself and with one’s social and natural worlds (Natali 2010).

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Toward a Conclusion This chapter suggested that in order to investigate and narrate with both images and words the possible environmental scenarios that may enter the green criminological arena, different visual and sensory techniques will probe useful to learn new modes of listening to and seeing the manifold experiences of socio-environmental harm and ecological destruction. Becoming even more familiar with the ‘culture of the image’ and with its possible uses, green criminology could also discover unknown ways of ‘originating ‘new’—insightful, open, moving—descriptions of the world’ (Robins 1996: 167). To obtain these results, it will be vital to promote a ‘visual scientific literacy’ (Pauwels 2011: 14), which would have to include not only the skills necessary to interpret and produce images, but above all would allow the development of a visual thinking capable of permeating and animating the whole research process. The mutual relations and points of methodological and theoretical overlap between green, visual, critical and narrative criminologies will help to take into account these various aspects, representing the starting point for the promotion of new imaginative explorations of environmental crimes, harms and conflicts (Natali and McClanahan 2020; see also Presser and Sandberg 2019). These theoretical and methodological sensitivities will then be able to become part of the global environmentalist endeavor that refuses to turn a blind eye to planetary degradation and destruction. Albeit in a different context, O’Neill (2018: 80) suggests that ‘[c]ombining participatory, biographical and visual research, and ‘walking’, can open a shared space, an imaginary domain, generate sensory knowledge and shared ‘understandings’ about belonging and citizenship.’ In this sense, the use of these methods opens the door to the exploration of different kinds of social harm, besides the ones connected to the phenomena of environmental victimization described in this chapter. It suffices to remember O’Neill’s contribution on asylum seekers and on the experiences of social injustice of migrant mothers (O’Neill 2017, 2018) or some participatory research on the social perception of prison and of the multiple harms of the penal system and of punitive violence (Natali et al. 2020).

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Some scholars (Fleetwood et al. 2019: 5) have already highlighted that ‘[n]arratives of victimization are both personal and existentially significant and motivators for political and social change. Analysis of both depends on a keen attentiveness to questions of power that infuse who can tell a victim narrative’ (see also Walklate et al. 2019; Pemberton et al. 2019). This level of analysis becomes even more important considering how the state complicity in the routine and systematic production of corporate social and environmental harms often impedes the recognition of eco-crimes as ‘real’ crimes (Tombs 2013: 276; Tombs and Whyte 2015). Within this perspective, some important results to which criminologists may hope to contribute are: an understanding of the complex and multifaceted social-environmental harms; the weakening of the myths, prejudices and distortions that even now persist in the man–nature relationship; and the bringing into focus of the dimensions of injustice deriving from an uneven distribution of environmental resources and of technological risks, carrying out a critique of the present status quo. Including within the criminological discourses the most advanced theoretical perspectives on environmental issues together with a social harm perspective and with visual methodologies constitutes an action aimed at (1) sensitizing scholars, practitioners and policy-makers to the need to change some taken-for-granted views that inform our relationship with the environment and, at the same time, at (2) empowering communities, citizens and those who suffer socio-environmental harms. As the philosopher Salvatore Natoli (2010: 148) remarks, there has never been a real change of the mind that has not also been a change of life. And this change requires looking at, seeing and sensing things in different and multiple ways. This path requires a tenacious awareness of the ‘banality of evil,’ in the environmental field as well, which means a consciousness of its ordinariness and of its presence in the small acts of daily life, which turn the harmful effects into a routine. As Rob White (2013) notes, the ‘naturalness’ of these harms, the ways in which social harms, the economic exploitation and the destruction of the environment become integrated into the fabric of daily life as a ‘normal’ function, renders them much more difficult to challenge. This is further aggravated by the fact that much of what happens is hidden behind some form of ‘legality’—regardless of the actual harm

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suffered. Being able to recognize these harms means then not allowing oneself to become accustomed either to evil and to suffering or to their disconcerting banality.

Further Reading • Brisman, A., & South, N. (Eds.). (2020). Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology (2nd ed.). Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge. It is the second edition of the first comprehensive and international anthology dedicated to ‘green criminology.’ In this revised edition, new methodological orientations are proposed, including a new chapter (Ch. 5) by Lorenzo Natali and Bill McClanahan, entitled ‘The Visual Dimensions of Green Criminology.’ • Brown, M., & Carrabine, E. (Eds.). (2017). Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Various chapters in this Handbook are relevant to an analysis of the ‘visual’ in the criminological field. In particular, Ch. 30 by Maggie O’Neill, entitled ‘Asylum seekers and moving images: Walking, sensorial encounters and visual criminology’ (pp. 389–403), is crucial in describing the potentials of a sensory and walking method. • Natali, L. (2016). A Visual Approach for Green Criminology: Exploring the Social Perception of Environmental Harm. London: Palgrave Macmillan. The book explores environmental harms through a combination of green and visual criminologies. Making creative use of visual methods, in particular photo elicitation, it provides conceptual and methodological innovations for green criminology to explore how environmental harm is perceived and experienced by those who suffer socio-environmental harms.

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References Athens, L. (2007). Radical interactionism. Going beyond Mead. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 37 (2), 137–165. Auyero, J., & Swistun, D. (2009). Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Back, L. (2007). The Art of Listening. London: Bloomsbury. Barthes, R. (2000 [1980]). Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. London: Vintage. Barton, A., Corteen, K., Scott, D., & Whyte, D. (2007). Conclusion: Expanding the Criminological Imagination. In A. Barton, K. Corteen, D. Scott, & D. Whyte (Eds.), Expanding the Criminological Imagination. Critical Reading in Criminology. Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing. Beck, U. (2009 [2007]). World at Risk. Cambridge: Polity. Becker, H. (1974). Photography and Sociology. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, 1, 3–26. Beccaria, C. (2003 [1764]). Dei Delitti e delle pene. Milano: Feltrinelli. Beirne, P. (2015). Hogarth’s Art of Animal Cruelty: Satire, Suffering and Pictorial Propaganda. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Brisman, A. (2017). Representations of Environmental Crime and Harm: A Green Cultural Criminological Perspective on Human-Altered Landscapes. In M. Brown & E. Carrabine (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Brisman, A. (2018). Representing the “Invisible Crime” of Climate Change in an Age of Post-Truth. Theoretical Criminology, 22(4), 468–491. Brisman, A., & South, N. (2014). Green Cultural Criminology. Constructions of Environmental Harm, Consumerism and Resistance to Ecocide. London: Routledge. Brisman, A., & South, N. (Eds.). (2020). Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology (2nd ed.). Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Brown, M. (2014). Visual Criminology and Carceral Studies: Counter-images in the Carceral Age. Theoretical Criminology, 18(2), 134–158. Brown, M. (2017). Visual criminology. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology. Available at: http://criminology.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/ acrefore/9780190264079.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264079-e-206?pro duct=orecri#acrefore-9780190264079-e-206. Accessed 27 July 2020.

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Natali, L., & Hall, M. (in press). A Green Criminological Approach to Environmental Victimisation and Restorative Justice. In J. P. Burgess L. Centemeri, & S. Topçu (Eds.), Repairing Environments: A Critical Perspective on Recovery After Disaster. Routledge. Natali, L., & McClanahan, W. (2017). Perceiving and Communicating Environmental Contamination and Change: Towards a Green Cultural Criminology with Images. Critical Criminology: an International Journal, 25 (2), 199–214. Natali, L. & McClanahan, W. (2020). The Visual Dimensions of Green Criminology. In A. Brisman & N. South (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology (2nd ed.). Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Natoli, S. (2010). Il buon uso del mondo. Milano: Mondadori. O’Neill, M. (2017). Asylum Seekers And Moving Images: Walking, Sensorial Encounters and Visual Criminology. In M. Brown & E. Carrabine (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology (pp. 389–403). Abingdon, Oxon, UK, and New York: Routledge. O’Neill, M. (2018). Walking, Well-Being and Community: Racialized Mothers Building Cultural Citizenship Using Participatory Arts and Participatory Action Research. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41(1), 73–97. Pauwels, L. (2011). An Integrated Conceptual Framework for Visual Social Research. In E. Margolis & L. Pauwels (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods. London: Sage. Pauwels, L. (2017). Key Methods of Visual Criminology. An Overview of Different Approaches and Their Affordances. In M. Brown & E. Carrabine (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge. Pemberton, A., Mulder, E., & Aarten, P. G. M. (2019). Stories of Injustice: Towards a Narrative Victimology. European Journal of Criminology, 16 (4), 391–412. Pink, S. (2008). An Urban Tour: The Sensory Sociality of Ethnographic PlaceMaking. Ethnography, 9 (2), 175–196. Presser, L., & Sandberg, S. (2019). Narrative Criminology as Critical Criminology. Critical Criminology: an International Journal, 27 (1), 131–143. Rafter, N. (2014). Introduction to Special Issue on Visual Culture and the Iconography of Crime and Punishment. Theoretical Criminology, 18(2), 127–133. Robins, K. (1996). Into the Image: Culture and Politics in the Field of Vision. London: Routledge.

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8 Documenting Harm to the Voiceless: Researching Animal Abuse Jennifer Maher

Introduction This chapter explores approaches to animal abuse research, associated challenges and implications for future research. These manifold challenges are typically linked to a legacy of speciesism and the mass exploitation of most nonhuman animals who are denied victim status and rights. Animal abuse researchers must therefore consider the inconsistencies and fundamental harms implicit in the human–animal relationship. They must ask: why so few abuses of nonhuman animals are defined as socially unacceptable; why even less are criminalised; and why those behaviours recognised as offences are marginalised in criminology and the criminal justice system (Beirne 2009). We can then better understand the subtleties and paradoxes inherent in our existing relationships and improve research and our responses to animal abuse. J. Maher (B) University of South Wales, Pontypridd, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_8

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While laws exist in most countries to protect animals, they typically address some crimes against certain animals—a little protection for a select few. To make sense of these acts and inconsistencies, animal abuse research might usefully employ the kind of nonspeciesist scrutiny a zemiology or social harms lens offers. These critical perspectives have a heightened awareness of the role power plays in producing hegemonic knowledge and seek to expose harms not recognised as crimes. In this way, we can illuminate the gaps in our knowledge and animal abuse— particularly the everyday pervasive systems of abuse—like other major forms of interpersonal and institutional abuse (e.g. racism and sexism) can be better understood and responded to. A short note is required on the language and focus herein. In recognition of the harmful speciesist terminology commonly used to refer to animals other than humans (Beirne 2018; Nibert 2002; Sollund 2019), the term nonhuman animal is used except when referring to animal abuse (see further discussion below). Most research on nonhuman animals is conducted in the life and natural sciences (e.g. biology, veterinary, conservation) and includes subjecting some nonhuman animals to harmful scientific procedures (see Menache 2017). This research seeks to benefit humans, to the detriment of nonhuman animals. It does not commonly study abuse (e.g. measurement, causes or prevention), nor position nonhuman animals as victims (apart from seminal veterinary studies by Merck 2007; Munro 2006; Munro and Thrusfield 2001). Further, as abuse is perpetrated by humans—in state, corporate, political and social institutions—I argue that the human–nonhuman animal relationship is best viewed from a social science research perspective and through a critical and social harms lens. This chapter focuses on the key discussion points in the field of animal abuse studies, namely, the meaning, definition and measurement of animal abuse and the methods used to investigate it. To orient readers, the chapter begins with a discussion on legalistic animal abuse definitions. In highlighting the limitations of such definitions, the case for a social harms approach is established. In what follows, I outline the developments and challenges in researching animal abuse and conclude by identifying areas for future research.

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Problematising Legal Constructions of Animal Abuse When conducting animal abuse research, all researchers must first confront the definitional problem (Agnew 1998)—what is animal abuse? Many studies focus on behaviours prohibited in law (e.g. bestiality, dog fighting) and this, I will argue, is an inherently problematic approach due to the lack of consensus on what constitutes abuse and the omission of many victims and harms. According to World Animal Protection (2016) and Global Animal Law (2020), most countries worldwide have anticruelty laws protecting nonhuman animals. However, legislation varies considerably, with many countries ranked as weak, that is, possessing at best a basic level of welfare legislation.1 Strikingly, even in countries ranked as having robust legislation—Germany, New Zealand, the UK and Austria—most nonhuman animals receive little or no protection in law. In the UK, for example, nonhuman animals remain defined as commodities (property) and objects in law despite anti-cruelty legislation in some substantial form or other being on the statute books for almost 200 years and animal welfare rating is high on the consumer and public health agenda. The positioning of nonhuman animals in law—as objects, commodities, persons or subjects—is an important consideration for researchers as it illustrates the paradoxes implicit in the human–nonhuman animal relationship and the challenges confronting animal abuse researchers. As objects and commodities, one can, for example, legally torture, kill, sexually penetrate and consume nonhuman animals. These behaviours only become illegal harms when a nonhuman animal is protected, and their treatment deemed unnecessary. The fragile dividing line between abusive and acceptable behaviours is underpinned by the implicit belief that harm is necessary and nonhuman animals do not have fundamental 1

The rating produced by World Animal Protection involves a ranking of 50 countries according to their legislation and policy commitments to protecting animals (e.g. recognising animal protection, governance structures and systems, animal welfare standards, providing humane education and promoting communication and awareness). The Global Animal Law database ranks countries according to existing animal laws, civil code provisions and constitutional principles.

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rights (Singer 1995). Anti-cruelty legislation recognises an ethical responsibility in our use of nonhuman animals (World Organisation for Animal Health 2019). ‘Unnecessary suffering’, a common but ambiguous legal term, is suffering above and beyond the harms required in our use (e.g. in medicine, food, sport, etc.) or destruction (e.g. due to their status as invasive species or pests) of nonhuman animals. In the UK Animal Welfare Act [AWA] (2006) this applies only to vertebrate animals ‘of a kind … commonly domesticated in the British Islands’, ‘under [human] control whether on a permanent or temporary basis’ or ‘not living in a wild state’ (§.2).2 Consistent with Favre’s (2004) notion of ‘sentient property’, Nurse (n/d) suggests the AWA (2006) moves beyond the treatment of nonhuman animals as objects to sentient beings with the introduction of five mandatory duties of care.3 The idea of constituting animals as sentient property, however, is challenged by the failure in 2017 to transfer the European Union protocol on sentience (recognition that nonhuman animals can feel, perceive, be conscious and thereby experience pain and pleasure) into UK law,4 despite consensus from the scientific community (Low 2012) that many species/groups (e.g. cetaceans, corvidae, hominidae, octopoda and psittaciformes) do possess humanlike cognitive and mental capabilities (e.g. possessing beliefs, desires and emotions). Human-like animals are often valued more, and through regulation and mainstream social practices, considered to be individuals who are ‘subjects of life’ (Regan 2004) and ‘persons’ (Francione 2008). The US Nonhuman Rights Project (2018) for example uses the legal concept of Habeas Corpus to fight for the release of captive chimpanzees,

2 Other legislation exists which provides a lower standard of protect to other animals, such as the UK Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 (see Nurse 2012). 3 See the RSCPA explanation of the five freedoms at https://www.rspca.org.uk/whatwedo/end cruelty/changingthelaw/whatwechanged/animalwelfareact. 4 In 1999, a protocol which explicitly recognised nonhuman animals as sentient beings was incorporated into the Lisbon Treaty (Article 13 of Title II). The UK has no legal instrument other than Article 13 of the Lisbon Treaty to legally recognise that nonhuman animals are sentient beings. In the aftermath of the UK vote to exit the EU, the Bill to transfer this protocol on nonhuman animal sentience into UK law, brought to Parliament on 15 November 2017, failed to be passed. Consequently, there is no legal recognition of nonhuman animal sentience in the UK.

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arguing their similarity to humans makes them worthy of moral consideration, rights, ‘personhood’ and bodily liberty. Rather than enhancing welfare standards these campaigners seek human-like rights.5 Although unsuccessful to date in the USA, some countries have enshrined in law human-like rights for nonhuman animals. For example, the Spanish parliament has extended human rights to apes (Glendinning 2008), and the Law of Mother Earth (2010) in Bolivia affords nature equal rights to humans (Vidal 2010). From a rights perspective, animal abuse is defined as any harm caused to nonhuman animals by humans unless required to relieve pain (e.g. euthanasia) (Francione 2008; Regan 2004). As demonstrated by the Nonhuman Rights Project, acknowledging these rights in law is problematic, not least because much of our existing engagement with nonhuman animals would consequently constitute criminal behaviour. Further, nonhuman animals lack the moral agency believed necessary to have or exercise rights. Yet, this deficiency is also present for vulnerable humans (e.g. children) who are deemed moral ‘patients’ rather than ‘agents’, deserving rights without needing to be accountable for their behaviour (Rowlands 2012). There is also precedent for legal personhood to be granted to non-persons such as corporations (e.g. USA) and rivers (e.g. New Zealand, Colombia and India) (Tignino and Turley 2018). Thereby, legal frameworks exist in which nonhuman animals could be defined as persons/moral patients with certain rights that moral agents must respect. Legal definitions of animal abuse are complex and deficient for the purpose of protecting rights or welfare as they fail to treat nonhuman animals as victims. Arguably animal welfare legislation has developed as part of civilisation processes that have removed animal abuses perceived as creating or indicating deviance (e.g. enjoyment of blood sports). Thus, some animal abuses are criminalised on the basis that they pre-empt interpersonal violence (e.g. they ‘link’ to current or future deviance or victimisation—see discussion below). In contrast, most abuses committed for financial or commercial gain are not perceived

5 Human-like rights does not equate to human rights for animals. For a more detailed discussion on rights for animals, see Regan (2004).

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as deviant. By focusing on intent, we justify required practices in vivisection and agriculture which intentionally inflict pain and injury to animals without anaesthetic. Practiced on companion animals, these acts would be considered criminal. The former is viewed as compassionate management of animals rather than evidence of a personality disorder (e.g. conduct disorder). The protections conferred in law are also questionable when the ‘capable guardians’ (Cohen and Felson 1979) responsible for protection (e.g. owners or government agencies) are also the most likely perpetrators (or financers) of abuse. That nonhuman animal exploitation is pivotal to capitalism, consumerism and culture, and thereby global economies and politics should not be ignored (Brisman and South 2014). The legal requirement that ‘unnecessary suffering’ requires physical evidence, for example, facilitates exploitation and reduces protections by requiring the abuse: to have already occurred, be deemed unnecessary and be visible. Many physical, sexual and emotional abuses and thereby mainstream practices are excluded. As Agnew (1998: 179–180) has argued, the ‘prevailing beliefs’ surrounding the necessary uses and abuses of animals should be challenged, else we risk having ‘political and social actors with the greatest power determine our definition of abuse’. This dynamic provides additional challenges for animal abuse researchers who are reliant on human guardians to provide evidence and accounts of the abuse. By using narrow and piecemeal legal definitions, researchers risk desensitising and legitimising legal harms. In this vein, the study of harm to oppressed nonhumans and humans shares many common and sympathetic features. Importantly, a critical social harms lens can extend the criminological gaze beyond existing exclusive legalistic definitions (Hillyard et al. 2004), to better understand how to confer an identity, voice, rights or redress to nonhuman animals.

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Giving Voice to the Voiceless A full discussion on the contributions of research in documenting harm to nonhuman animals is far beyond my scope here, as is a detailed discussion on explaining and responding to animal abuse. Rather, I begin by providing a synopsis of the origins, scope and theoretical traditions in the development of animal abuse studies. I then address the core issues and challenges of defining and measuring animal abuse in academic research, as these are essential to legitimise animal abuse studies and develop appropriate explanations and responses.

Origins, Scope and Theoretical Developments in Animal Abuse Studies Given the limitations of legalistic definitions, the fragmented development of animal abuse studies in criminology is perhaps understandable. Animal abuse has been documented in criminology and associated subjects for over a century, beginning with publications in psychiatry and psychology (Ascione and Shapiro 2009). Prior to 2010, most animal abuse studies focused on the mindset of the offender and the relationship between animal abuse and interpersonal violence, commonly referred to as the ‘Link’ (seminal compendiums include Ascione 2010; Ascione and Arkow 1999; Linzey 2009; Lockwood and Ascione 1997). Evidence from multidisciplinary and international ‘link’ studies, found animal abuse coexists with various forms of interpersonal offending (Luke et al. 1997).6 Direct and intentional animal abuse (perpetrated or witnessed) was identified as indicative of abusive and defective personalities and concurrent or future interpersonal offending (e.g. among serial killers and mass murderers and within the family). These studies utilised the broad spectrum of social science research methods—systematic literature reviews, surveys, interviews, self-report, and statistical analysis of 6

For example, Luke et al. (1997) study concluded that animal abusers were: five times more likely to commit violence against people; four times more likely to commit property crimes; and three times more likely to be involved in drunken or disorderly offenses. These results were determined from the criminal records of 153 intentional animal abusers prosecuted by the MSPCA, compared to the criminal history of a control group of offenders of the same size.

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official offence and incident data. They provided crucial measurements, explanations and evaluation of responses to animal abuse and introduced new areas of research, such as animal sexual assault, hoarding and abuse against wildlife. In practice, these studies influenced: the addition of animal abuse to the criteria for diagnosing conduct disorder (American Psychiatric Association 1987), the development of pioneering prevention and intervention programmes (e.g. US AniCare and AniCare Child programmes, Gupta et al. 2017) and the inclusion of animal abuse in the US FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (2016). However, this research commonly emphasised anthropocentric harms (Solot 1997) and lacked conceptual clarity and methodological reliability, due to sample populations and sizes, definitional problems and inconsistencies, and the reliance on retrospective self-reports (Flynn 2012). In contrast, developments in animal abuse studies in sociology (e.g. the development of ‘Anthrozoo’ (1987) and ‘Society and Animal’ (1992) journals and a special issue journal in Qualitative Sociology (1994)) emphasised feminist and ethnographic research approaches (Beirne 1999). This research embraced an animal-centred narrative and focused on in-depth understanding, exploration and inductive reasoning, which critiqued the influences of social context and human subjectivity (Adams and Donovan 1995; Agnew 1998; Cazaux 1999). These studies were part of the ‘explosive growth’ of the multidisciplinary field of Human–Animal Studies [HAS] in which research from the social and natural sciences overlapped with the humanities (Shapiro and DeMello 2010). Despite these developments, Beirne (1999) maintained animal abuse did not yet constitute a coherent object of study in criminology. With the turn of the twenty-first century more criminologists have inserted nonhuman animals into their studies, informing developments in green (Beirne 2009; Beirne and South 2007; Fitzgerald 2010; Nurse 2012, 2015; Sollund 2008, 2012; White 2015, 2018; Wyatt 2013, 2014;) and conservation criminology (Gore 2017; Lemieux and Clarke 2009; Pires and Clarke 2012). Critical animal and animal abuse studies—now legitimate subgenres in criminology (Goyes and Sollund 2018)—have highlighted routine harms and amplified the voices of nonhuman animal victims (see seminal publications Beirne 2011; Maher et al. 2017). Many of these studies adopted a social harms approach to

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describe, measure, explain and critique responses to abuse. In Maher et al. (2017), researchers collected data from a large variety of sources, detailing illegal and legal harms, to evidence routine abuse in ‘arenas’ such as the racing industry (Young, pp. 271–288), fish in aquariums (Mazurek, pp. 313–336), dog fighting (Lawson 2019, pp. 337–364), conflict (Hediger, pp. 475–496), conservation and habitat destruction (Srinivasan and Kasturirangan, pp. 433–452; White 2018, pp. 249– 270), scientific experimentation (Menache 2017, pp. 389–416; Phillips and Belottie, pp. 365–388) and trade (Maher and Wyatt, pp. 223–248; Sollund, pp. 453–474). To develop deeper and more complex understandings of the intersections of human–animal abuse, animal abuse studies have borrowed conceptual and research tools from all areas of social studies and beyond, rather than developing a unique methodology. Theoretical and methodological contributions from critical criminology have influenced many studies, questioning how social constructs and circumstances influence definitions, explanations and responses to those commonly marginalised and unheard. Critical animal studies, according to Taylor and Fitzgerald (2018), are necessarily situated in a critical praxis of activist scholarship in order to explicitly focus on the mechanisms of inequality and oppression. As researchers pose questions that place nonhuman animals at the centre of social inquiry, these studies provide new critical perspectives and concepts and areas of research. Importantly, critical harms approaches offer important alternative theories to the aforementioned individualistic ‘Links’ explanations for animal abuse. Sollund (2019), for example, explains wildlife crime as consumption-related, with legal harms constructed around the needs and consumption preferences of humans. She emphasises the need for multifaceted explanations, pointing out the cross-over between this and other arenas of abuse (e.g. breeding and trade of companion animals, wildlife companion market and other nonhuman animal consumption markets). Further, Sollund (2017) utilises the methodological and theoretical developments in feminist-animal studies (Adams 2018; Deckha 2013; Gaard 2017) research to highlight the ‘othering’ processes explicit in the oppression of nonhuman animals. Feminism, ecofeminism and feminist intersectional theory are identified by Taylor and Fitzgerald (2018: 423) as important

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tools in ‘destabilizing the epistemic and methodological foundations of hegemonic speciesism’. Green criminology, a critical approach to environmental harms (Nurse 2015), has notably benefited from the development of critical studies on wildlife crime (Arroyo-Quiroz and Wyatt 2019; Goyes and Sollund 2018; Maher and Sollund 2016; Sollund 2019; van Uhm 2016a, b, 2018; Wyatt 2013, 2014). For example, animal abuse studies have helped green criminology scholars recognise the importance of supporting and including research from the ‘Global South’, which is home to both the world’s richest biodiversity and ecosystems and most atrocious harms against nonhuman animals7 (Goyes 2019). Yet, while these studies have existed as a legitimate field of green criminology for almost two decades (Sollund 2019), they remain a minority. They are not yet wholly embraced by green scholars (Beirne 2007; Flynn and Hall 2017), a stance at odds with an approach dedicated to environmental (e.g. nature, animals) harms. In a review of green criminology publications, Lynch et al. (2017: 23) found only 5.49% of published articles included animal-related (e.g. welfare or rights) keywords. Further, while Taylor and Fitzgerald’s (2018) broader review of criminology literature found the number of sources considering nonhuman animals had increased dramatically, few studies examined the larger questions of species justice, and corporate or state harms. Moving forward, it is important to question why so few criminology—especially green and critical—studies have adopted a nonspeciesist critical victimology that focuses on nonhuman animals as the first and most important victims of animal abuse.

Defining, Identifying and Measuring Nonhuman Animal Abuse As discussed, legalistic definitions of animal abuse are problematic. So, too, are academic definitions (see Flynn 2008, 2012; Pagani et al. 2010 for a detailed discussion). Problems relate to cultural differences and speciesism. Meanings of abuse constructed by individual researchers 7 According to NGO Mighty Earth, South America is home to the world’s largest meat company JBS (Hurowitz et al. 2019).

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may be incompatible with popular and fluid time and place cultural definitions (Pagani et al. 2010). The inclusion of legal or acceptable harms is particularly challenging as this conflicts with conventional norms on the use of nonhuman animals. Some studies fail at clearly defining abuse (Piper et al. 2003). Others have moved beyond anthropocentric definitions of acceptable use to include deviance and harm alongside established crimes (Agnew 1998: 178). Beirne’s (1999: 121) research provides one of the more thoughtful, widely accepted and useful definitions for social harms research: any act that contributes to the pain, suffering, or death of an animal or that otherwise threatens its welfare. Animal abuse may be physical, psychological, or emotional; may involve active maltreatment or passive neglect or omission; and may be direct or indirect, intentional or unintentional.

Beirne (2018) more recently defined the term ‘theriocide’ as the moral equivalent to homicide, defined as the intentional killing of nonhuman animals by humans, including individual domestic killings alongside numerous other sites of harm such as ‘intensive rearing regimes; hunting and fishing; trafficking; vivisection; militarism; pollution; and humaninduced climate change’ (2018: 55). Beirne argues it is essential for all parties to move beyond contemporary concepts and definitions of nonhuman animal use and abuse. A consistent nonspeciesist definition is long overdue and essential for accurate measurement and comparative national and cross-national research (see also discussion below on terminology). Measuring the prevalence of abuse is critical to giving nonhuman animals a voice, as it shapes the way we think and interact with the issue. As animal abuse is diverse, it has necessitated the use of a wide range of qualitative and quantitative research approaches (Lynch and Pires 2019; Maher et al. 2017). The measurement issues experienced in mainstream studies, such as small and inaccessible populations, data incompatibility and the dark figure of crime (e.g. unnoticed, unreported, unrecorded, unpublished offences), are heightened in animal abuse research. There is

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no single location of abuse. No single source of information. Conventional sources of data are difficult to access; researchers, for example, cannot utilise victimisation studies in which nonhuman animals selfreport their experiences. There is difficulty identifying victims, offenders and even advocates. This impacts on the reliability of official incident data, whereby very few offences are reported or recorded, and the available data is often inaccessible, piecemeal and problematic (Maher and Sollund 2016). Also, some harms are so numerous they cannot be counted. Lynch (2019) concludes qualitative descriptions, rather than quantitative measurements are sometimes required to make some harms apparent and meaningful. In addition to the challenges of finding credible, authentic and representative data, the data produced in empirical studies can present further problems. Limited funding can lead to small studies and data are seldom generalisable or comparable (due to varying definitions, measurements and populations) and frequently inconsistent. Take, for example, Arluke and Irvine’s (2017) review of animal abuse prevalence studies, which found between 2–72% of the populations studied (including 18–30% of young people) had engaged in animal abuse at some point in their lives. Discrepancies like this raise questions about the reliability and validity of such findings. Given widespread acceptance of many routine harms, such as those in the industrial meat (Fitzgerald 2010) or scientific industries (Herrmann and Jayne 2019), it can be, as Regan puts it, ‘shockingly easy to find accounts of horrific suffering inflicted on animals…published in leading scientific journals’ (Herrmann and Jayne 2019: xii). Researchers can easily identify and measure such abuses.8 Yet these figures must be scrutinised as instruments in the exploitation of nonhuman animals rather than in exposing the harms. Informative studies from other bodies (e.g. NGOs,9 government agencies) are also widely available, however as Lawson (2019) notes, these are commonly predisposed to positivist and quasi/experimental methodologies, and thereby may fail to comprehend 8 See for example: USA department of Agriculture https://www.ers.usda.gov/, UN food and Agriculture organisation—http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data, world beef production https:// beef2live.com/storylist-242. 9 See the US/UK/Australia and Canada total calculation of animals killed for the food industry. https://animalclock.org/.

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the social meaning of abusive acts. Developments in the legal protection of routine harm complexes have, however, created considerable barriers for qualitative research on both legal and illegal abuses. Legislation has enhanced the covert nature of these industries (e.g. preventing photography in slaughterhouses), while also criminalising those interested in exposing harms (e.g. Ag-Gag legislation), which is discussed further below. In these cases, analysis of existing documents—as socially situated products—created by government agencies, businesses, NGOs and media may be useful. In reality, harms to nonhuman animals are everywhere, hidden in plain sight. Researchers must learn how to look, where to look and who to ask. Identifying and measuring animal harms is not just important, it is essential to legitimise animal abuse studies and develop meaningful responses. Facing these methodological challenges, animal abuse researchers have utilised diverse methods and mixed approaches to generate more complete and representative accounts of presenting issues. Beirne, for example, conducted his most recent research examining the social construction of nonhuman animal exploitation by analysing images in art and history—if art imitates life and vice versa how does this help us identify and understand animal exploitation? Lawson (2019) employed extensive documentary analysis and elite interviews to analyse the inner processes and rationale of prominent UK policy figures in order to identify, measuring and explain the harms generated by nonhuman animal control responses to status and dangerous dogs.10 Wyatt and colleagues (2017) developed an extensive mixed-methods approach in their research on the legal and illegal puppy trade (see Fig. 8.1). Recognising the lack of relevant research, the study adopted a broad-brush approach, involving the collection of data from all available sources (e.g. government databases and online advertisements) and stakeholders (e.g. experts, professionals, dog owners). This consolidation enabled the researchers 10 The recognition within UK welfare legislation of animals as objects to which we have a duty of care is in stark contrast to their treatment elsewhere in law—as inanimate objects or possibly subjects to control. Lawson (2019) identifies how some controls can lead directly to the destruction of ‘dangerous’ or ‘unwanted’ dogs. These dogs are vilified and treated as subjects accountable for the risk they might pose to humans even if the risk is created by the poor standards of care provided by humans from birth.

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Fig. 8.1 Example of a methodology to research animal abuse

to better explore the complex nature of the trade and enhance data reliability, validity and credibility. Adopting a critical approach to studying the UK puppy trade, and focusing on both the illegal and legal trades, Wyatt et al.’s study included a systematic literature review and five stages of empirical data collection, to determine the prevalence and nature of the puppy trade. The literature reviewed included international academic and grey literature. The grey literature, predominantly from NGOs, provided invaluable information given limited academic research and official records. Empirical data collection began with 12 expert (semi-structured) interviews involving NGOs, veterinarians, government employees and breeding standards organisations with specialist knowledge and/or direct experience in responding to the puppy trade. These interviews provided current knowledge on the status quo and identified key areas for investigation in the study. Simultaneously, all online advertisements for puppies in Scotland (on seven key websites: Craigslist, Dogs & Puppies UK, Epupz, Freeads, Gumtree, Pets for Homes and Pets Viva Street) were monitored for 12 weeks. Data was collected on the prevalence and characteristics of

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advertisers and puppies. To supplement and compare this data with official records, prevalence data from the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) TRACES database and from Trading Standards Scotland were analysed. The data found in TRACES provided insight into the legal movement of dogs for commercial purposes and revealed transgressions within the trade. Trading Standards Scotland data detailed recorded complaints from puppy purchasers. To provide an alternative and more detailed perspective, an online survey was then used to capture the wealth of experience and insights from 400 stakeholders working in related fields (i.e. dog walkers, groomers, trainers, boarders and veterinarians) in order to learn about their dealings with consumers and their puppies, animals sometimes sourced irresponsibly or illegally. Drawing upon findings from the official, online, expert and stakeholder data, 40 qualitative consumer focus groups were conducted with people around Great Britain who were considering buying or had recently (within the last two years) bought a puppy. Despite the limitations of each data source (e.g. selection bias, sample sizes, access, credibility and the dark figure of reported incidents), analysis of the combined data provided a valuable insight into nature of, and influences on, the trade and the role of consumers and agencies in facilitating harms in the trade.

Ethical Challenges in Researching Nonhuman Animal Abuse Social harms research is especially cognisant of the role hierarchies and power relations play in reinforcing the status quo and producing knowledge to oppress certain groups (see Chapter 18 this collection). Power relations intersect and interlock in complex ways. Consequently, while animal abuse studies require similar ethical reflections to mainstream studies (Israel and Hay 2011), the human–nonhuman animal power dynamic demands further considerations. For example, animal abuse researchers should be mindful of the focus of the study—is it on animals rather than for animals? This is not to say we should structure ethics based on emancipatory research paradigms, which emphasise self-empowerment and reciprocity (Mietola et al. 2017). This is

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not possible for nonhuman animals. Rather researchers can consider nonhuman animals as moral patients who have rights which moral agents (researchers) respect. Feminist research has relevance here, whereby animal abuse researchers should aim ‘to understand, criticize and correct’ (Lindemann 2005: 11) how speciesism maintains harmful oppressive beliefs and practices. In practice, this may simply involve considering the terminology utilised in the study (as discussed below), drawing attention to the harms experienced by nonhuman animals and working alongside animal guardians to protect and empower their actions (discussed below, see also militant ethnography—Scheper-Hughes 1995). Moving forward, Braidotti (2017), like Cudworth and Hobden (2011) before him, makes the case for a posthuman ethics that not only encompasses multiple species, but the planet as a whole. As with any exploited and oppressed group, reflecting on the terminology adopted in research to ensure it does not reinforce the status quo is crucial. Many scholars have argued that the terminology commonly used when discussing nonhuman animals is oppressive (Beirne 2018; Sollund 2019). Terms such as pet, animal and wildlife are speciesist. They set humans apart and superior. Our default is to consider nonhuman animals in anthropocentric terms—as pet, food, pest or wildlife— depending on the role they fulfil for us. Beirne (2018), like Derridá, emphasises the power anthropocentric language has in shaping our thoughts and attitudes, and consequently our behaviour (in research and otherwise). He explains how language hides and standardises harms, preventing abuse being defined as a crime or harm, in order to build and maintain speciesism and prevent species justice. Take the term ‘animal’, which encompasses human and nonhuman animals. Broadly speaking its everyday application refers to animals other than humans. It is also a derogatory term, a claim for human superiority. However, even while acknowledging the problem of anthropocentric language, researchers often maintain its use, decrying alternatives as clumsy and confusing and thereby prohibitive. Some scholars refer to animals as ‘nonhuman’ or ‘other’ (Nibert 2002), while others also reconstruct harmful actions: ‘kidnapping’ rather than poaching (Sollund 2019) and ‘murder’ and ‘theriocide’ (discussed above) rather than culling, destroying or processing animals. It is essential for researcher to recognise the

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need to develop common understanding and nonspeciesist terminology when referring to all animals, including those other than human. The aforementioned support for recognising nonhuman animal sentience exemplifies that research which utilises the common social construction of nonhuman animals is refuting scientific knowledge and ignoring the interests of the victims. Research embedded in anthropocentric and speciesist constructs and language could, arguably, be considered a tool of speciesism rather than harm prevention. Ethical social science research prioritises participant harm prevention and researcher safety. This is critical in animal abuse research whereby governmental, social and criminal organisational responses to animal abuse may harm or endanger research participants. Lawson (2019), for example, reported fear among some respondents, due to the close-knit circle of UK animal welfare and dog control policy, that their participation could negatively affect their job/career. More significant risks lie in the repression of nonhuman animal and environmental activists through legislation and violence, which has implications for both the participant and researcher. Animal advocacy or activism is viewed by some as provocative, extreme and terrorism (CordeiroRodrigues 2016; Monaghan 2013; Sorenson 2009) and is increasingly criminalised (ASPCA 2020; Yates 2011). For example, in 2004 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] made the nonhuman animal liberation movement their terrorism priority (Lewis 2004), bringing about the Animal Enterprise Protection Act11 and ‘Ag-Gag’ Bills. Ag-Gag laws, which have introduced harsher penalties for whistle-blowers revealing animal abuse in the farming industry, have spread to 20 US states over the past ten years (ASPCA 2020). Similar developments are evident in many other countries (e.g. The Australian Criminal Code Amendment [Agricultural Protection] Bill 2019). Researchers associated with animal or environmental guardians may be targeted by legislation or denied access to other agencies. Further still, animal abuse, such as wildlife trafficking, is increasingly linked to corruption, organised crime and serious organised crime groups (Arroyo-Quiroz and Wyatt 2019; Musing et al. 11 The Animal Enterprise Protection Act was expanded in 2006 into the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.

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2019; Van Uhm 2016a, b; Sollund and Maher 2015; South and Wyatt 2011), with the deaths of environmental guardians reportedly increasing (Butt et al. 2019; Cox 2018). It is thereby crucial for animal abuse researchers engaging with those on the front line—such as activists, campaigners and those involved in animal protection and welfare—to consider anonymity and safety measures when conducting their research.

Implications for a Less Harmful Society This final section considers some broad future directions for animal abuse studies. In a society that is argued by Goyes (2019) to be shifting towards posthuman and anti-anthropocentric times, critical researchers should be in the foreground, moving us from where we are now to where nonhumans animals need us to be. As awareness grows of the impact of animal abuse on nonhuman and human animals, society may be forced to embrace a nonspeciesist narrative and respond to the impact of their behaviours. Most importantly, while the growth in animal abuse research is worthy of applause and cause for hope, seismic gaps in our knowledge and understanding of animal abuse and the implications of these harms need urgent attention. Thereby, the first proposition, albeit predictable, is to build on the base of this accumulated knowledge with more and better research to allow broader and deeper consideration of the issues. Given the breadth of harms to nonhuman animals and the aforementioned ‘Link’ to human suffering (Maher et al. 2017), animal abuse studies provide a rich set of research opportunities for those interested in crime, harm, justice and equality. Further empirical research, using innovative research methodologies, is needed to: evidence and develop current arguments; test and develop theories to explain the multifaceted nature of the abuse; and change attitudes and responses to nonhuman animal victims. This would help reinforce nonspeciesist terminology and concepts and foster an anti-anthropocentric approach. Empirical research which engages with different cultures and locations (e.g. Global South and North) is also essential for ensuring animal abuse studies are meaningful and have impact (Goyes et al. 2019). There are numerous

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established concepts tried and tested in other areas of study, which can be embraced to develop robust multi- and interdisciplinary research—such as Kenehan’s (2019) analysis of animal experimentation from the point of view of business ethics, particularly through the lens of stakeholder theory. He argues that nonhuman animals, as research subjects (rather than objects), are stakeholders in businesses that practice animal experimentation, and this status demands the ‘moral manager’ consider their interests equally with the interests of other stakeholders to ensure fairness and compassion. While this approach is unlikely to justify ending experimentation, it does provide an alternative voice and momentum towards effective critical appraisal of the harms endured by nonhuman animals. The second proposal is to increase funding for future research. Animal abuse research is never a priority for social science grant agencies.12 Government funding for animal-related research is typically anthropocentric (e.g. the economic loss and environmental impact of wildlife trafficking or vivisection for human health benefits). Nonhuman animalcentred research funding is scarce and frequently resourced by (often under-resourced) animal NGOs. Most funding agencies do not view the prevention of harm to sentient nonhuman animals as a worthy end in itself. Further, they continue to ignore the wider benefits of and lessons from animal-centred research. Animal abuse draws stark attention to problems of harm, inequality and injustice, which impact society and are implicit in social institutions, such as the criminal justice system. Nonhuman animals are perfect examples of the voiceless and vulnerable in society, those who cannot protect themselves and who require others to advocate for them. Animal abuse is an important component in the cycle of human violence and harm (such as in the natural, family or corporate environment). The omission of nonhuman animals from social science studies not only undermines our understanding and responses to nonhuman victims, it also adversely affects human. Support is required from critical (and mainstream) criminologists involved in grant processes to communicate the importance of animal-centred abuse studies. Animal abuse researchers should also look beyond the usual funding bodies, for 12

For example, a search for ‘animal’ or ‘animal abuse/welfare’ on the UK’s largest funding organisation for research on economic and social issues (ESRC) website reveals funding for one software project which aids the identification of the illegal wildlife trade.

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example, by engaging in interdisciplinary and with innovative research methods. Finally, I suggest academics are suitably placed to encourage and support stakeholders, such as NGOs, nonhuman animal advocates and government bodies, to collect data in a more meaningful and effective manner and to find ways to share this data more broadly (transparency). Further, animal abuse researchers can lead and support multi-agency and multi-partners work, bringing together agencies, researchers and stakeholders from a variety of disciplines to investigate and respond to the complexities surrounding animal abuse. Such partnerships can provide evaluation, funding and support for research and inform the collection and dissemination of good research (e.g. data collection, pilot projects) and practice.

Conclusion This chapter contributes to the growing debates in criminology and society at large, on the definition and measurement of animal abuse, the methods used to investigate it, and the relationship between animal abuse and power, inequality and speciesism. The problem of defining and measuring animal abuse has rightly become increasingly pressing in animal abuse studies. Failure to recognise and count harms diminishes the voice of the majority of victimised nonhuman animals. Animal abuse researchers remain in the position of needing to legitimise their studies (to colleagues, academics and funding bodies) to a degree not required in other more established areas of criminological interest. This is not a unique problem in social harms research (many environmental studies in criminology face questions of legitimacy), despite, as Lynch (2019: 50) argues, ‘it can be easily shown that there are more green crimes and victimization than street crimes and victimization’. Animal abuse is a social harm, it should not therefore be the sole remit of life and natural scientists. Social scientists, particularly critical criminologists, must take up the call to ensure we have studied, understood and effectively responded to vulnerable and exploited nonhuman

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animals, not least to avoid becoming a tool of speciesism and oppression. While early research on animal abuse was largely anthropocentric in nature—focused on the ‘Link’—developments in critical animal studies, human–animal studies and animal abuse studies have helped expand this to the routine harms which exploit and kill nonhuman animals in their millions and to recognise these animals as victims. The ‘Link’ is important. Yet it is only one aspect of the abuse continuum, one far less significant than state institutions that tolerate, systematically perpetuate or fail to prevent animal abuses on a scale that results in widespread social injustice. And while there is seemingly an impenetrable ‘glass ceiling’ in society, preventing a nonhuman animal’s right to bodily ownership, personhood and justice, this does not need to be the case in academic studies. Although (green or critical) criminology has not yet shaken loose the shackles of speciesism, as we move towards post-human and anti-anthropocentric times, the foundations have been laid. There are considerable opportunities for researchers to develop studies, which challenge the epistemic and methodological foundations of hegemonic speciesism.

Further Reading • Beirne, P. (2018). Murdering Animals: Writings on Theriocide, Homicide and Nonspeciesist Criminology. Palgrave Studies in Green Criminology. London: Palgrave MacMillan. This book provides readers with a detailed analysis of historical and contemporary uses and abuses of nonhuman animals, blending issues such as animal rights, speciesism and the impact of speciesist language. It contributes to current discussions on legal personhood, asking if nonhuman animals killed by humans have a right to be considered the moral equivalent of humans murdered by other humans. • Goyes, D., Sollund, R., & South, N. (Eds.). (2019). Special Issue: Towards Global Green Criminological Dialogues: Voices from the Americas and Europe. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 8(3), 1–115.

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This special journal issue furthers the dialogue and collaboration between green criminological researchers from the Global North and South. The Arroyo-Quiroz and Wyatt article details the abuse of animals in the wildlife trade, while other contributions provide a broader perspective on the impact of environmental decline on both human and nonhuman animals and an academic review on three new green criminology publications. • Maher, J., Pierpoint, H. and Beirne, P. (Eds.). (2017). The Palgrave International Handbook of Animal Abuse Studies.London: Palgrave Macmillan. This handbook identifies and disentangles the complicated relationships that exist at important sites of animal abuse—those socially acceptable, unacceptable, legal and illegal. Each chapter provides a detailed account of one type of animal abuse—in domestic, wild, entertainment and scientific arenas, drawing upon contemporary research from around the world to explain what happens at these sites and how we explain and respond to it. • Sollund, R. (2019). The Crimes of Wildlife Trafficking: Issues of Justice, Legality and Morality. London: Routledge. Drawing on empirical research from Norway and Colombia, this book explores harms in the illegal and legal wildlife trade. It draws upon a critical green criminology perspective and eco-feminist theoretical framework to provide a broad perspective on concepts such as nonhuman animal harm and rights, species justice and speciesism.

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Munro, H. (2006). Animal Sexual Abuse: A Veterinary Taboo? The Veterinary Journal, 172, 195–197. Munro, H., & Thrusfield, M. (2001). “Battered Pets”: Features That Raise Suspicion of Nonaccidental Injury. Journal of Small Animal Practice, 42, 218–226. Musing, L., Harris, L., Williams, A., Parry-Jones, R., van Uhm, D., & Wyatt, T. (2019). Corruption and Wildlife Crime: A Focus on Caviar Trade (A TRAFFIC, WWF, U4 ACRC, Utrecht University, and Northumbria University report). Nibert, D. (2002). Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Nonhuman Rights Project. (2018). Litigation. Available at: www.nonhumanr ights.org/litigation/. Accessed 1 January 2020. Nurse, A. (n/d). Legal Personhood for Animals. Available at: https://www.mdx. ac.uk/about-us/what-we-do/faculty-of-professional-and-social-sciences/sch ool-of-law/features/dr-angus-nurse-legal-personhood-for-animals-is-stillsome-way-off. Accessed 1 January 2020. Nurse, A. (2012). Repainting the Thin Green Line: The Enforcement of UK Wildlife Law. Internet Journal of Criminology. Available at: https://958be75a-da42-4a45-aafa-549955018b18.filesusr.com/ugd/ b93dd4_4b720aabf88442f29fec2bec2ff6fee6.pdf. Accessed 1 January 2020. Nurse, A. (2015). An Introduction to Green Criminology and Environmental Justice. London: Sage. Pagani, C., Robustelli, F., & Ascione, F. (2010). Investigating Animal Abuse: Some Theoretical and Methodological Issues. Anthrozoos, 23(3), 259–276. Piper, H., Johnson, M., Myers, S., & Pritchard, J. (2003). Children and Young People Harming Animals: Intervention Through PSHE? Research Papers in Education, 18, 197–213. Pires, S., & Clarke, R. (2012). Are Parrots CRAVED? An Analysis of Parrot Poaching in Mexico. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 49, 122– 146. Regan, T. (2004). The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rowlands, M. (2012). Can Animals be Moral . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scheper-Hughes, N. (1995). The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Ethnography. Current Anthroplogy, 36 (3), 409–440. Shapiro, K., & DeMello, M. (2010). The State of Human-Animal Studies. Society & Animals, 18(3), 307–318. Singer, P. (1995). Animal Liberation (2nd ed.). London: Pimlico.

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Part III Social Harms Based Scholarship

9 The Harms of Industrial Food Production: How Modern Agriculture, Livestock Rearing and Food Processing Contribute to Disease, Environmental Degradation and Worker Exploitation Paul Leighton

Introduction and Background Context ‘You are what you eat’: The foods and beverages people consume are broken down and absorbed by the body, literally becoming part of the person by fueling their growth, for better and worse. But while we might be what we eat, we know little about the contents of our food or its journey to our plates (Pollan 2006). There is a widespread view of ‘food from nowhere,’ and people are eating meals with less idea than ever before about where the food in front of them was grown, the conditions under which it was cultivated, reared and processed, what chemicals it contains, who is making the decisions or how it was distributed, much less anything about the broader social and P. Leighton (B) Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Criminology, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_9

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environmental implications of the system through which they get their food. (Gray 2019: 14)

Because of this ‘food alienation,’ people are missing important information about who they are because their relationship to labor, animals and the environment is obscured. People’s disconnection from what they eat obscures environmental harms caused by deforestation, pesticides, and contributions to global warming/climate collapse; it allows for the exploitation of labor and animals. The assumption that food in stores is ‘safe’ leads to an uncritical acceptance of regulatory systems and the food industry. The public writes off ‘food crimes’ as meaning pineapple on pizza (Gray and Hinch 2019: xiii) and may only think about harm in relationship to food when something they eat is contaminated or adulterated with pathogens like Salmonella, Listeria and E. coli that come from feces and bacteria of other origins. Such contamination leads to ‘47.8 million episodes of illness, 127,839 hospitalizations, and 3,037 deaths’ annually resulting from contaminated food in the United States (Scallan et al. 2011). The World Health Organization’s annual global estimate, based on 31 foodborne hazards, is 418,608 deaths and 600 million foodborne illnesses that would leave people with 5.6 million Years Lived with Disability (WHO 2015: 73). While adulteration, contamination and food fraud—deliberate mislabeling (Johnson 2014)—are widespread problems, criminal law is invoked so infrequently that a narrow, legalistic, focus on food crime is not helpful in understanding the harms of modern food systems (Gray and Hinch 2019; Leon and Ken 2019). Prosecution is reserved for egregious bad actors and bioterrorists (Leighton 2015), even though regular and less dramatic corporate misbehavior is responsible for more deaths, disability and disease. While regulatory systems try to police food safety and labeling as a first line of defense against harms to consumers, some harms from food systems are allowable under regulations. For example, the food industry regularly and legally engages in extensive research to make food with unhealthy levels of fat, salt and/or sugar enticing for consumers; the industry then spends substantially to advertise it,

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even though its consumption leads to a number of debilitating and life-shortening chronic health conditions. Unfortunately, parts of these and many other harms from the industrial food system are hidden, sometimes deliberately. In this environment, knowledge can allow people to better align their diet with their values, take steps to improve their health, and highlight larger unjust and unsustainable arrangements. To explore some of these issues of harm, this chapter discusses the growing and processing of food consumed in developed nations/the Global North, while recognizing that a substantial part of that food (or its ingredients) originates elsewhere. Also, developed nations/the Global North set taste patterns that have global influence. While regulatory systems and standards differ across countries, all are similarly situated in having food systems ‘built upon a foundation of commodity crops like corn and soybeans’ (Pollan 2020). Thus, what is grown ‘is not food exactly, but rather feed for animals and the building blocks from which fast food, snacks, soda, and all the other wonders of food processing, such as high-fructose corn syrup, are manufactured’ (Pollan 2020). Further, nations in the Global North all confront ‘food companies [that] owe their primary allegiance to stockholders, and their principal goal must be profit, not public health’ (Nestle 2010: 60). All nations face ‘huge and powerful industries that use every means at their disposal to maximize income and reduce expenses’ (Nestle 2010: 1) in ways that not only harm consumers, but exploit labor and trade short-term profit for long-term environmental sustainability. While countries differ in the extent to which they have embraced neoliberalism, its basic premises are endorsed by politicians across continents, leading to market deregulation—especially with labor and environmental standards—privatization and deference to private interests, cuts to tax rates and welfare programs, and the mobility of capital (Harvey 2007; Leon and Ken 2019). The United States has arguably ventured further down the road of neoliberalism than other developed nations, so it illustrates many problems and should serve as a warning to other nations. To provide a systematic examination of some of the harms arising from industrial food production, the first section of this chapter explores issues associated with growing crops, including deforestation, loss of

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biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, degradation of water quality, pesticides and the exploitation of farm labor. The second section reviews the harms from—and to—livestock, including the conditions of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO)/factory farms, why they matter, and the harms to people because of antibiotic resistance and infectious diseases. The third section discusses the harms of processed food and animal slaughter, which include health risks of ultraprocessed foods and food additives, the suffering inflicted during animal slaughter/disassembly, and the hazards to workers in those plants. A final section explores the implications for a less harmful world, especially individual choice and agency in a situation where problems of health and ecological destruction are also structural.

Growing Plants: The Harms of Agriculture The food journey starts with land to grow crops and raise animals, and this often requires clearing forests or converting ecosystems into areas for agriculture. Three of the four main causes of deforestation are foodrelated: beef, soy, palm oil, and wood products (Union of Concerned Scientists 2016a). Deforestation leads to harmful environmental impacts. Trees capture carbon dioxide, reducing the total atmospheric level of this greenhouse gas, which is a crucial element of global warming/climate collapse. The destruction of forests means they can no longer sequester the greenhouse gas, and deforestation releases stored carbon as carbon dioxide. Tropical forests store larger amounts of carbon and are frequent targets for deforestation, with the forests and peatlands destroyed for palm oil plantations storing 18–28 times more carbon than other forests (Union of Concerned Scientists 2013: 2; Dauvergne 2018). When this process involves burning trees, air pollution is released that adversely affects human and animal health, including 100,000 annual deaths in Southeast Asia alone (Union of Concerned Scientists 2016b). Some ‘30–40% of the earth’s surface is now under some sort of agricultural system,’ much of it converted from ecologically diverse wildlands, thus representing an ‘increased homogenisation of natural landscapes’ (Sunderland 2011: 266). Whether the conversion to agriculture involves

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deforestation or not, it is a loss of biodiversity (Zabel et al. 2019)—and the loss of plant and animal habitat is a loss to the people who rely on it for food, recreation and/or spirituality. Further, ‘ecological processes such as the maintenance of watershed services, soil fertility, pollination, seed dispersal, nutrient cycling, natural pest and disease control, etc. all rely to a greater or lesser extent on biodiversity’ (Sunderland 2011: 267). The expansion of agriculture stresses already endangered species and brings others closer to extinction. For example, deforestation in Southeast Asia for palm oil plantations took place on the habitat for endangered animals like the Sumatran orangutan, elephant, tiger, the Bornean orangutan and pygmy elephant. Sadly, ‘many of these forest species are found nowhere else on Earth, and only about 15 percent of them can also survive in oil palm plantations’ (Union of Concerned Scientists 2013: 2). While people tend to be most concerned about charismatic endangered species—the cute, majestic and photogenic—declining biodiversity of all kinds is a threat to the human future: destroying any plant and animal species represents the removal of rivets holding together our Earthship or tearing pages out of an unread book (Rolston 1988: 127– 129). And apart from their value to humans, processes that end species are worse than the killing of individuals; they represent an irreversible ‘superkilling’ (Rolston 1988: 144), a ‘maelstrom of killing and insensitivity to forms of life and the sources producing them’ (Rolston 1988: 133). Also, the seizure of land for agriculture can harm local and indigenous populations (Dauvergne 2018), as does ‘water grabs’ that involve the seizure of water rights for large-scale agriculture (Mehta et al. 2012). Land is converted from being a source of sustenance for local populations into an enterprise for growing cash crops for export, which also potentially scars sacred land and eliminates culturally important plants and animals (McMichael 2012). Local and indigenous people may have to flee the area. Others end up as slave or exploited labor. Even where land is not seized, agricultural farm work tends to be low-paid, dangerous and exploitative. Agriculture is ‘one of the most hazardous industries worldwide,’ causing 170,000 deaths annually (Prado-Lu 2019: 93). In the United States, where most farm work is done by migrant (and sometimes undocumented) labor, workers have

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been threatened with death and physical harm if they tried to leave economically exploitative arrangements. Some have passports or visas held, while others are subject to debt bondage, warehousing, food, uniforms and supplies cost more than their wages (Barrick 2016). Workers live in ‘storage sheds, horse stables, barns and chicken coops,’ or other conditions with exposure to toxic substances, ‘subpar sewage systems, poor water quality, overcrowding and inadequate ventilation’ (Barrick 2016: 149). The intensity of modern industrial agriculture does not allow for crop rotation that keeps soil fertile. Locally-adapted genetic varieties of crops are replaced by ‘high-yielding, input-intensive varieties’ with nutrient and water requirements ‘higher than what is available under natural conditions’ (Lin et al. 2008: 848). Water and nutrients must be continually added, stressing dwindling freshwater supplies or necessitating the use of contaminated water. Mimicking a process that occurs during lightning strikes, fertilizer is manufactured by the petrochemical industry by combining ‘nitrogen and hydrogen gasses under immense heat and pressure,’ which ‘are supplied by prodigious amounts of electricity’ (Pollan 2006: 44). Most electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, so fertilizer production (and its transportation to farms) contributes to global warming/climate collapse. Further, the abundant nitrogen in fertilizer is released by microorganisms as nitrous oxide (N2 O), another greenhouse gas. Indeed, ‘as well as trapping heat, it depletes ozone in the stratosphere, contributing to the ozone hole. Once released into the atmosphere, N2 O remains active for more than 100 years’ (Canadell et al. 2019). The use of such fertilizer has increased more than ‘100-fold in the past 4 decades and by 50% in the past decade alone’ (Gilbert 2017: 593), with a substantial amount of nutrients getting washed into streams, rivers, lakes and ultimately oceans. In a process called eutrophication (Le Moal et al. 2019), the nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer fuels the growth of harmful algae blooms, which can result in toxic water unfit for human consumption. The growth of algae and other plants also causes oxygen depletion in the water, resulting in ‘the massive death of aquatic organisms’ (Le Moal et al. 2019: 3). Globally, only about one percent of water is available freshwater, and more than 40% of these water bodies

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experience eutrophication (Nazari-Sharabian et al. 2018: 3668), with agricultural fertilizers being responsible for the majority of it (Le Moal et al. 2019: 4). CAFOs/factory farms add to the problem because animal excrement washed into waterways and aquaculture (fish farming) also contributes (Gilbert 2017: 592–593). All of this fertilizer is required for high-yielding crops that are ‘loaded with sugars, oils and proteins and bloated in size compared with its wild ancestor’ (Jahren 2020: 33). The fertilizer also nourishes competing weeds, and the crops themselves will attract hungry bugs. So current agricultural practice relies heavily on pesticides: the United States uses 1.1 billion pounds a year (Landrigan et al. 2018: 4), and ‘more than five million tons of pesticides are applied to cropland each year the world over—that’s a little more than one pound for every person on earth’ (Jahren 2020: 33). Because many biological processes are similar across life forms, pesticides harm human health as well as weeds and animal ‘pests.’ The American Academy of Pediatrics (2013) notes that ‘many pesticide chemicals are classified by the US EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] as carcinogens’ and that exposure problems ‘include adverse birth outcomes including preterm birth, low birth weight, and congenital anomalies, pediatric cancers, neurobehavioral and cognitive deficits, and asthma.’ Pesticides can be especially harmful to farmworkers, who bear the brunt of toxic exposure when they apply pesticides, often without adequate training (Barrick 2016: 150). The families of farmworkers usually live in close proximity to the fields and often have high levels of exposure even if they do not work in the fields (Prado-Lu 2019). Unfortunately, pesticides carry on air and in water, so they are widely disbursed beyond farmworkers. Indeed, pesticides ‘are found in nearly every stream in the United States, over 90 percent of wells,’ and, as might be expected, ‘every human tested is found to have pesticides in his or her body fat’ (Bittman 2012). With certain classes of pesticide in ‘extensive use,’ a commission assembled by the medical journal the Lancet found ‘very little information is available on the possible human health effects’ in health registries even though ‘they are water-soluble and can persist for years in soils, dust, wetlands, and groundwater and are detected in commonly consumed foods’ (Landrigan et al. 2018: 20).

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Raising Animals: The Harms from—and to—Livestock Raising animals for meat, milk and eggs implicates all of the harms just described because crops from industrial agriculture are used to feed animals in the vast majority of global livestock production. Actually, the use of crops to feed animals for meat is ‘notoriously inefficient’ (Sunderland 2011: 269) and multiplies the harms of agriculture because ‘for every 1 kg of high-quality animal protein produced, livestock are fed about 6 kg of plant protein’ (Pimental and Pimental 2003). The animals not only eat food that could go to the malnourished and food insecure people in the world, but such animals occupy ‘30% of the world’s ice-free surface’ (Herrero et al. 2013: 20888). This land has been—and continues to be—claimed by deforestation and other means that involve the loss of biodiversity. Depending on how land use change is accounted for, between 14 and 22% of all anthropogenic (human caused) greenhouse gas emissions are related to livestock agriculture (Moumen et al. 2016). A significant amount of the emissions, however, are directly attributable to the animals themselves because their digestion involves fermentation, which releases the potent greenhouse gas methane; manure is also a source of multiple greenhouse gasses. In addition, the current food systems relying on CAFOs/factory farms cause a great deal of animal suffering. The usual framework for raising this concern—like Peter Singer’s (1975) classic Animal Liberation—is a moral system known as utilitarianism, frequently described as ‘the greatest good for the greatest number.’ It aims to identify everyone affected by an action, consider how much happiness/good or the opposite the action would bring to each, then total up the result for different courses of action. The choice with the greatest amount of ‘good’ or ‘utility’ is considered to be the morally best course of action. While this moral calculus normally only includes humans, one of the moral philosophers who articulated utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, commented about animals: ‘The question is not, Can they reason? Nor Can they talk? But, Can they suffer? ’ (in Singer 1975: 8, emphasis original). Singer (1975) argues that just as a racist violates equal consideration of interests by giving excessive weight to the interests of their race, and

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a sexist gives undue weight to the interests of their sex, a speciesist gives undue weight to human interests and fails to give adequate consideration to the interests (suffering) of other species. He recognizes that there are differences between humans and other animals in cognition, self-consciousness and other attributes, and these qualities can either heighten or mitigate suffering depending on the circumstances (1975: 16). The morally relevant qualities exist in ‘a continuum’ (1975: 252) such that some animals have the capacities of humans with ‘severe and irreparable brain damage’ (1975: 254) or those with such a low IQ they ‘would also have no idea of what was going to happen to them’ (1975: 16). Singer’s point is that the difference in species cannot justify making animals suffer in CAFOs/factory farms and experience mass slaughter for minor human satisfactions like the difference between eating a vegetarian diet instead of one that includes meat.1 As also mentioned in Chapter 13 of this Handbook (Stephens Griffin and Griffin in ‘Beyond Meat?), this infliction of suffering is massive: People slaughter 80 billion animals globally for food each year, and that number is both increasing rapidly and does not include animals caged for milk and eggs (Ritchie and Roser 2019). The majority of these animals are raised in CAFOs/factory farms (Wrock 2016; Lavin 2009), which are crowded warehouse-like structures whose environment is tightly controlled so as to maximize the profitability of turning animal feed into animal products for human consumption (‘feed conversion ratio’). In contrast to the images of farms where animals graze outside, animals in CAFOs/factory farms live inside, standing on cement or a wire cage bottom, often without enough room to turn around or lie down (Wrock 2016). Animals may have their tails or horns amputated, be castrated, and ‘egg-laying hens have their beaks seared with a hot metal blade to prevent hen-pecking which results when the animals are 1 While Singer’s argument is trying to increase equality across sentient beings, Pellow (2013: 336) offers a poignant reminder that ‘certain people have long experienced “equality” with animals other than humans in a violently imposed fashion (e.g., slavery and mass incarceration).’ Indeed, ‘people of colour have, ironically, been struggling to maintain the boundaries between humans and animals other than humans because our dignity and survival have depended on it (despite the inherent speciesism of that stance), while privileged and largely unaware AR [animal rights] activists wish to dismantle these borders without careful attention to the historical and contemporary contexts in which they have evolved.’

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confined in crammed living conditions’ (Fiber-Ostrow and Lovell 2016). Many of these procedures are painful and done without the benefit of painkillers, which would increase costs. The average cow today produces four times more milk per year than in the 1950s. When she gives birth, her calf is sold for veal and soon she is artificially inseminated again, resulting in considerable stress and illness from years of ongoing pregnancy (Fiber-Ostrow and Lovell 2016). Although wild hens lay 20 eggs a year, CAFO/factory farm hens lay 250, which can likewise cause stress and illness (Fiber-Ostrow and Lovell 2016). While public outcry may follow the release of pictures or video of CAFOs/factory farms, the industry continues its practices and lobbies for ‘animal enterprise interference’ statutes that criminalize photography and recordings, as well as failing to disclose ties to animal advocacy organizations on job applications (Fiber-Ostrow and Lovell 2016). Because these laws aim to prevent undercover investigations and the exposure of systemic problems, they are often referred to as ‘Ag-Gag’ laws—one of ‘myriad state laws designed to protect capital over the interests of people or animals’ (Fiber-Ostrow and Lovell 2016; see also Wrock 2016). The Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 exposed further problems when many US slaughterhouse/meat processing facilities were closed. The animals destined for them were simply killed and disposed of without becoming part of the food supply even though there were simultaneously high levels of food insecurity. With pigs, for example, ‘you can’t afford to keep feeding them; even if you could, the production lines are designed to accommodate pigs up to a certain size and weight, and no larger’ (Pollan 2020). Likewise, with modern ‘hybrid industrial chickens, which, if allowed to live beyond their allotted six or seven weeks, are susceptible to broken bones and heart problems and quickly become too large to hang on the disassembly line’ (Pollan 2020). CAFOs/factory farms have conditions that further endanger both animals and humans. Diseases are more likely because animals are concentrated, indoors with limited air circulation, sedentary because of small cages, subjected to stress that suppresses their immune system, and with vast amounts of manure and excrement. While antibiotics quell outbreaks of disease in animals, they are also used non-therapeutically to promote the growth of animals (Gilchrist et al. 2007; Goldman 2010).

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About ‘63 million kg of veterinary antibiotics are consumed annually in the world and as much as 30 to 90% of them are excreted in animal waste’ (Zheng et al. 2020: 413), so tens of millions of kilos of antibiotics are annually released onto farmland and into waterways through animal manure. The antibiotics reduce microbial diversity, and the elimination of beneficial microbes degrades ecosystems. Further, antibiotics from manure can accumulate in crops subsequently grown on it in ways that pose ‘food safety and human health concerns’ (Zheng et al. 2020: 421). The antibiotics used on livestock also increase antibiotic resistance, with effects on animals, food safety and directly on human health. Antibiotic resistance is not a property of animals or humans, but a trait of the microbes (bacteria and fungi), some of which are pathogens that cause infections or diseases in animals and/or humans. When those health problems cannot be treated with antibiotics, animals and/or humans can get sick more frequently, be more debilitated because of the sickness, or die (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2019a). Antibiotic use in human medicine also contributes to antibiotic resistance, but more than 80% of all antibiotic use in the United States is by animals, and it is the majority of use globally, although the European Union banned non-therapeutic uses in 2006 (Gilchrist et al. 2007; Zheng et al. 2020: 411). The prolonged low-dose antibiotic usage in livestock is most likely to favor the selection and establishment of antibiotic resistance genes (Goldman 2010). Also, CAFOs/factory farms are a risk factor because ‘animals harbor multiple microbial species that are exposed to multiple antibiotics over the course of their lives,’ maximizing the likelihood of resistance (Gilchrist et al. 2007). Once established, the antibiotic resistant microbes travel with animals to other locations, on food to humans, through the manure, and become airborne. Health authorities have raised concerns about this issue since the 1970s, but the increased consumption of meat undermines existing efforts to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria. CAFOs/factory farms also have direct impacts on human health, as documented by ‘more than 70 papers published on the adverse health effects of the confinement environment on swine producers by authors

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in the United States, Canada, most European countries, and Australia’ (Donham et al. 2007). Likewise, ‘neighbors of CAFOs do experience health problems at a significantly higher rate than the control populations’ (Hollenbeck 2016: 45). One likely cause is that animal manure contains up to 150 known pathogens (Hollenbeck 2016: 44), and CAFOs/factory farms collect it in vast ponds where it can affect human populations by leaking into water supplies and becoming airborne when sprayed on fields (James 2019: 70). CAFOs/factory farms play a role in the spread of infectious diseases to human populations, including new zoonotic diseases—infectious diseases with pandemic potential that jump from animals to humans (Hollenbeck 2016). While not all zoonotic diseases are linked to CAFOs/factory farms, six in ten human infectious diseases are zoonotic, including SARS and MERS (CDC 2019b). The increasing number and size of CAFOs/factory farms is a concern, as is the close proximity of swine (pig) CAFOs/factory farms to avian (chicken, duck, and turkey) ones because of the increased pathways for a virus to jump species (Hollenbeck 2016).

Making Food: The Harms of Processed Food and Animal Slaughter In addition to the harms from raising plants and animals, other harms occur when they are processed to include high levels of fats, sugars, salts, additives and dyes. Surveys in Europe, the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Brazil find that Ultra-Processed Foods contribute to between 25 and 50% of total daily calorie intake (Thibault et al. 2018). A longitudinal study of almost 105,000 French people found that ‘a 10% increase in the proportion of ultra-processed foods in the diet was associated with significant increases of 12% in the risk of overall cancer and 11% in the risk of breast cancer’ (Thibault et al. 2018: 7). One of the main hypothesized links is through obesity, which is recognized as a ‘major risk factor’ for cancers in many parts of the body (Thibault et al. 2018). The French study also discussed the role of food additives, because studies ‘have suggested carcinogenic properties’ (Thibault et al. 2018:

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8). Indeed, another review of the 326 additives deemed safe in the EU found that 22% had adverse outcome pathways—levels at which the additive caused harm. These were related to ‘the liver, kidney and cardiovascular system, as well as developmental and reproductive processes and the endocrine system’ (Kramer et al. 2019: 2119). Food additives are also implicated in the development of intestinal and systemic immuneinflammatory disorders like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, and inflammatory bowel diseases (Laudisi et al. 2019). A safe Acceptable Daily Intake level (per kilogram of body weight) is calculated by regulators, but as additives appear in more foods, and people eat more processed foods, a person’s daily consumption of an additive can increase above this level. Further, ‘although maximum authorised levels normally protect the consumers against adverse effects of each individual substance in a given food product, the effect on health of the cumulative intake across all ingested foods and potential cocktail/interaction effects remain largely unknown’ (Thibault et al. 2018: 8). The situation is worse in the United States, despite the early, powerful warning of Beatrice Hunter’s (1982) The Mirage of Safety. It described how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), through lax enforcement and uncritical acceptance of the food industry’s research, allowed the American public to be guinea pigs for food additives. Little has changed in the intervening years. Currently in the United States, about 10,000 chemicals are added to food or used in food packaging—but the exact number is unknown because the FDA program for registering food additives and submitting safety information is voluntary. (And residues of some chemical processes are not considered ingredients.) According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), of 4,000 chemicals added directly to food, 64% had not been studied for toxicology (Trasande et al. 2018). In contrast with Europe, where additives approved before January 2009 were subjected to new risk assessments (Oplatowska-Stachowiak and Elliott 2017), the US FDA lacks the authority to reassess the safety of additives on the market. The AAP notes that this is ‘of great importance and concern for chemicals approved decades ago on the basis of limited and sometimes antiquated testing methods’—and because some ‘have been subsequently classified as reasonably anticipated to be human

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carcinogens’ (Trasande et al. 2018). A manufacturer that develops a food additive can have a panel of its own experts or paid consultants to deem it as ‘generally recognized as safe’ and put it in food without FDA notification or approval. Approximately 1,000 ingredients have been added to the US food supply without FDA review. The AAP notes that ‘the FDA is not able to ensure the safety of existing or new additives through this approval mechanism’ (Trasande et al. 2018; see also Quinn 2015). Finally, while the EU requires food or drink containing any of six dyes to carry a warning on the label that the product ‘may have effects on activity and attention in children,’ the US FDA does not require it (Oplatowska-Stachowiak and Elliott 2017: 525). Finally, slaughterhouses/meat processing plants present harms to animals, workers and communities. Many would consider the mass and systematic killing of animals to be a concern in itself (Singer 1975). Additional harms happen because killing and disassembly lines are set up for speed, so some animals are not stunned unconscious before being killed or put in boiling water to remove their hair and feathers (Wrock 2016; Fiber-Ostrow and Lovell 2016). For example, ‘nearly 1 million chickens and turkeys are unintentionally boiled alive each year in U.S. slaughterhouses’ (Cook 2017: 39). Even if the rules of humane slaughter are established to maximize profit and meat quality, they acknowledge the killing of a sentient animal, and workers continually participate in and observe efficient large-scale killing with ample opportunities for cruelty. Unsurprisingly, slaughterhouse workers/meatpackers have higher rates of serious and mild psychological distress than the general US prevalence (Leibler et al. 2017). While employment generally tends to reduce crime, the opening of slaughterhouses/meatpackers in anti-union US states is associated with an increase in total arrests—including violent crime, rape and sex crimes—in the community (Fitzgerald et al. 2009). Further, because the lines are set for speed: workers must stand shoulder to shoulder cutting and deboning animals so quickly that they can’t pause long enough to cover a cough, much less go to the bathroom, without carcasses passing them by. Some chicken plant workers, given no regular bathroom breaks, now wear diapers. A

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worker can ask for a break, but the plants are so loud he or she can’t be heard without speaking directly into the ear of a supervisor. (Pollan 2020)

The line speed causes several paths to worker harms in the United States, where slaughterhouse workers/meatpackers—disproportionately minorities and immigrants—have some of the highest rates of injury of all occupations (Leibler and Perry 2017). First, the fast line speed contributes to a high level of repetitive motion injuries in workers. In poultry processing, workers are kept in room chilled to 40 degrees and ‘process around 35 to 45 birds per minute, which amounts to approximately 20,000 repetitions of the same movement per day for each worker’ (Grueskin et al. 2020: 7). These musculoskeletal disorders—like carpal tunnel syndrome—can cause pain and be either temporarily or permanently disabling. Second, lacerations and amputations are common given the occupational requirements of long hours, sharp knives and a fast pace (Leibler and Perry 2017).

Implications for a Less Harmful Society The food industry in the Global North emphasizes processed food that is high-calorie but low in nutrition, leaving people undernourished but obese. Even when it does not promote unhealthy food—or unhealthy amounts of a food—the industry causes widespread environmental destruction and harm to workers. Reducing food alienation allows people to see where their food comes from and be engaged in making choices about what they consume to balance health, taste preference and ethics. Changing consumption patterns can bring about benefits to individual health, better conditions for labor and a more sustainable planet, even if someone does not become a strict vegetarian or vegan (vegetarian with no consumption of animal products like cheese or eggs).2 For example, food critic and cookbook author Mark Bittman (2013) developed an Eat Vegan Before 6 [pm] diet to balance health 2 Of course, junk food vegetarians and vegans who consume large amounts of processed food are unlikely to see health benefits.

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concerns with personal preferences and his profession. This type of action does mean less harm for him and some animals, although the harms to labor and the environment remain. Further, people can take steps to reduce their consumption of ultraprocessed foods, but it is a mistake to see obesity as merely a matter of personal choice and a lack of willpower. Responsibility for choices is maximized when a person makes voluntary and informed decisions, and is undermined by ‘consumers’ lack of awareness and alternatives as well as the possibility of addictive (or addiction-like) tendencies toward unhealthy food ingredients such as salt, sugar and fat’ (Schrempf-Srirling and Phillips 2019: 112, emphasis original). Responsibility is thus shared with industry and government regulators, and ‘consumers can only take responsibility after other actors fulfill their obligations to support choice and agency’ (Schrempf-Srirling and Phillips 2019: 121). As noted in the introduction, the food industry’s primary obligation is to return a profit to shareholders, a context that undermines support for choice and agency because concern for consumers or the public health is secondary. Indeed, Leon and Ken (2019: 26) discuss ‘research demonstrating how corporations benefit from the exploitation of people’s biological, psychological, and socio-economic vulnerabilities in service to profit.’ Corporations make misleading claims on packaging and advertisements, and they manipulate science. Rather than address the unhealthiness of the food they produce, ‘corporations support a more active lifestyle as a substitute, rather than a complement, for healthier food choices’ (Schrempf-Srirling and Phillips 2019: 116; see also Leon and Ken 2019: 35). Sugar, salt, fat and caffeine are added to ‘processed food because it makes consumers want more’ by playing on the addictive and addiction-like tendencies of human physiology (Schrempf-Srirling and Phillips 2019: 117). Extensive corporate resources go into finding the levels of sweetness that will bring about the most consumption and engineering food to have ‘vanishing caloric density’—a situation where ‘food melts so quickly in the mouth that the brain does not notice any calories, leading consumers to eat more’ (Schrempf-Srirling and Phillips 2019: 118).

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All too often, corporations will claim that their activities do not violate law or regulations—a statement that is meant to shut down discussion, but instead should start a critical examination of the extent to which political processes and regulatory agencies are independent of large corporate food interests when those interests conflict with the public good. Especially in the United States, government actions do less to strengthen consumer agency and choice than strengthen and legitimize industries that are the problem. What Nestle (2010: 62) notes from her experience with meat and poultry producers applies to the food industry more generally—that they ‘generously support both political parties, form close personal relationships with members of Congress and officials of regulatory agencies, and often use the so-called revolving door to exchange their executives’ positions for those in government and vice versa.’ This situation is not an aberration, but the expected and desired state of affairs for powerful economic interests under neoliberalism, where the main point of government is to create a ‘business friendly’ environment that partners with offending industries for symbolic gains rather than substantive protections for the public. Further, a key aspect of the state-corporate relationship is ‘a massive degree of consolidation among a handful of mega-companies across the food and non-food chain, which is allowed and fostered by the state’ (Leon and Ken 2019: 37). Consolidation strengthens corporate power in relation to the state and makes it harder to regulate them in the public interest. Individual choices—people ‘voting with their dollars’—can have some impact on labor exploitation and environmental destruction, but there are notable limitations. Organic produce is more expensive, and some people live in food deserts where little fresh produce—let alone organic produce—is available. Food that is certified as sustainable or fair trade can also come with higher price. Some certifications are examples of ‘greenwashing,’ which is a public relations effort to spread disinformation to make companies, products and practices seem more environmentally responsible than they really are (Vos 2009). Sustainable palm oil certification, for example, is an industry-led effort that seems to act as a ‘firewall’ to shield the food industry from criticism while ‘deflecting, hiding, and causing new problems within illegal political economies and across the complex global palm oil landscape, while doing comparatively

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little to enhance environmental management or community well-being’ (Dauvergne 2018: 36). Further, some causes of environmental degradation and destruction are deeply rooted in economic structures that do not change because of individual choices and can even co-opt social movements. Financialization, for example, refers to the widespread practices whereby wealth generates greater returns from investments and financial speculation than labor. It is coupled with neoliberal deregulation to allow pools of capital greater opportunities for investment returns, whatever the collateral damage to the public welfare (Harvey 2007). Investors therefore engage in land grabs; evict ‘unproductive’ indigenous populations ‘from ancestral lands to install “agriculture without farmers”’ (McMichael 2012); maximize production at the expense of sustainability; rework animals into ‘food machines’ (Lavin 2009); allow commodities futures markets to become places for trading profits at the expense of food consumers; and ‘develop’ the Global South with an ‘extractive form of agriculture that caters to (inefficient, climate-threatening) overconsumption by a global minority’—a perspective that equates ‘wealth with money, rather than intact habitat and common lands and the security of landholding’ (McMichael 2012: 694). The consolidation of industry is part of this process, which is justified because of economies of scale and efficiencies. But the well-being of rural areas is not simply tied to the volume of livestock raised or crops grown; having more farms and farmers leads to greater economic well-being as well as ‘richer civic and social fabric’ (Donham 2007). The consolidation of animal feeding leads to the problems with CAFOs/factory farms already discussed. The consolidation of agriculture leads to intensified production, where increased yields come at the expense of genetic variety and adaptability. Crops are less resilient and more fragile because they require extensive inputs of fertilizer, water and pesticides—and ‘under potential regimes of climate change, these intensified systems may experience lower productivity, higher vulnerability, and reduced sustainability’ (Lin et al. 2008: 849). In addition, the consolidation of slaughterhouses/meat-packers in the United States has generally occurred in anti-union states (Grueskin et al. 2020). The consolidation increases the economic and political power of

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industry, while state laws disempower workers, creating more exploitative and hazardous work. The consolidation also ‘has given us a supply chain so brittle that the closure of a single plant can cause havoc,’ such as when the COVID-19 pandemic closed plants and caused havoc for both consumers and the CAFOs/Factory farms (Pollan 2020). Having a number of smaller regional slaughterhouses/meatpackers would mean ‘meat would probably be more expensive, but the redundancy would render the system more resilient, making breakdowns in the national supply chain unlikely’ (Pollan 2020). Neoliberalism has also served to stagnate wages for many who are middle class and below, a category that includes workers throughout the food industry. As Nestle (2010: 30–31) explains, this dynamic has implications beyond economic justice: much of the actual work in the food industry—in agriculture, slaughterhouses, processing plants, and places where food is served—is carried out by immigrants, teenagers, and other groups paid the minimum wage. People can only produce safe food if they know how to do so, if they follow the rules, and if they are themselves in good health. Thus, the production of safe food also depends on the adequacy of fundamental social support systems such as public education and health care.

Especially in the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed existing problems with workers who go to work sick because they lack health care, would be fired by their employer for missing a shift and have such a precarious financial existence that they cannot take days off to get tested or recover from sickness (Pollan 2020).

Conclusion At the dawn of agriculture some 12,000 years ago, humans consumed about 7,000 plant and several thousand animal species. Population growth and industrial agriculture, in mutually reinforcing feedback loops, have changed that: ‘12 plant crops and 14 animal species today provide 98% of world’s food needs’ (Sunderland 2011: 267). During

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that time, too, ‘human-food distance’ became ‘the key organizing principle of modern life’ (Gray 2019: 14). Children—and many adults—can better identify corporate food brands than what food ingredients look like on the plants that grow them. All through the developed world, ‘the groceries we buy are mostly produced in distant places, by people we don’t know, using processes that we know little about and have little or no control over’ (in Gray 2019: 15). Peoples’ distance from the raising and processing of food allows for ongoing harms to the environment, animals, human health and labor. And sociology, criminology, anthropology, history, biology, dietetics, nutrition, public health, ethics and ecology by themselves have perspectives that are too limited to close the human-food distance. Put another way, ‘no discipline can accommodate the meal as a whole’ (in Gray 2019: 13) and no discipline can capture the harm done by the industrial food system we all use by necessity. This chapter has focused attention on some of those harms, with an emphasis on those arising from the regular production of food, rather than outbreaks of foodborne illnesses or criminal offenses. Those examples of breakdowns in the system can yield important lessons, especially when ‘reforms’ are examined with a critical eye (Leighton 2015). Likewise, the emphasis has not been on ‘cheap capitalism,’ because it is not just low-cost producers that exhibit degraded business morality, lowwaged labor, profit-maximization, and the undermining of consumer interests (Asomah and Cheng 2019). In spite of the environmental degradation, the extensive exploitation of labor and infliction of suffering on animals, about one-quarter of the world’s population—some two billion people—experience severe or moderate food insecurity according to the U.N. (Food and Agriculture Administration et al. 2019). This includes eight percent of the population in North America and Europe. Those levels of food insecurity mean that because of inadequate financial resources, people are skipping meals or doing without food, which leads to decreased energy, poor concentration and worse health. Food insecurity exists alongside increases in obesity, and a growing number of food insecure children experience obesity because of diets high in Ultra-Processed food (Food and Agriculture Administration et al. 2019).

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The existence of food insecurity and malnutrition is interpreted as a crisis that calls for more intense industrial agriculture: more environmentally sensitive land converted into food production, more fertilizer and pesticides, more and larger CAFOs/factory farms with better ‘feed conversion ratios,’ more consolidation for efficiency, and more ‘productive’ (meaning exploitative) labor conditions to keep prices low. But industrial agriculture already produces vast quantities of food that are inefficiently diverted into animal feed for meat. Further, ‘globally, it has been estimated that one-third of the edible parts of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted’ (Thyberg and Tonjes 2016). Jahren (2020: 77) notes that for better and worse, ‘the magnitude of our global waste is in many ways equal to our need’ and asks, ‘Is this how we want to live?’ (Jahren 2020: 78). That question reverberates with the food we eat as well, suggesting that ‘you are what you eat’ should be replaced with, ‘you are what you eat and waste.’ And given the role that hunger and food insecurity play in driving the development of industrial agriculture, there is also a need to rethink that fundamental concept: ‘a household cannot be considered food secure if it has current access to sufficient food to meet immediate nutritional requirements while depleting the natural capital that would have provided future resources’ (Sunderland 2011: 267).

Further Reading • Gray, A., & Hinch, R. (2019). A Handbook of Food Crime: Immoral and Illegal Practices in the Food Industry and What to Do About Them. Bristol: Policy Press. In spite of having ‘crime’ in the title, this diverse edited collection goes beyond legalistic definitions to examine a range of harms. This book won the American Library Association’s award for Best Academic Book. • Jahren, H. (2020). The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where We Go from Here. New York: Vintage Books. Part Two of the book focuses on food, which, along with energy use (Part Three), are the pillars for understanding the impact of climate

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change (Part Four) and the ‘Story of Less’ (Appendix). The author blends stories, data and analysis into a fairly engaging text. • Pilcher, J. (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Food History. New York: Oxford University Press. Even before modern industrial agriculture and CAFOs/factory farms, food was related to power, inequality, capitalism and harm. While not all chapters explore critical aspects of harm, they do reveal important stories and dynamics behind what people eat today. • Pollan, M. (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin Random House. The title’s dilemma is that people can eat anything, with good and bad implications. Pollan explores where foods from industrial, industrial-organic, organic and hunter-gatherer food systems so people can understand the path between the ‘fertility of the earth and the energy of the sun’ (p. 8) and their plate.

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10 Work-Based Harm Anthony Lloyd

Introduction In 2013, a structural failure caused the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh to collapse, killing 1,134 people and injuring over 2,500 others (Large 2018). In 2019, the National Health Service (NHS) and NASUWT (The Teachers’ Union) in the UK both published research showing an increase in violence against NHS staff and school teachers (NHS Staff Survey 2019; Adams 2019). In the same year, former executives at France Télécom stood trial accused of instigating organised workplace harassment linked to a number of staff suicides (Chrisafis 2019). These reports have a single shared characteristic: they all concern workplaces. The workplace is a space of criminological interest, whether we observe structural violence (Tombs 2004) or physical and verbal violence A. Lloyd (B) Teesside University, Middlesbrough, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_10

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(Martin et al. 2012). However, the workplace is a site of zemiological interest too; the continuum of violence (Schindeler 2013) and the blurring between legality and illegality are evident across multiple sites of interest (Scott 2017) and raise important questions about work and the concept of social harm. This chapter summarises the key literature on work-based harm. It argues for a firm ontological footing for social harm in order to explain work-based harm. By using the above examples to critique and investigate the dominant zemiological frameworks, the chapter makes the case for a dynamic theory of harm that can account for problematic behaviour at work as well as structurally harmful conditions (Lloyd 2018a). Capitalism is a global system with a clear spatial component (Harvey 2005); production is increasingly expelled to the global South and East which has implications for labour markets and working conditions around the world. This chapter acknowledges those differences but concentrates on research situated within the neoliberal variant of capitalism in Western Europe and North America. The chapter will conclude with a comment on the need for a positive and collective vision of ‘the Good’ (Raymen 2019) if we wish to truly understand where and why harm occurs in the workplace and how harms may be prevented.

Work-Based Harm Research Criminology has long studied the workplace as a site of illicit activity (see, e.g., Ditton 1977; Hobbs 1989; Winlow 2001). Violence and theft are familiar tropes within criminological research and often take place in settings of employment, from violence against police officers (Waddington et al. 2005) or teachers (Martin et al. 2012) to theft from employers (Ditton 1977) or corporate fraud (Campana 2016; Levi 2016). The link between work and crime extends to ‘deviant’ forms of labour including sex work (Pickering and Ham 2014), professional crime (Hobbs 1989) and selling counterfeit goods (Hall and Antonopoulos 2016; Large 2018), as well as employment as a pathway to desistance (King 2013). Leadership and management, human resources, psychology and legal studies have also focused on toxic or problematic workplaces,

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particularly in relation to workplace bullying and harassment (Estes and Wang 2008; Lim and Cortina 2005; Macdonald and Sirotich 2005). Work rarely features as the object of investigation in studies of social harm, but an emergent body of research does foreground work and labour (Davies 2019a, b; Lloyd 2018a, b, 2019; Scott 2017; Tombs 2004; Tombs and Whyte 2007). Much workplace harm literature focuses on regulatory strategy and intervention with corporate actors. Pearce and Tombs (1990, 1991) suggest that corporations require regulation and, when necessary, punishment as a deterrent effect. Left to their own devices, firms will blindly follow market logic often with little concern for harm or ethical conduct (Tombs and Whyte 2015). However, Hawkins (1990) suggests that the deterrent effect of stringent regulation and enforcement can be counterproductive. As the movement towards zemiology and social harm gathered pace, Tombs’ significant body of work considers corporate governance and regulation within UK labour markets as crucial components in the commission of health and safety crimes and the harmful effects of corporate governance on workers and others (see Snell and Tombs 2011; Tombs 2004, 2007, 2017; Tombs and Whyte 2007, 2010, 2013). Tombs and Whyte explore the structural erosion of workplace safety regulations and corporate responsibility for employee well-being and the consequential impact on workplace injury and death (Tombs and Whyte 2007). Given that, in 2018–2019, the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) reported 147 fatal work injuries, 555,000 workplace injuries and 1.4 million people suffering from work-related illness (HSE 2018), Tombs and colleagues connect lax and eroded regulation and safety enforcement with workplace harm. In framing workplace safety and deregulation in a political-economic context, this demonstrates that ‘regulatory degradation’ (Tombs and Whyte 2010) at the political level erodes safety enforcement. Furthermore, in his work on UK agri-business networks of agricultural and food supply, Davies (2019c) argues that the top-down enforcement of regulation at the heart of Tombs’ work is insufficient to address labour exploitation and harm. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or ‘self-regulation’ within firms is also required, although largely ineffective, alongside ‘bottom-up’ trade union pressure for further regulation. Harmful and illegal labour practice requires a

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multi-polar deterrent, particularly as, left to their own devices, corporate actors’ commitment remains to their balance sheet, not their employees (Lloyd 2018a). Beyond corporate and workplace regulation, a range of research considers workplace harm when corporate actors are left to follow their own drive for the bottom line. This often situates work-based harm within the broader context of legal and illegal practice across the formal and informal economy (Davies 2019a, b; Lloyd 2018a, b; Scott 2017). The starting point must be Scott’s (2017) Labour Exploitation and Work-Based Harm which posits harmful working conditions along a continuum of legality and control within UK labour markets. Scott argues that communities of low-wage migrants are more susceptible to patterns of exploitation, but labour exploitation and work-based harm are problematic across multiple labour markets. Davies’ (2019a, b) work on the UK agri-business identifies corporate harm embedded within business practices in a sector that also routinely employs migrant workers. Scott (2017: 5) suggests that the dynamic shift in power from labour to capital (see also Harvey 2005; Standing 2011) reveals three forms of control: direct control where power is centralised, visible and explicit; indirect control where power is fragmented, invisible and often implicit, and; exogenous where control of workers takes place beyond the workplace in the interests of capital. These forms of control generate negative and highly problematic outcomes ranging from excessive and oppressive forms of exploitation and harmful damage to physical or psychological well-being, socio-communal structures and the environment. Davies (2019a, b) also acknowledges a continuum of exploitation and harm that suggests a range of workplace mistreatment is unlikely to fall into the category of ‘severe exploitation’, i.e. trafficking or modern slavery. This argument is also forwarded in my work on the UK service economy (2018b). The focus on extreme forms of exploitation misses the routine and mundane failure to pay the National Minimum Wage, unpaid work trials, and absent employment protections that enable the extraction of free labour from workers. Systemically embedded labour practices, designed to extract additional value from workers, open up space for harm and exploitation ranging from the seemingly trivial (e.g.

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cash-in-hand payments below the minimum wage) to the serious and problematic (e.g. modern slavery). In approaching this issue from a political-economic perspective, the continuum of exploitation becomes clear and logical. In terms of the motivation to harm, Davies (2019a, b) follows Scott (2017) to indicate that much of this literature identifies harm as the result of the normal functioning of neoliberal labour markets and therefore a structural issue to be regulated or reformed. For example, Davies (2019a) suggests that harmful labour practices result from the structural problems associated with effective demand while fragmented responsibility throughout the supply chain absolves actors of blame or culpability; it is the cost of doing business. Crucially, harmful consequences are normalised, accepted and embedded throughout the sector; harms are not simply inflicted by individual operators or criminal networks, but instead embedded across the dynamics of otherwise legitimate agri-food supply business processes. In my work on the UK service economy (Lloyd 2018a, b, 2019) harmful labour practices were routine and embedded within this sector. However, while in broad agreement about the continuum of harm and exploitation across formal and informal labour markets, I offer an ultra-realist perspective (Hall and Winlow 2015; see also chapters 4, 6 and 11 in this volume) to account for harm inflicted upon workers through the normal functioning of neoliberal capitalism as well as the harms inflicted by workers upon each other. In identifying the probabilistic causal tendencies that may motivate some workers to do this, I try to combine the structural violence outlined by Scott, Davies and others with an account of subjective motivation. In the remainder of this chapter, the ongoing attempts to define social harm’s ontological underpinnings will be subject to critique in light of work-based harm studies.

Zemiology and Work-Based Harm Zemiological investigation into the workplace is a productive, albeit marginal, line of inquiry, yet the existing ontological foundations of

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social harm present challenges that impact upon the specific study of work-based harm. I now explore work-based harm via a number of examples that can be filtered through the dominant paradigms of harm theorisation: Hillyard and Tombs’s (2004, 2007) typology of harm; Yar’s (2012) search for recognition; Pemberton’s (2007, 2016) needs-based approach; and the ultra-realist perspective offered by Hall and Winlow (2015) and adapted to work-based harm in my own work (2018a, b, 2019). In examining work-based harm through various ontological lenses, the remainder of this chapter will demonstrate the strengths and limitations of workplace research and zemiology more broadly, as well as identifying avenues for future development.

Hillyard and Tombs’ Typology of Harm Hillyard and Tombs (2004) offer a typological outline to delineate the myriad ways in which the neoliberal paradigm harms individuals, communities and nations. Rather than an unintended consequence, harm is an integral and necessary component of neoliberal economics (Tombs and Hillyard 2004) divided into four ideal types, • • • •

Physical harms; Financial or economic harms; Emotional and psychological harms; Cultural safety harms.

Physical harms include premature death or accident while financial or economic harm incorporates poverty and cash loss such as fraud or ‘mis-selling’ mortgages. Emotional and psychological harm relates to precarity and insecurity whereas cultural safety harms include notions of individual autonomy, development and growth, and access to cultural resources generally perceived to be freely available to all. If we explore examples of ‘work-based harm’, it becomes clear that Hillyard and Tombs’ typology is broad. The Rana Plaza factory collapse clearly corresponds with physical harms inflicted on workers in the course of their employment. Violence against NHS staff and teachers

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falls into the same category, but could also correspond with emotional and psychological harm. If we consider workplace bullying, this typology struggles to account for the nature of subjectivity and motivation. First, Hillyard and Tombs (2004: 20) suggest that harm has a stronger foundation than crime because, rather than the field of inquiry preordained by the state (i.e. criminal law), harm can be defined by ‘people’s understandings, attitudes, perceptions and experiences’. Harm in this context implies that subjective impressions could ultimately result in any behaviour, action or event identified as harmful because the individual perceives it to be so. Second, while workplace bullying might sit within emotional and psychological harm in terms of the victim, if we begin to think about the perpetrator, this typology offers no aetiological understanding. We can categorise work-based examples in relation to those suffering the effects of harm, but it becomes less clear how this framework explains the causes of harmful behaviour within the workplace.

Harms of Recognition While Hillyard and Tombs (2004) rightly suggest that ‘harm’ has a stronger connection to reality than ‘crime’, their typology does not offer the ontological foundation that social harm requires. Majid Yar (2012) takes on this challenge and utilises Axel Honneth’s (1996) Hegelianinspired philosophical inquiry into our ‘struggle for recognition’. Yar suggests that social harm can be tethered to one’s quest for recognition and the failure to achieve this, what for Honneth is ‘disrespect’ or ‘misrecognition’, constitutes a harmful outcome for the subject. For both Yar and Honneth, recognition occurs on multiple levels: • Respect—the institutionalisation of respect through universal recognition of our basic legal rights and entitlements; • Esteem—the intra-group solidarity associated with mutual esteem and acknowledgement of valuable shared cultural characteristics and social identities; • Love—the level of intimate relations, our primary relationships that constitute strong emotional attachments.

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‘Recognition’ acts as a multi-axial analytical device. At the institutional level of respect and rights, one is seen as equivalent to others; at the level of esteem and solidarity, one is recognised as the holder of common traits, but at the level of love and intimate relations, the subject is recognised by one’s particularity; those unique virtues and characteristics that appeal to the intimate other or family member. If we measure a recognition-based conception against examples of work-based harm, it is clear that Yar’s interpretation has value. The Rana Plaza building collapse and the death of over 1,000 employees constitute institutional level misrecognition of human rights; the entitlement to a safe working environment suffered fundamental ‘disrespect’ by owners and authorities unwilling or unable to protect worker safety. The violence against teachers and nurses in the course of their occupation violates or ‘misrecognises’ those individuals as members of a common social group with a shared background or cultural solidarity. Esteem is lost when one member of a community inflicts harm and violence on another in the course of their employment. Those employees abused and bullied by coworkers also face a loss of esteem and suffer misrecognition by individuals clearly unwilling to ‘recognise’ them. However, if we contemplate workplace insecurity or precarity, the systematic erosion of legal employment rights responsible for the spread of workplace precarity and insecurity, characterised by deunionisation, flexibilisation, zero-hour contracts, on-demand work, and just-in-time management, potentially negates Honneth’s ‘respect’ at the level of universal or institutional rights. In neoliberal societies such as the UK and USA, employment rights and security have been stripped away with minimal protections enshrined in law; there are few legal rights to protect from misrecognition in the workplace. Of course, some rights exist and the misrecognition attached to non-payment of the minimum wage, off the books work, or unpaid work trials (Lloyd 2018b) does fit Yar’s framework. However, many of the standard employment practices characteristics of contemporary Western neoliberal labour markets (see Standing 2011; Lloyd 2018a) reflect the erosion of legal protection and the generalised infliction of instability on working populations—but do not reach the level of disrespect in Honneth’s terms as this does not involve the misrecognition of legal rights.

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Finally, a theory of recognition encounters turbulence when it travels through a political-economic analysis related to contemporary work and labour (Hall 2012a). Honneth’s theory of recognition is derived from Hegel’s ‘master-slave’ dialectic: the master requires the slave to generate wealth through productive labour, but also recognise the master as the Other. The master’s status rests in the hands of the slave recognising the master as master, therefore tethering one to the other. In today’s Western political economy, wealth is frequently generated without the need for massed labour (Harvey 2005). The majority of productive labour is redundant under conditions where the capitalist class can generate wealth through financial instruments and other means (Hall 2012a). As Kotzé (2019) attests, Yar’s theory of recognition stumbles in labour markets and capitalist societies where the rich no longer require or solicit recognition from the labour force. Recognition, or misrecognition, as the basis for understanding how and why capitalism inflicts harms upon populations is undermined by the increasingly evident fact that the superrich and the rest of society live entirely separate lives; the rich no longer require the slave to recognise the master.

Flourishing and Harms of Human Need Simon Pemberton (2016) addresses harm through an explication of human flourishing and a needs-based approach. Impediments and obstacles to individual or collective human flourishing are a positive starting point as they provide a clear object of harm. Drawing on Doyal and Gough’s (1991) theory of human need, Pemberton (2016: 24) identifies ‘the relations, processes, flows, practices, discourse, actions and inactions that constitute the fabric of our societies which serve to compromise the fulfilment of human needs and in doing so result in identifiable harms’. In order to reach a place of self-actualisation, social participation and individual or collective flourishing, we must meet specific and identifiable needs, including food, shelter and autonomy. For Doyal and Gough (1991), freedom and survival represent the most basic of human needs. In Pemberton’s (2016) schema, neoliberalism represents a patently harmful form of political economy and ideology because it damages our

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ability to flourish and meet essential needs. In the UK, USA and parts of Western Europe, recent official figures, media reports and academic research indicate an increase in homelessness, poverty, and the need for food banks to alleviate food poverty. For a growing proportion of our population’s neoliberalism denies basic human needs and ultimately prevents flourishing and reaching our individual and collective potential. Pemberton also devises a three-fold typology, which allows us to identify core harms: • Physical and mental health; • Autonomy harms; • Relational harms. Physical and mental health harms relate to barriers that prevent the maintenance of sufficient health to lead an active and successful life. Autonomy harms consider attempts to achieve full self-actualisation and flourishing, through understanding and learning as well as opportunities to achieve self-actualisation and control over one’s circumstances. Finally, relational harms refer to enforced exclusion from social relationships and misrecognition. Self-actualisation and flourishing require other people, therefore social relations can produce barriers that damage the individual. Pemberton offers a clear and coherent ontological foundation for social harm that can be applied to numerous circumstances, including work-based harm. The Rana Plaza building collapse fits the definition of physical and mental health harm, both in terms of the loss of life and the injuries sustained by survivors. The barriers to an active and successful life are also compounded by autonomy harms; the workers do not control their circumstances or safety. Relational harm also occurs as self-actualisation is prevented by managers and owners excluding or misrecognising workers’ rights to a safe environment. However, how and why harm is inflicted on those workers is explained only by identifying neoliberalism as a harmful form of political economy. In fact, the factory owners are pursuing their own self-actualisation and autonomous flourishing by cutting corners to maximise profit; their freedom comes at the expense of workers. Rising levels of violence against NHS staff and teachers also

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sits comfortably within Pemberton’s harm framework, as there are clear physical and mental health harms, as well as relational harms; employees assaulted in the course of their work are excluded from social relationships or misrecognised by service users, pupils or parents. Finally, workplace bullying by co-workers corresponds with autonomy harms; harassed or abused employees are undermined in a way that prevents full self-actualisation or flourishing in their role while there is an obvious lack of personal control in being subject to such abuse. In the France Télécom case, mental health harms are clearly present as some employees were apparently driven to suicide following systemic harassment by management. However, pressure to achieve an arbitrary level of performance, which in turn assures success and profit, is itself a reflection of managers pursuing their own self-actualisation and autonomy; their freedom and success require the sacrifice of others.

Making Sense of Work-Based Harm While Pemberton, like Yar, offers a comprehensive ontological foundation for social harm, limitations appear when we filter the thesis through a work-based harm lens. Doyal and Gough (1991) reject drive as a motivational force in human subjectivity, instead of focusing on needs-based survival and freedom. Liberal subjectivity is fundamentally tethered to the belief in freedom and individual autonomy, at the expense of mutual or collective social relations (Raymen 2019). If harm reduction under neoliberalism is concerned with increasing freedom and autonomy for individuals to achieve flourishing and selfactualisation, there is no moral or value framework within capitalist ideology to underpin self-actualisation and prevent the subject from simply ensuring their own success and happiness (MacIntyre 2011; Lloyd 2018a). What stops me from inflicting harm on others, if I am free to do so? This results in autonomy harms and relational harms overlapping and clashing; if employees gain more control and opportunity to achieve self-actualisation and flourish at work, this can (and does) come at the expense of others who then suffer relational harms. It is imperative that the socio-economic and cultural context of neoliberal workplaces is

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considered here; in a culture of competitive individualism, productivity, targets and profitability, reducing barriers to self-actualisation encourages flourishing that will equate to the dominant cultural and economic values of that society. As Pemberton notes, neoliberalism is inherently harmful, so freedom in this context may be problematic. Pemberton’s typology and ontological foundation offer useful categories for identifying harm inflicted upon individuals and communities and explains the ways in which the individual is damaged by neoliberal society and toxic workplaces. However, like previous zemiological standpoints, it offers no substantive account of why individuals seek to inflict harm on others. It is a negative account of harmful consequences, but fails to address what Hall and Winlow (2015) call the ‘positive motivation to harm’. In this sense, its weakness can be identified in relation to work-based harm: How and why do some employees harm their coworkers? Why do some managers bully staff? What motivates someone to inflict violence in workplaces? It is not clear how Pemberton’s framework explains this. Furthermore, Pemberton’s schema identifies neoliberal capitalism as harmful and destructive but, in positing harm reduction as the solution, the analysis stops at the water’s edge. There is a degree of ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher 2009) here; capitalism dominates the horizon of possibility, therefore solutions aim to mitigate the worst excesses of the system, but stop short of advocating deep structural change. Harm reduction does not address the underlying logic and energy of a political-economic system and ideology that generates significant inequalities, acquires and directs libidinal energy into socially corrosive activities and is harmful at its core. In relation to work-based harm, human trafficking and modern slavery bear many of the same hallmarks as banal forms of legal work-based harm as they share the same core logic (Lloyd 2018a; Scott 2017). Examples of work-based harm usefully operationalise and critique the dominant ontologies of harm and demonstrate their strengths and limitations. Political economy is crucial to work-based harm perspectives. Tombs and Hillyard (2004: 31) argue for a political economy of harm because the traditional focus of criminology has been confined to the activities of, rather than the harmful experiences suffered by, the

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marginalised 30%. However, while a theory of harm must account for the harm inflicted upon marginalised communities, it must also explain harms inflicted by individuals. So far, the dominant perspectives account for one half of this dialectic. In utilising developments in ultra-realist criminology, harm frameworks can account for both negative and positive motivations to harm (Hall and Winlow 2015; Lloyd 2018a).

Understanding Work-Based Harm via the Ultra-Realist Approach Ultra-realism represents an attempt to reconnect criminology with its aetiological roots (Hall 2012a; Hall and Winlow 2015). It eschews criminological research that favours crime control strategies over causation and suggests that criminology has a place in explaining motivational factors behind crime and harm. Emerging from the traditions of critical criminology and critical realism, ultra-realism does not offer a theory of causation, but one where probabilistic causal tendencies may be identified that allow us to explore the connections between macro- and micro-levels (Hall and Winlow 2015). This challenge has been taken up by a number of criminologists, who utilise the various components of ultra-realist criminology to explore a range of contemporary issues, including violence (Ellis 2019), deviant leisure (Raymen and Smith 2019), debt (Horsley 2015), the crime decline thesis (Kotzé 2019), counterfeit goods (Large 2018), the rise of English nationalism (Winlow et al. 2017) and fraud (Tudor 2019). What connects these disparate research projects is an eagerness to consider both the structural factors that affect behaviour and decision-making and individual subjectivities and motivations. Harm, within an ultra-realist schema, consists of two key and interrelated components: the negative motivation to harm, the consequence of structural factors such as changes in public policy, adherence to neoliberal ideology and the normal functioning of consumer capitalism (Hall and Winlow 2015); and, the positive motivation to harm, the willingness to inflict harm on another in order to succeed within a late-capitalist ideology and cultural commitment to competitive individualism, status,

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display and success (Tudor 2019). Where ultra-realism deviates from the previous harm frameworks is a clear reversal of causal tendency; while Pemberton (2016) and Hillyard and Tombs (2004) posit harm as the widening of inequality under neoliberal capitalism, ultra-realism sees inequality as the consequence of an increased willingness to inflict harm on one another (Lloyd 2018a). Harm is, as Pemberton (2016) suggests, an endogenous feature of neoliberalism, but only in the sense that neoliberal ideology engenders a form of subjectivity imbued with an individualistic, competitive, winner-take-all value-system that allows for and expects society’s ‘winners’ to harm others to ensure success, the trappings of display and status, or the avoidance of symbolic annihilation and cultural irrelevance (Hall 2012a). Exploring work-based harm from an ultra-realist perspective begins with its convergence with existing harm frameworks; the negative motivation to harm. In low-paid service economy work (Lloyd 2018a, 2019), the negative motivation to harm is exemplified by the systemic violence of neoliberalism. The normal functioning of capitalism and the ideological dominance of neoliberalism impose a set of conditions upon organisational logic and workplace culture. The quest for efficiency, productivity and profitability in a competitive marketplace, the new managerialism of neoliberalism (see Lloyd 2018a), alters the focus of the workplace and creates conditions within which a series of absences occur. Critical realism identifies the probabilistic causal tendencies inherent within absence (Hall and Winlow 2015); for example, if a UK government withdrew free universal healthcare, its absence could have a probabilistic causal effect on a range of issues, including poverty, health inequalities, mortality rates, and so on. Of course, these issues would be mediated according to a range of social, cultural and economic factors but there would remain a probabilistic causal tendency that the absence had an effect. In the UK service economy, an absence of stability emerges through the increased flexibilisation of labour markets; conditions of employment are increasingly precarious and unstable, most often exemplified by zero-hour contracts, ‘gig economy’ work, low levels of remuneration and poor labour protections (Lloyd 2018a). A number of harmful consequences are attached to the absence of stability and these include

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respondents who struggle to plan ahead: next week’s shifts are not guaranteed, insecurity precludes entrance to the housing market, progression and promotion pathways do not exist. An absence of protection is also prevalent within the service economy; employment protections enshrined in law have replaced union representation, but have been systematically eroded over time and often leave workers facing uncertain futures without adequate support. This is most visible in examples of redundancy where a decade or more in service of one organisation ended almost overnight with limited redundancy pay based on contracted hours rather than hours worked. Absent workplace protections include physical injury and emotional or mental health problems; workers injured in the line of work lost their jobs through a ‘failure to perform one’s duties’ while the emotional strain of providing for families in high-pressure, lowpay environments where employers abdicated responsibility for employee well-being led to mental health problems and medical intervention (see Lloyd 2018a, b, 2019). This corresponds with the critique of neoliberalism posited by Pemberton (2016) and Hillyard and Tombs (2004); the normal functioning of capitalism generates a ‘systemic violence’ (Žižek 2008) that imposes a number of harms on people’s lives, particularly in their working environment. As employers push for competitive advantage through profitability, efficiency and the pursuit of targets, management practice and organisational culture adapt to meet these demands, but do so at a cost to the employee. However, this is only half of the story; the positive motivation to harm accounts for the willingness to inflict harm on others. We have established that neoliberal ideology is one of competition, profitability, status, display and success; it is important to note that as individual subjects we are not exempt from these drives (Hall 2012b).

Positive and Negative Motivations for Work-Based Harm To connect positive and negative motivation to harm, ultra-realism employs a number of theoretical constructs that emanate from a range of disciplines, including psychoanalysis, neuroscience and philosophy,

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in order to elucidate the complex relationship between subject and ideology. In a departure from traditional belief in Cartesian subjectivity, a rational, self-aware subject emerging at the point of conscious thought, ultra-realism employs the Lacanian-inspired (see below) transcendental materialist subject (Johnston 2008). Rather than a fixed individual existing within a flexible or malleable society, the transcendental materialist subject is malleable; we are hard-wired for dysfunction and have the capacity to reconstitute our materiality in order to fit the external environment in which we exist. Neurologically, our brain’s receptors can break down and reconfigure, changing our corporeal existence to adapt to our surroundings (Hall 2012b). In this sense, the society in which we live can shape our being. However, this is no one-way street; the subject has the capacity to act in the world and shape the external environment, which in turn feeds back onto our material being. In a contemporary context, an ideology of competition, status, profitability, display and success represents what Lacan calls a Symbolic Order; a set of signs, values and ideas that the subject unconsciously solicits in order to stave off a confrontation with the Real (Johnston 2008). The Real exists beyond symbolisation and represents trauma; the best example is to picture a newborn baby thrust into the world and unable to yet make sense of its surroundings. The subject must solicit that Symbolic Order to make sense of the world and in doing so actively solicits the dominant ideology; in this case, the competitive individualism and status-driven symbolism of neoliberal consumer capitalism (Hall and Winlow 2015). The relationship between subject and ideology is mediated through a range of factors such as family, upbringing, education, friendships, and the subject possesses agency to make choices. However, the field of vision is limited by the Symbolic Order. In linking this to work-based harm, ultra-realism affords us an explanation of harmful subjectivities; those individuals who identify closely with the dominant values of neoliberalism and seek to make the material, cultural and symbolic gains necessary to believe themselves successful, and to ward off the symbolic misery of cultural annihilation (Hall and Winlow 2015; Tudor 2019). In my workplace research, some individuals appeared to be emboldened by what Hall (2012a) terms ‘special liberty’; the libertine drive of

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exceptionalism that ‘frees’ the subject to act in any way necessary to get things done. If screwing over co-workers or bullying employees is the price to pay to either continue one’s instrumental journey or protect one’s position within the organisation, it was a price worth paying. Harm is not just done to us, it is also inflicted upon others by us. An ultra-realist interpretation of social harm demonstrates both the positive and negative motivation to harm and offers a more dynamic interpretation of social relations.

Implications for a Less Harmful Society The ultra-realist interpretation of work-based harm has implications for a less harmful society. First, the necessary explication of harmful workplaces and problematic subjectivities provides a clear picture of the scale of the problem. We cannot begin to reduce harm without all of the pieces of the puzzle. We have to investigate thoroughly in order to find what Hegel calls ‘concrete universals’; in this case, the abject concrete universal of work-based harm studies shows that exploitation exists across labour markets in many contexts. In identifying concrete universals, those things upon which we can all agree are harmful or problematic, for example zero-hour contracts or the absence of a truly living wage, we can begin to consider ways of reducing harm. Raymen (2019) takes a positive leap forward in asking zemiology to incorporate a theory of ‘the Good’. In relation to work-based harm, research has shown what is believed to be ‘bad’ about current employment conditions, but unless we collectively consider what ‘good’ employment conditions could and should be, we cannot realistically address work-based harm. In utilising an ethical framework based Alasdair MacIntyre (2011), Raymen posits ‘goods’ internal to social roles as the basis for a theory of the Good; there are internal ‘goods’ to work and labour, the things that generate meaning and value from one’s work, that derive social benefit too. We come to learn these things through routine and practice, constantly striving to improve. What it means to be a ‘good employer’, a ‘good worker’ or a ‘good co-worker’ can be the starting point for an ethical discussion that translates into practice; if we can define the

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concrete universals of the workplace and strive for a collective ethics of the ‘good’, we can begin to address work-based harm.

Conclusion Work-based harm is an under-researched area of criminology and zemiology. Few have taken on the challenge of identifying the ‘harms of work’ and those who have largely focused on neoliberalism and capitalism as the root of work-based harm. Tombs and Whyte demonstrate the impact of neoliberal regulation on safety at work with evidence to suggest the increase in accidents and deaths at work as a harmful consequence. Sam Scott posits a continuum of legal/illegal exploitation and harm, which stems from the same capitalist imperative for profit. The ‘banal’ harms of work and the problematic exploitation of trafficking and modern slavery emanate from the same place. In my work on the service economy, I acknowledge the harmful conditions of neoliberal labour markets and identify the individuals willing to inflict harm on others. This chapter has explored work-based harm from various ontological foundations. We require an ontological grounding that can adequately explain various forms of work-based harm. The work of Hillyard and Tombs, Yar and Pemberton provides foundations that could account for the harm done to employees in the course of their work, but does not address the harm willingly inflicted by employees and managers. The ultra-realist schema employed in my own research suggests that the positive motivation to harm is as powerful as the unintended consequences of actions and decision-making. Toxic workplaces exist precisely because of external conditions and factors imposed upon the organisation, but also because individuals within those organisations identify with those problematic drivers and imperatives as well as the wider neoliberal ideology that encourages us to compete against one another, at any cost, in order to secure our own material and symbolic position within a cultural where value emanates from success. The agenda for future research on work-based harm must be able to account for this.

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Further Reading • Scott, S. (2017). Labour Exploitation and Work-Based Harm. Bristol: Policy Press. Showing ‘legal’ harms and ‘illegal’ exploitation often stem from the same embedded business practice, Scott’s book has implications for work-based research and zemiology’s relationship to criminology. • Lloyd, A. (2018). The Harms of Work: An Ultra-Realist Account of the Service Economy. Bristol: Bristol University Press. This book demonstrates the relationship between the negative motivation to harm most often identified by other work-based harm scholars (e.g. the systemic violence of capitalism) and the positive motivation to harm, most often ignored in work-based harm research (e.g. the willingness to inflict harm on others). • Raymen, T. (2019). The Enigma of Social Harm and the Barrier of Liberalism: Why Zemiology Needs a Theory of the Good. Justice, Power and Resistance, 3(1), 134–163. Although Raymen’s paper is not a study of work-based harm, the implications of a theory of ‘the Good’ forces work-based harm researchers to ask what ‘good’ workplaces should look like.

References Adams, R. (2019, April 20). One in Four Teachers ‘Experience Violence from Pupils Every Week’. The Guardian, Saturday. https://www.theguardian.com/ education/2019/apr/20/one-in-four-teachers-experience-violence-from-pup ils-every-week. Campana, P. (2016). When Rationality Fails: Making Sense of the ‘Slippery Slope’ to Corporate Fraud. Theoretical Criminology, 20 (3), 322–339. Chrisafis, A. (2019, July 8). Workplace Bullying Trial That Shocked France Draws to a Close. The Guardian, Monday. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2019/jul/08/france-telecom-workplace-bullying-trial-draws-to-close.

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Davies, J. (2019a). Corporate Harm and Embedded Labour Exploitation in Agri-Food Supply Networks. European Journal of Criminology. https://jou rnals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1477370819874416. Davies, J. (2019b). From Severe to Routine Labour Exploitation: The Case of Migrant Workers in the UK Food Industry. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 19 (3), 294–310. Davies, J. (2019c). Criminological Reflections on the Regulation and Governance of Labour Exploitation. Trends in Organized Crime. https://link.spr inger.com/article/10.1007/s12117-019-09370-x. Ditton, J. (1977). Part-time Crime: An Ethnography of Fiddling and Pilferage. London: Macmillan. Doyal, L., & Gough, I. (1991). A Theory of Human Need . London: Macmillan. Ellis, A. (2019). A De-civilizing Reversal or System Normal? Rising Lethal Violence in Post-recession Austerity United Kingdom. The British Journal of Criminology, 59 (4), 862–878. Estes, B., & Wang, J. (2008). Workplace Incivility: Impacts on Individual and Organisational Performance. Human Resource Development Review, 7 (2), 218–240. Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist Realism. Winchester: Zero. Hall, A., & Antonopoulos, G. A. (2016). Fake Meds Online: The Internet and the Transnational Market in Illicit Pharmaceuticals. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot. Hall, S., & Winlow, S. (2015). Revitalizing Criminological Theory: Towards a New Ultra-Realism. London: Routledge. Hall, S. (2012a). Theorizing Crime and Deviance. London: Sage. Hall, S. (2012b). The Solicitation of the Trap: On Transcendence and Transcendental Materialism in Advanced Consumer-Capitalism. Human Studies, 35 (3), 365–381. Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: University Press. Hawkins, K. (1990). Compliance Strategy, Prosecution Policy, and Aunt Sally: A Comment on Pearce and Tombs. The British Journal of Criminology, 30 (4), 444–466. Health and Safety Executive. (2018). Health and Safety Statistics: Key Figures for Great Britain, 2017-18. http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/index.htm. Hillyard, P., & Tombs, S. (2004). Beyond Criminology? In P. Hillyard, C. Pantazis, S. Tombs, & D. Gordon (Eds.), Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously. London: Pluto Press. Hillyard, P., & Tombs, S. (2007). From ‘Crime’ to Social Harm? Crime Law and Social Change, 48, 9–25.

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Hobbs, D. (1989). Doing the Business: Entrepreneurship, The Working Class, and Detectives in the East End of London. Oxford: University Press. Honneth, A. (1996). The Struggle for Recognition. Cambridge: Polity Press. Horsley, M. (2015). The Dark Side of Prosperity. Farnham: Ashgate. Johnston, A. (2008). Žižek’s Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. King, S. (2013). Early Desistance Narratives: A Qualitative Analysis of Probationers’ Transitions Towards Desistance. Punishment & Society, 15 (2), 147–165. Kotzé, J. (2019). The Myth of the ‘Crime Decline’: Exploring Change and Continuity in Crime and Harm. London: Routledge. Large, J. (2018). Spot the Fashion Victim(s): The Importance of Rethinking Harm Within the Context of Fashion Counterfeiting. In A. Boukli & J. Kotzé (Eds.), Zemiology: Reconnecting Crime and Social Harm. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Levi, M. (2016). The Phantom Capitalists: The Organization and Control of Long-Firm Fraud (rev ed.). London: Routledge. Lim, S., & Cortina, L. M. (2005). Interpersonal Mistreatment in the Workplace: The Interface and Impact of General Incivility and Sexual Harassment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90 (3), 483–496. Lloyd, A. (2018a). The Harms of Work: An Ultra-Realist Account of the Service Economy. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Lloyd, A. (2018b). Working for Free: Illegal Employment Practices, ‘Off the Books’ Work and the Continuum of Legality Within the Service Economy. Trends in Organised Crime. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-018-9351-x. Lloyd, A. (2019). Harm at Work: Bullying and Special Liberty in the Retail Sector. Critical Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09445-9. Macdonald, G., & Sirotich, F. (2005). Violence in the Social Work Workplace: The Canadian Experience. International Social Work, 48(6), 772–781. MacIntyre, A. (2011). After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. London: Bloomsbury. Martin, D., Mackenzie, N., & Healy, J. (2012). Balancing Risk and Professional Identity, Secondary School Teachers’ Narratives of Violence. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 13(4), 398–414. NHS Staff Survey. (2019). NHS Staff Survey 2018. https://www.nhsstaffsurv eys.com/Caches/Files/ST18_National%20briefing_FINAL_20190225.pdf. Pearce, F., & Tombs, S. (1990). Ideology, Hegemony, and Empiricism: Compliance Theories of Regulation. The British Journal of Criminology, 30 (4), 423–443.

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Pearce, F., & Tombs, S. (1991). Policing Corporate ‘Skid Rows’: A Reply to Keith Hawkins. The British Journal of Criminology, 31(4), 415–426. Pemberton, S. (2007). Social Harm Future(s): Exploring the Potential of the Social Harm Approach. Crime Law and Social Change, 48(1–2), 27–41. Pemberton, S. (2016). Harmful Societies: Understanding Social Harm. Bristol: Policy Press. Pickering, S., & Ham, J. (2014). Hot Pants at the Border: Sorting Sex Work from Trafficking. The British Journal of Criminology, 54 (1), 2–19. Raymen, T. (2019). The Enigma of Social Harm and the Barrier of Liberalism: Why Zemiology Needs a Theory of the Good. Justice, Power and Resistance, 3(1), 134–163. Raymen, T., & Smith, O. (2019). Deviant Leisure: A Critical Criminological Perspective for the Twenty-First Century. Critical Criminology, 27 (1), 115– 130. Schindeler, E. (2013). Workplace Violence: Extending the Boundaries of Criminology. Theoretical Criminology, 18(3), 371–385. Scott, S. (2017). Labour Exploitation and Work-Based Harm. Bristol: Policy Press. Snell, K., & Tombs, S. (2011). ‘How Do You Get Your Voice Heard When NoOne Will Let You?’ Victimisation at Work. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 11(3), 207–223. Standing, G. (2011). The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury. Tombs, S. (2004). Workplace Injury and Death: Social Harm and the Illusions of Law. In P. Hillyard, C. Pantazis, S. Tombs, & D. Gordon (Eds.), Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously. London: Pluto Press. Tombs, S. (2007). Violence, Safety Crimes and Criminology. The British Journal of Criminology, 47 (4), 531–550. Tombs, S. (2017). Social Protection After the Crisis: Regulation without Enforcement. Bristol: Policy Press. Tombs, S., & Hillyard, P. (2004). Towards a Political Economy of Harm: States, Corporations and the Production of Inequality. In P. Hillyard, C. Pantazis, S. Tombs, & D. Gordon (Eds.), Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously. London: Pluto Press. Tombs, S., & Whyte, D. (2007). Safety Crimes. Cullompton: Willan. Tombs, S., & Whyte, D. (2010). A Deadly Consensus: Worker Safety and Regulatory Degradation Under New Labour. The British Journal of Criminology, 50 (1), 46–65.

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Tombs, S., & Whyte, D. (2013). The Myths and Realities of Deterrence in Workplace Safety Regulation. The British Journal of Criminology, 53(5), 746–763. Tombs, S., & Whyte, D. (2015). The Corporate Criminal . London: Routledge. Tudor, K. (2019). Symbolic Survival and Harm: Serious Fraud and Consumer Capitalism’s Perversion of the Causa Sui Project. The British Journal of Criminology, 59 (5), 1237–1253. Waddington, P. A. J., Badger, D., & Bull, R. (2005). Appraising the Inclusive Definition of Workplace Violence. The British Journal of Criminology, 45 (2), 141–164. Winlow, S. (2001). Badfellas: Crime, Tradition and New Masculinities. Oxford: Berg. Winlow, S., Hall, S., & Treadwell, J. (2017). The Rise of the Right: English Nationalism and the Transformation of Working-Class Politics. Bristol: Policy Press. Yar, M. (2012). Critical Criminology, Critical Theory and Social Harm. In S. Hall & S. Winlow (Eds.), New Directions in Criminological Theory. London: Routledge. Žižek, S. (2008). Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. London: Profile Books.

11 The Deviant Leisure Perspective: A Theoretical Introduction Thomas Raymen and Oliver Smith

Reclaiming ‘Deviant’ Leisure The purpose of this chapter is to provide a brief theoretical introduction to the emerging deviant leisure perspective within criminology. We have outlined elsewhere some of the founding principles of the deviant leisure perspective and the forms of leisure and harm with which it is concerned (see Smith and Raymen 2016). This chapter intends to go into more Raymen T., & Smith O. (2019). The Deviant Leisure Perspective: A Theoretical Introduction. In T. Raymen & O. Smith (Eds.), Deviant Leisure. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media, and Culture (pp. 17–44). London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-03017736-2_2.

T. Raymen (B) Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] O. Smith University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_11

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theoretical depth to explore the intellectual underpinnings of deviant leisure, specifically its critique of the relationship between liberalism, consumer capitalism and the dominant conceptions of leisure. Our use of the term ‘deviant leisure’ is quite distinct and, in many ways, diametrically opposed from its existing use within the field of leisure studies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For scholars interested in the field of deviant leisure, a quick Google Scholar search is likely to return a mixed bag of results that, without clarification, could obfuscate rather than illuminate their understanding of our development of the deviant leisure perspective. Nevertheless, one of the central goals of this edited collection, and indeed the deviant leisure project more broadly, is a criminological and zemiological reclaiming of the term ‘deviant leisure’ from leisure studies and the sociology of deviance. Existing work in leisure studies conceives of ‘deviant leisure’ as those leisure behaviours which violate criminal and non-criminal moral norms (Franklin-Reible 2006; Rojek 1999; Stebbins 1996; Williams and Walker 2006). This work has focused upon street-racing, joyriding, graffiti writing, illegal forms of pornography, the forms of crime that occur within serious leisure practices (Stebbins 1996), and even upon conceptualising some cases of serial murder as a form of ‘leisure’ (Gunn and Caissie 2002). For the most part, they are concerned with behaviours which, if not always illegal, appear close enough to the boundary between legality and illegality to invoke discussions about its legitimacy, police and policy responses, anti-social behaviour and crime prevention. This, of course, is a product of a preoccupation with the concept social deviance; the utility of which has come under criminological scrutiny in recent years (Hall et al. 2008; Smith and Raymen 2016; Sumner 1994). The concepts of crime and social deviance are socio-legal and cultural constructs which are inextricably tied to the values of liberal capitalism. Consequently, such concepts exclude many of the most normalised, accepted and culturally celebrated forms of commodified leisure which, in conforming to the central values of liberal capitalism, generate significant levels of interpersonal, parasuicidal, socially corrosive and environmental forms of social harm. These are harms which have been largely downplayed, relativised or obscured from view because

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of their demand-side value to post-industrial economies of consumer capitalism. Furthermore, to suggest that such activities ‘deviate’ from the moral norms and values of contemporary society is to make two fatal errors. Firstly, it makes the false suggestion that there is a coherent and shared conception of ethics and morality which simply does not exist in a consumer capitalist society predicated upon the pluralistic values of sovereign liberal individualism. Secondly, our conceptualisation of deviant leisure inverts the traditional conception of deviance as the contravention of these non-existent social norms, values and ethical standards. In an era of ‘cool individualism’ in which it is culturally imperative to form a unique identity that is distinct from ‘the herd’, to transgress or cultivate a ‘deviant’ identity is steadfastly conformist (Hayward and Schuilenburg 2014; Heath and Potter 2006; Raymen 2018; Smith 2014). In this sense, what could under a more ethical or coherent social order be conceptualised as deviant behaviour is harnessed, pacified and repositioned as a very specific form of dynamism that propels desire for symbolic objects and experiences—desires which are translated into demand within the circuits of consumption dominated by the leisure economy. Therefore, the term ‘deviant leisure’, as it is used in this book, follows the growing zemiological trend in criminology to consider the myriad harms that are embedded within some of the most popular and familiar forms of commodified leisure. Deviant leisure scholars step back from the more ‘exotic’ forms ‘transgressive leisure’ listed above to examine the more prosaic and run-of-the-mill harms that are generated by holiday-making, the night-time economy, social media, gambling, video games, CrossFit gyms and voluntourism to name a few. Forms of leisure and harm that, for us, are produced by and reflect an unquestioning commitment to consumer capitalism. The chapter will focus on what we see to be four key features of the deviant leisure perspective’s approach to studying leisure and harm. First is a problematisation of what have come to be some of the defining characteristics of leisure. Namely, its association with enjoyment, freedom and autonomous ‘choice’, and its contradistinction from work. It is argued that these assumptions no longer apply in the contemporary context of late modern consumer capitalism. Furthermore, the marriage

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between consumer capitalism and liberalism’s primacy on the sovereignty of individual choice has elevated leisure to a moral right. This right to freely indulge one’s wants and desires—the exercise of Hall’s (2012a) ‘special liberty’—is becoming increasingly problematic and, in many ways, a source of harm in itself. Second is the deviant leisure perspective’s roots in ultra-realist criminology theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis and their conceptualisation of subjectivity. This theoretical framework is necessary for an understanding of how the conditions of contemporary liberal capitalism and consumer culture generate harmful and competitive individualistic subjectivities. This is something which is vital for a third key aspect of deviant leisure, which follows the call of ultra-realists to make the ‘return to motivation’ and explain why the contemporary consumer citizen is willing to act in ways and engage in leisure practices which not only harm others, but also themselves and the shared human commons of the environment. There is a growing body of literature to suggest that the sense of lack, fragile narcissism and fear of missing out that is generated by consumer culture is deleterious to mental health, ontological security and anxiety. Gambling, luxury tourism and pharmaceutical enhancement (Chapters in Raymen T. and Smith O. (eds) Deviant Leisure.) are just a few of the leisure practices discussed in this book which have damaging long and short-term effects of which we are perfectly aware but unreflexively disavow. As Rob White (In Raymen T. and Smith O. (eds) Deviant Leisure.) so eloquently ruminates, the question for many deviant leisure scholars is: ‘Why are we pooing in our own nest?’ Lastly, the chapter will consider on what basis we can begin to imagine forms of ‘pro-social leisure’. This, for the deviant leisure perspective, is important in two respects. Firstly, it forces us to think about the kind of society we want to live in; the kinds of leisure practices and social relations we want to promote and encourage; and how such forms of pro-social leisure are either marginalised, corrupted or outright precluded by a society built upon the material economic and cultural relations of consumer capitalism. Secondly, conceptualising pro-social leisure provides an important basis upon which we can identify harmful forms of leisure. By imagining pro-social forms of leisure, we begin to enquire as to the function of leisure within contemporary society and

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how it can foster more positive social and political relations which can contribute towards positive notions of human flourishing. This notion of a shared conception of the Good provides an objective reference point from which we can establish a basis for identifying for identifying forms of social harm or ‘deviant leisure’. For us, social harm is not reducible to a set of already-identified evils. On the contrary, as Simon Pemberton has written, ‘we gain an understanding of harm exactly because it represents the converse reality of an imagined desirable state’ (Pemberton 2015: 32). Therefore, one of the key tasks of deviant leisure scholars is to develop a conception of the common Good and pro-social leisure from which we can derive an understanding of harm.

Does Leisure Exist in Late-Capitalism? Leisure is arguably one of the broadest and most elusive concepts in the social sciences. Ostensibly, it is a remarkably simple concept, as numerous scholars have defined leisure in simple contradistinction from work. Roberts (1978: 3), for example, defines leisure as the ‘relatively freely chosen non-work area of life’ and the ‘obverse of work’, while Kelly (1990: 9) argues that ‘leisure is generally understood as a chosen activity that is not work’. Lyng (1990) has suggested that many forms of adrenaline-fuelled, risk-taking leisure are driven by a desire to escape the mundane tediousness of life under capitalism, while liberal sociologists have emphasised choice, autonomy, voluntarism and enjoyment as the characteristic features of leisure. The diverse buffet of leisure arenas, identities and experiences presents emancipatory possibilities for the consumer to freely invent and reinvent themselves. Under this framework, leisure becomes a source of politicised liberation from moral conservativism, restrictive political-economic and cultural imperatives, or hegemonic understandings of gender, race, class (Hebdige 1979; Jayne et al. 2006; Millington 2011; Riley et al. 2013). Changes in the global economic landscape have enabled a democratisation of leisure beyond the privileged elites of the ‘leisure class’ (Veblen 1965). As politics and the economy have mutated over the past four decades in the wake of mass deindustrialisation (Hobsbawm 1996), leisure has been a central driving

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force in maintaining a real economy largely predicated upon consumption. A consumer society relies upon the democratisation of the ability to spend ‘time off ’, consume and engage in leisure in ways which transcend the basic levels of necessity to such an extent that they become a socially and culturally internalised set of practices and values (Gailbraith 1999). The ability of all citizens to consume, indulge in luxury commodities and be ‘free’ to liberally spend their leisure time enjoying whatever tastes, fetishes or desires they please has arguably become a marker of the advanced and privileged position of Western society. Therefore, it seems there is nothing ambiguous about leisure. We all know leisure when we see it and we can quite quickly reel off a seemingly infinite array of leisure activities. It is within leisure that we are culturally, economically, and even politically represented to be living in a state of voluntarism and exercising the freedom of our individual agency (Rojek 2010). While leisure is of significant economic importance for the maintenance of consumer capitalism, the idea of leisure as voluntarism and freedom of agency works for and has been championed by both the left and right sides of liberal thought that dominate the social sciences and political-economic arena. For the liberal-right, the proliferation of leisure industries and opportunities for self-expression are the product of a wondrous ‘free market’.1 For the liberal-left the individual’s creative leisure lifestyles are an example of the hard-won freedoms of a tolerant, progressive and non-judgemental society. It is the realm in which the individual is free to construct her true self and identity, or even an arena of opportunity to express social and political resistance and subvert the existing social order from the inside (Ferrell et al. 2008; Hebdige 1979; Jayne et al. 2006, 2008). Consequently, the study and analysis of leisure has been overwhelmingly one-sided. As Chris Rojek has written, ‘one may hardly dare speak of leisure in anything other than celebratory or triumphalist tones’ (Rojek 2010: 1). The primacy given upon leisure and ‘free time’ in contemporary consumer capitalism is not simply a product of its demand-side value to 1

See Davies (2017) on the myth of the free market and neoliberal capitalism’s historical reliance upon the State.

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our real economy. It also has roots in the ethical justifications of modern liberal individualism. This is a broad church of moral philosophy which has underpinned much of political-economic and cultural life in Western society for at least the last 250 years (Deneen 2018). The liberal individualist human actor enters the world alone as a self-subsistent entity; a fully free, autonomous and isolated individual who chooses to enter into social relationships. Liberal individualist thought gives primacy to the sovereign individual who is free to pursue his or her privately defined notion of the Good life free from intrusive moral, political or theological intervention. Consequently, the fusion of consumer capitalism with the philosophy of liberalism has elevated leisure to a position of not just a social good, but a moral right. Of course, as the chapters in this book [Raymen T. and Smith O. (eds) Deviant Leisure.] will show, the foundations of liberal individualist thought are deficient at best and a dangerous delusion at their worst (Davies 2017). Liberal capitalism has convinced us that we are first and foremost private persons rather than public citizens who, when we do choose to enter society, do so only to protect our private interests. We are currently witnessing the darker problems associated with this marriage between an economic system which has competitive exchange at its core and a moral and social philosophy which is predicated upon sovereign individualism. It has produced a society plagued by a series of seemingly interminable political, moral and economic conflicts which, in the absence of an ethics which can transcend the individual, descend into clashes of will and desire (MacIntyre 2011); such as the desires of environmentalists for planetary sustainability versus the desires of the hard-working consumer citizen to enjoy two weeks relaxing in the luxury resorts of the Maldives. Consequently, these are conflicts which liberal capitalism itself is incapable of resolving within its own confines due to the centrality of consumerism to its post-industrial economies and its use of the ‘autonomous’ wants and needs of the sovereign individual as the yardstick of ‘liberty’. This is a negative liberty (Berlin, 1970), the freedom from any prohibition placed upon the individual’s enjoyment, fantasies or desires which can be guaranteed through the marketplace. The result, as Hall and Winlow (2018: 114) describe, is a situation in which the myriad interpersonal, environmental and socially corrosive harms that emerge at the intersection of leisure, consumer capitalism and

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liberal individualism are seen as collateral damage. The price to be paid for our sovereign individual freedom is to live in a society which: categorises and evaluates harms across a spectrum defined at one end by absolute evils and at the other by unfortunate but necessary collateral damage. The political ability to place in the latter category the harms that are the consequences of one’s actions allow such actions to be performed, justified and accepted by the actor and the electoral majority, even some of the victims. (Hall and Winlow 2018: 114)

In addition to these problems, a moment of brief critical reflection also brings into question the authenticity of the assumed relationship between leisure, autonomous choice and enjoyment in consumer capitalism. In contemporary society and culture anxiety and lack are the core drivers of a consumer economy which are translated into desire by consumerism’s influential advertising and mediascape (Barber 2007; Heath and Potter 2006; McGowan 2016). Žižek (2002) argues that there has been a reorientation of the superego towards a ‘cultural injunction to enjoy’. This is enforced by the threat of cultural obsolescence that looms large in the background of our lives, captured by the popular social media hashtag ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out). Here, the superego is not the prohibitive paternal superego that actively attempts to temper our enjoyment, but one which compels us to enjoy, indulge and express our ‘true’ selves. While this may sound like a wonderfully liberating improvement upon a more Victorian ascetic subjectivity, this veneer of liberation is only a seductive illusion. The reoriented superego inflicts an intense paranoia and objectless anxiety on the subject. In a society in which the good life is organised around having a clear identity, expressing that identity, having fun and being happy, the contemporary subject is assuaged by constant nagging feelings of doubt and lack. They worry that others out there are living fuller, happier lives; enjoying and travelling more; or have a better sense of who they are and where they are going. This destabilises the assumption that it is in leisure in which we are socially, culturally and economically displaying freedom and voluntarism, leading scholars such as Lasch (1985) and Rojek (1995) to conversely argue that

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there is a certain ‘unfreedom’ to leisure. Therefore, ‘choosing’ an identity is negated its true scope of choice. In reality, the individual has no choice but to choose. As Christopher Lasch (1985: 38) has written, ‘[f ]reedom to choose comes down to the freedom to choose between Brand X and Brand Y, between interchangeable lovers, interchangeable jobs, interchangeable neighbourhoods’. Moreover, when enjoyment becomes an injunction, it is immediately stripped of its immanent and authentic qualities. Enjoyment and satisfaction are extremely ambiguous within leisure. The man or woman who, in a panic, impulsively joins a gym in order to fit into a dress or have a beach body ready for the summer could not be said to be truly ‘enjoying’ themselves when engaging in that quintessentially late modern pastime of running on a treadmill or monitoring their steps on a Fitbit (Cederström and Spicer 2015). Briggs and Ellis’ (2016) ethnographic research has suggested that young men attending bachelor parties do not enjoy the ritual humiliation and excessive drinking that is accompanied with such events, but in fact dread and endure them. Ethnographic research by Smith (2014) into contemporary adulthood and the nighttime economy reveals that a disappointing and mediocre night out was overwhelmingly the most common experience. Nevertheless, in an act of hedonic amnesia, Smith’s (2014) participants continuously returned to these leisure arenas in pursuit of the elusive ‘great night out’; just as Raymen and Smith’s (2017) lifestyle gamblers compulsively restaked their winnings out of a nagging dissatisfaction with the gambling win and a desire to extend the experience of play (Bjerg 2009). Numerous scholars have suggested that the psychoanalytic roots of consumerism are not predicated on enjoyment but a perpetual dissatisfaction, cultivating an absence and lack within the subject which can be fleetingly filled by the promise of the commodity that will satiate their desire (McGowan 2016). Clearly then, the assumed relationship between leisure, freedom and enjoyment is not quite so clear-cut. Nevertheless, leisure’s more fundamental definitional characteristic has always been its distinction from work, and this elementary distinction has appeared to be the most enduring both in academic scholarship and the popular imagination. However, it is this very division and boundary between work and leisure

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that has been most compromised by the economic needs and imperatives of late-capitalism; arguably to such an extent that the line between work and leisure is all but obsolete. Early observations of this can be found in Hochschild’s (1983) work on emotional labour, in which the interpersonal skills and forms of emotional intelligence required in the post-industrial world of work have become increasingly synonymous with the very repertoire of skills required to be an accepted part of a social circle. In their polemic Dead Man Working, Cederström and Fleming (2012) take this argument a step further to suggest that in our contemporary mode of late-capitalism, the most prominent area of contention and exploitation is not between capital and labour, but between capital and life. Under Fordism, leisure and the weekends were relatively free from the world of work, serving as a mode of relaxation and recharging the industrial worker who was primarily exploited for the physical capacities of the body, its muscles and energy (Berardi 2009). It mattered not if the labour force were estranged from their work. However, in order to circumvent its periodic crises and maximise its potential for profit, work under late-capitalism has sought to extract value from every corner of life. Berardi (2009) argues that the buzz of life had to be imitated or ‘mainlined’ into the veins of work. Team-building exercises, afterwork drinks and leaving cards; LinkedIn; being friends with colleagues on social media; ‘casual Fridays’ and the general commandment to ‘be yourself ’ in the workplace are all examples. However, as Cederström and Fleming (2012: 17) also observe: ‘this displacement of non-work into the office also entails the obverse, the shift of work into all pockets of life’. The value-creating capacity of workers is enhanced by developing a symbiotic relationship between life and work in which our being, our very existence becomes the job entirely (Berardi 2009). This can be seen in the centrality of work to identity, its prominent position on our social media profiles, and its staple feature within small talk: ‘So what do you do for a living?’ As Cederström and Fleming (2012: 9) write, ‘Their aim is clear. Not only to make us do something we would rather shun, but also make us want to do it ’. Here we see Žižek’s (2002) cultural injunction to enjoy apply not just to consumption and ‘leisure’ but also seep into the world of work.

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Therefore, what we have long been witnessing is a bi-directional merging of work and leisure in which work becomes more like leisure as forms of leisure become more like work, particularly as they undergo commodification. The most obvious historical example is that of sport, which, as it underwent commodification and homogenisation, quickly became professionalised at the elite levels. However, this has expanded to amateur youth sports in which children from the ages of 5 years old are being taught to treat their sport ‘like a job’ if they’re going to ‘make it’; as shown in Christopher Bell’s riveting and troubling documentary Trophy Kids. Similarly, the participants in Raymen’s ([chapter in Raymen T. and Smith O. (eds) Deviant Leisure.], see also Raymen 2018) ethnography of parkour and freerunning attempted to make the jump into the ‘professional world’ of parkour and freerunning in an effort to begin the transition into adulthood while preserving a ‘cool’ and culturally relevant identity. Their position and status within the parkour community and their potential to get ‘picked up’ as stunt workers or athletes for advertising is contingent upon the steady release of new videos, photographs and materials on social media and through personal websites. This introduces a certain ‘labour’ to leisure (Rojek 2010), in which their leisure time is shaped by these more commodified and competitive individualistic imperatives. In a more mundane example, websites such as TripAdvisor and eBay rely on the affective labour of ‘productive consumers’ or ‘prosumers’ (Winlow and Hall 2013), in which individuals must work to attain and preserve their high-status reviewer ratings by going through what could only be described as a form of administrative leisure. Users consistently rank and review hotels and restaurants. Comments are offered which are then linked to personal blogs or YouTube pages for the ‘full review’. Under this framework of leisure, the act of going out for lunch turns into a long to-do list of tasks to complete. Consequently, all of the characteristics and distinctions that define leisure appear not to exist. Therefore, the question stands: Does leisure exist under late-capitalism? This is a seductive premise which few have been bold enough to suggest let alone defend. As Rojek (1995) argues, in a society in which so much time, money and physical space is dedicated to ‘leisure’, it seems absurd to argue that leisure does not exist. To answer

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such a question comprehensively is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, what we will say for now is that perhaps, under the present relations of capitalism, leisure as it is currently conceptualised was never intended to really exist. If we were to take a Freudian line of thought and suggest that what the subject ultimately finds most satisfying is not realising what they think they desire, but repeatedly failing to fully realise their desire (McGowan 2016), then perhaps leisure under capitalism has always intended to be an ideal that can never truly be realised. Thinkers such as Bauman (1976) and Rojek (1995) have played with the notion of leisure as a ‘utopian ideal’. In trying to describe the ambiguity and intangible nature of ‘leisure’, Rojek (1995: 1) writes that ‘like the concept of utopia, leisure seems to be one place on the map of the human world where we are constantly trying to land, but which perpetually evades our reach’. Rojek’s words are suggestive of an incessant searching which is constitutive of the Freudian compulsion to repeat. It is the pursuit of the ideal of leisure, and the repeated failure of that pursuit, that the capitalist subject finds most satisfying; compelling them to return to these commodified leisure arenas in the hope of one day being truly ‘at leisure’.

Ultra-Realism, Consumerism and Motivation Liberal capitalism, and indeed vast swathes of the social sciences, likes to convince us that we are knowing, consciously reasoning and autonomous individuals who rationally act in our best self-interest. Like Hobbes’ ‘natural man’, we are sovereign individuals who are not defined by pre-existing social relationships, identities or responsibilities. Rather, we freely choose to contractually enter into the myriad social, economic and political, relationships that constitute ‘society’ more broadly, and suffer when such relations are oppressively imposed upon us. When people act against their self-interest, the narrative tends to be that it is because they are either intellectually deficient or driven by prejudices; they lack the adequate information to make a properly informed decision; or they have been ‘tricked’ into doing so by the powerful forces of politicians or ‘the media’. Once we are given the information, once we can shake off our

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ideological blindness, we will be able to revert to our natural conscious reasoning and act once more in our own rational self-interest. Ultra-realists argue that this conception of the subject misconstrues the true complexity of subjectivity and cannot explain why we continue to engage with a consumer culture that harms ourselves, others and our shared environment. This is not because of certain analytical mishaps that are easily resolvable, but because of foundational problems with what ultra-realists describe as the domain assumptions of their theoretical perspectives—namely their conceptualisation of subjectivity which underpins and informs the rest of their analyses (Hall and Winlow 2015). For example, information about the relationship between carbon emissions, climate change and its potentially catastrophic consequences is now common knowledge. However, this knowledge has done relatively little to dissuade consumers from going on their annual holidays in order to realise the scale of change required to achieve the 1.5°C mean global temperature increase limit as set out in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The democratisation of cheap air travel witnesses a continuing rise in the number of flights per year, with environmental scientists estimating that global airlines consume approximately 5 million barrels of oil a day (Grote et al. 2014). Similarly, there are enough celebrities out there criticising the advertising techniques of the beauty, fashion and fitness industries that we are aware, deep down, that such industries are not really geared towards empowering us. Rather, they attempt to cultivate a crippling sense of lack about our bodies and our selfworth that has prompted a significant increase in mental health issues in recent years (Cederström and Spicer 2015; Davies 2011; James 2010). Rather than rejecting such industries, the UK fitness and well-being industry continue its unabated growth with an ever-growing proliferation of workout regimes, diets, health apps and wearable devices in which we, through our technological devices, become our own personal trainers. Of course, we are not suggesting that consumers be solely responsibilised for trying to deal with the issues of climate change or the insidious machinations of marketing industries. In fact, ultra-realism employs Žižek’s notion of the reversal of ideology and his associated process of fetishistic disavowal to explain why ‘green’ policies predicated

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upon responsibilising consumers are doomed to fail, thereby demanding state intervention and rigorously imposed environmental regulations upon industry. Contrary to Marx’s view of capitalist ideology as a false consciousness in which ‘we do it without knowing it’ ultra-realists suggest is that we know of the problems and harms of consumer culture, but we fetishistically disavow them and continue acting in the world as if we did not know. Therefore, for Žižek, ideology operates at the level of action rather than thought. As Winlow ([in Raymen T. and Smith O. (eds) Deviant Leisure.]) outlines, this inspires interpassivity (Pfaller 2017), in which we delegate our duty to make radical changes to our lives and consumption to external bodies and actors. We watch the news and see that climate change is on the agenda. We are told to celebrate this and decry the pollution that consumerism is doing to our planet. In doing so, we are convinced that we are not the uninformed and duped masses. Our minds and beliefs have not been captured by consumer capitalism and we are glad that people are buying reusable coffee cups and that documentaries that speak ‘truth to power’ are being made about the realities of climate change. All of this critique and knowledge is not only tolerated but actively encouraged; but only as long as we continue to buy take-away coffee, book our annual holidays abroad, and fetishistically disavow this troubling knowledge by behaving and consuming as if we did not know the harms generated by these consumer industries. Given the centrality of leisure and consumerism to contemporary social life and identity, such truths are too traumatic to incorporate into our reality, and therefore we effectively choose what we repress into our unconscious. Therefore, by problematising individual subjectivities and explaining why individual consumers will continue to engage in harmful patterns of consumption despite being cognisant of these harms, the concept of fetishistic disavowal displays the futility of responsibilisation policies and the necessity of state-led forms of industry regulation which are abhorrent to liberal capitalism. Of course, in order to understand why we engage in this fetishistic disavowal, we require a more complex understanding of subjectivity and how the subject comes into being. As Simon Winlow ([In Raymen T. and Smith O. (eds) Deviant Leisure.]) has already outlined, ultra-realism is heavily indebted to Lacanian psychoanalysis and transcendental materialist ontology and

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philosophy. This offers a conception of subjectivity that is diametrically opposed to liberal individualism’s conception of human beings as self-subsistent, fully constituted individuals capable of independent and fully autonomous reasoning. For Lacanian psychoanalysis, human beings are inherently social animals that are reliant upon others and upon a coherent set of symbols, customs and rules which offer a frame of reference with which we can identify, orient ourselves and make coherent sense of our world. This is because at the core of Lacanian subjectivity there is a lack or an absence—the Lacanian Real. From birth, we are besieged by raw internal drives and external stimuli which we cannot make sense of without the aforementioned coherence of the symbolic order. To escape the Lacanian Real, the subject must actively solicit a symbolic order in order to establish any sense of coherence, stability or ontological security (Hall 2012b). Therefore, identifying with a symbolic order is not something that the autonomous individual contractually agrees to enter. It is a fundamentally necessary part of identity formation and subjectivity. The problem, of course, as numerous critical scholars have outlined elsewhere, is that our current symbolic order is not a fully-functioning one (Hall et al. 2008; Hayward and Smith 2017). As contemporary liberalism’s negative liberty and expressive individualism combine with capitalism’s profit motive and its amoral drive to open up new markets and expand existing ones; the ethical prohibitions of a fully-functioning Symbolic Order upon unchecked individualism are either rapidly corroding or virtually absent from contemporary social life. Instead, consumer capitalism has cultivated a surrogate Symbolic Order predicated upon competitive individualism, a disdain of collective identities and a unique ‘individualism’ which relies upon a fake ‘Big Other’ to validate the individuals consumer choices and culturally-constructed identities (Hall et al. 2008). However, this surrogate Symbolic Order is fragile and transient. Neoliberal capitalism’s flexibilisation of labour has engendered precariousness, uncertainty and an inability to plan for the future while simultaneously dismantling or destabilising many of the more stable forms of collective identity such as class, family, community and politics. Capitalism’s marriage with liberalism has meant that this systemically engendered insecurity is rarely framed as a loss but as a selfcongratulatory gain (MacIntyre 2011). The autonomous self of liberal

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individualism was freed from the social bonds and hierarchies of industrial modernity. However, in achieving its own sovereignty, liberalism’s individual has been deprived of many of the firm boundaries around which identity could be oriented. This so-called liberation has only intensified the need for something in which identity could be rooted, and the polysemic world of consumer capitalism was happy to step into the void. Of course, consumer capitalism attempts to generate profit by constantly cultivating demand for new commodities, experiences and sensations which could help the competitive individual distinguish themselves from ‘the herd’. The looming anxiety and threat of cultural obsolescence loom in the background as the life-cycle of commodities, experiences and lifestyles shorten and are abandoned. Therefore, using consumerism as the foundations of identity is like building a house made of beach sand as the tide is rolling in. It quickly erodes and must be constantly rebuilt anew, irrespective of the interpersonal, socially corrosive, and environmental harms it generates. This problem is amplified when we look at psychoanalytical accounts of desire in consumer capitalism. The likes of McGowan (2016) have suggested that what we find most satisfying is our dissatisfaction. It is the failure to derive satisfaction from what we think we desire, and thus the drive to satisfy new desires that we find most satisfying. Prior to its acquisition, the commodity or the consumer experience holds a sublime status that appears to us as the object of our desire. However, upon the moment of its acquisition, the object begins to lose its appeal. We then continue on in the hope of one day finding the object that can finally satisfy our desire once and for all. It is this repeated and renewed dissatisfaction that we ultimately find most satisfying. It is why the build-up and anticipation to Christmas Day is perceived as more enjoyable and has become grossly disproportionate to the day itself. It is the means through which Apple can release endless electronic products which ‘differ’ only minutely from their predecessors and still stimulate demand. The sublime status of the consumer object or experience is preserved through a distance from the object itself. The proliferation of mobile-phone shopping apps combined with ready access to debt through overdrafts and loans that can be acquired at the touch of a button attempt to diminish this distance

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between the subject and the object. This is in order to more hastily stimulate dissatisfaction and desire for the next object, resulting in a rising indebtedness that is becoming increasingly common in contemporary society (Horsley 2015), with the Bank of England figures revealing that total unsecured consumer debt2 in the UK on credit cards, store cards and loans rose to £210.5bn as of May 2018, up from £194bn as of January 2017. Here, then, we can see that the harms generated out of some of the most familiar forms of commodified leisure are a product of a fundamental conformity and commitment to the norms and values of late-capitalist consumer culture. Obviously, this is not an ideal state of affairs for the late-capitalist subject. Therefore, the obvious question is why the allegedly self-interested actor does not just abandon this fragile and anxiety-inducing symbolic order in favour of something more stable and geared towards a shared common good? Again, this is where we must return to ultra-realism’s emphasis upon the unconscious drive and desire to escape the Lacanian Real. To abandon the existing symbolic order is to risk an encounter with the Real, and in an age of capitalist realism we are told that all attempts of fundamental social change to configure an alternative political-economic system will end in disaster, totalitarianism, tragedy and chaos (Fisher 2009; Winlow et al. 2015). Fuelled by the myth of liberalism that we are naturally first and foremost private individuals, capitalism falsely appears as the default system that is closest to our nature, the one we revert to in the absence of an alternative (McGowan 2016). Therefore, the leisure subjects of late-capitalism continue on, immersing themselves further into the competitive individualism of capitalism’s symbolic order by clinging to the fleeting security granted by off-the-peg consumer identities, lifestyles and leisure experiences. However, the first step to social renewal is to acknowledge that this is not the case. Liberal capitalism is not the default system that continues on unabated unless it encounters political interference. If anything, given its primacy upon individualism and our nature as thoroughly social and political beings who are dependent on the Other and upon society, the social order and relations that are generated by capitalism are deeply 2

This figure from the Bank of England excludes mortgages and student loans.

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unnatural. The task, then, is to abandon these myths of liberal philosophy and imagine an alternative symbolic order. For deviant leisure scholars, this means imagining what pro-social leisure might look like.

Leisure Futures: Towards the Pro-social As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, the deviant leisure perspective approaches the contemporary landscape of commodified leisure through the lens of social harm. Social harm certainly has a long history within criminology (see Pemberton 2015 for an excellent overview). However, in the last fifteen years the concept of social harm has received increased interest and use both within criminology and through the formation of its own discipline of zemiology (Hillyard et al. 2004). Chapters on social harm and zemiology now feature within our most well-known disciplinary textbooks (Hillyard and Tombs 2017), while social harm has been the bedrock for various criminological fields such as green criminology; the study of corporate harm; and even served as the conceptual basis from which various forms of what we now term hate crime have become formally prohibited by law. Elsewhere, Raymen (2017) has predicted that without deep interventions and changes to our political economy, criminology will increasingly become a harm-based discipline. Capitalism’s economic imperative to open up new markets and avenues for profit demands that liberal capitalism’s dark underbelly of desires, fantasies and the obscene drive for capital accumulation become increasingly legalised, normalised and harnessed for the market irrespective of the human, social or environmental consequences. However, despite these grave problems, there is a significant paucity of coherence or consensus around how we should conceptualise social harm or its parameters. There is a palpable tentativeness and uncertainty as to whether certain social practices or processes should be considered genuinely harmful or only ‘mildly injurious’ outcomes that are to be tolerated as ‘price of freedom’ (Hall and Winlow 2018); and on what ontological or ethical basis we should make these decisions. In publications discussing theories of social harm, it is common for scholars to

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express concern and uncertainty around how broadly we should conceptualise social harm (Hillyard and Tombs 2004, 2017; Lasslett 2010; Pemberton 2015; Yar 2012a). The question that is often uttered but never comprehensively answered is: How can we establish clear conceptual parameters which take advantage of social harm’s broader critical focus, while avoiding the concept from becoming so nebulous that it loses all utility and leaves itself open to accusations of moral subjectivism? We live in a society which lacks a common conception of the human and social good; a clear and rational basis for determining what that common good might be; and a grounding conceptualisation of ethics that extends beyond negativistic rights-based ethics in order to determine what can be genuinely conceived of as social harm (MacIntyre 2011). In the absence of these crucial elements, current theorisations of social harm are uncertain of themselves. They exist in a state of pseudo-paralysis in which they are fearful of being derided as providing ‘catch-all’ conceptualisations or of committing liberalism’s cardinal sin of moralistically curtailing the sovereign individual’s right to freely express their desires and preferences. Consequently, they limit themselves to only the most visible and obvious forms of social harm; and either dismiss many genuinely harmful processes and practices as merely mildly injurious, or only discuss them as ethical dilemmas or ‘social harm’ when the harmful processes generate sufficiently extreme and problematic outcomes (see, e.g., Lasslett 2010). These harmful outcomes are seen as the ‘price of freedom’ and the ‘price of progress’ (Hall and Winlow 2018). But the freedom to do what? And what are we supposed to be progressing towards? On these more teleological questions around what we actually mean by the terms freedom, ‘human flourishing’ and what the good life is for individuals and society, zemiology has been relatively silent. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to offer a more comprehensive framework for identifying and defining social harm, and this will be done by scholars working in this field in future publications. What we will say for now is that criminologists and zemiologists must abandon an approach to social harm that attempts to derive its parameters and its notion of the Good from a set of already-identified evils, theories of human needs, or a priori universal maxims such as Kant’s categorical imperative. Such an approach lets us off the hook of engaging in

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the hard work of shared deliberation about the common Good for individuals and society and the kinds of political-economic interventions that they demand. Moreover, the moral pluralism of liberal individualism that is at the core of so many of our problems remains intact. It remains at the discretion of the sovereign individual to privately decide what constitutes the Good life for them; inevitably resulting in pluralistic conceptions which are likely to clash with others’ privately defined ideas of human flourishing with no basis of resolving themselves. Kant’s categorical imperative has no transcendent authority because the individual gives the categorical imperative to themselves. While theories of human need claim to espouse a notion of positive liberty (Doyal and Gough 1984, 1991; Pemberton 2015), what this really amounts to is a slightly more ambitious, welfare-oriented and socialistic brand of negative liberty. It simply extends the traditional negative liberties of human rights to life; freedom from torture; freedom of expression; and so on to include rights to physical and mental health; rights to education and personal development; and rights to employment, among others. The sovereign individual is simply provided with more services and tools to enable them to pursue their own personal wants and desires. Under this framework, positive liberty is defined as living in a society which provides the basic material needs and services for individuals to behave according to their sovereign view of the good life, while also being free from persecution or any form of political or moral interference. Following the moral philosophical writings of Alain Badiou (2001) and Alasdair MacIntyre (2011), we suggest that what we are striving for is the exact reverse of our current scenario: an idea of the Good or of pro-social leisure from which social harm is derived. An idea of what we want our cities and leisure spaces to look like and what characteristics and qualities they should have; what the goal or function of leisure practices should be; and how we can best go about achieving these goals. This is certainly a large and daunting task which requires a thorough-going re-evaluation of our entire political-economic structure, social institutions and ethical frameworks and values. We do not pretend to offer any definitive answers here. However, perhaps a useful first step for thinking about this enormous task is to follow Alasdair MacIntyre’s (2011) call to thinking about and pursue the goods that are internal to social practices,

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including leisure. Of course, this pursuit is anathema to the underlying logic of capitalist society which is predicated upon competitive exchange and goods external to practices. The goods internal to social practices— be it sport, holding political office, going on a honeymoon or even being an academic researcher in a university—are inferior to and only valued insofar as they assist the pursuit of goods that are external to such social practices such as money, fame, winning, securing a larger share of the market place or elevating one’s cultural status by cultivating admiration and envy. Thorstein Veblen (1965) observed long ago the primacy of external goods within leisure when he introduced the term ‘conspicuous consumption’: those excessive and wasteful leisure practices of the ‘leisure class’ which were a signifier of their exemption from work, and thus their status and social prestige which could inspire envy, admiration and even reverence in others. To provide just one example, travelling and tourism has become much more than an opportunity to relax, recharge the batteries, experience other cultures and spend quality time in the company of friends and family. In an era of what Jodi Dean (2009) describes as ‘communicative capitalism’, going on holiday is also bound up with the external goods of displaying one’s tourism by ‘checking-in’ to the airport, sharing pictures of sun-tanned legs by the poolside or videos of scuba-diving and bungee jumping. What Majid Yar (2012b) has termed the ‘will-to-represent’ shapes our holiday destinations and the activities we choose to engage with while which often have highly detrimental impacts to the local environment, eco-systems and the living conditions of local populations. Luxury consumers pursue the most exclusive locations, while there are numerous travel and tourism experiences which have become ‘bucket list’ items that the 18–30-yearold simply must experience before succumbing to the virtual death of adulthood (Thurnell-Read 2017). One hears of travellers talking about having to ‘do’ Ibiza, go scuba diving in Thailand or see the Northern Lights. This ‘bucket list’ approach to tourism is significant because it is the external good of the bucket list itself that has achieved primacy. By attaching one’s externally recognised identity as a well-travelled and cultured global citizen to one’s travel patterns and ‘bucket list’, travel

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and tourism becomes more about ticking items off the ‘bucket list’— and being seen to tick them off —than it does about the goods internal to tourism itself. Consequently, the achievement of this external good of the bucket list can be interminably put-off and placed out of the subject’s reach by the creation of new ‘must-have’ experiences which then amplify the environmental harms associated with a burgeoning travel and tourism industry. It is useful to think about what leisure and leisure spaces would look like if they were decommoditised and primacy was placed upon the shared goods that are intrinsic to particular leisure practices. One useful example is the most popular leisure past-time of pubs and drinking within the night-time economy. Patrons and landlords would orient their drinking spaces around cultivating a sense of community and belonging. The pub would become a hub for combatting issues of loneliness among the elderly, organising shared community events and activities, discussing politics or other issues central to local civic life and cultivating forms of friendship that transcend the facile and instrumental nature of friendship that pervades the contemporary night-time economy (Smith 2014; Winlow and Hall 2009). We can actually see examples of this within the recent increase of community-owned pubs that have attempted to prevent the closure of their local watering holes due to high rents and drinks prices. However, the vast majority of the night-time economy is geared towards creating drinking spaces of individualistic hedonism, distinction or exclusivity. The craft-ale bar or microbrewery affords people the opportunity to display their identity as a connoisseur with a more sophisticated taste than the ‘masses’ (Smith 2014). The night-club experience is as much geared around getting ready for a night out as it is about the drinking itself. Individuals use the sexually charged environs of the night-time economy to show off one’s latest fashion choices and display their sexual desirability or the benefits of their new exercise regime to cultivate admiration and envy through numerous social media posts (Winlow and Hall 2009). Friendships within these spheres mimic the ‘pure relationships’ identified by Giddens (1991) which are distilled down to their use-value. Here, the company of others is instrumentally employed to enable the subject to pursue their individual interests and

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desires (Raymen and Smith 2017). Consequently, contemporary nighttime drinking spaces become spaces which pursue the individualised goods external to this social practice. There are numerous other examples that the constraints of space preclude us from exploring in more depth. We could apply this mode of thinking to critiques of the creative city paradigm which perpetuate the creation of hyper-regulated privatised urban spaces of exclusivity. Urban policy and cultural strategy documents are littered with the language of ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’ (who could be against such things?) which emphasises cities’ desires to show off the diversity of art, music, multicultural festivals, theatres and creative practices and activities on offer. However, as Mould (2015) and Peck (2012) have suggested such activities only offer a simulacrum of genuine public civic life, as ‘culture’ becomes reduced to its economic benefits as it is increasingly defined as those ‘creative’ practices which can help cultivate economic productivity and growth. As Raymen (2018) has found, practices such as parkour and freerunning are increasingly being embraced by the creative city. The local Business Improvement District (BID) company and city councils would commission freerunners to do public and private exhibitions as an attempt to inject a veneer of ‘life’, spontaneity and ‘organic’ social activity into what are otherwise sterilised of hyper-regulated spaces of consumption. These legitimate events and the creation of legitimate spaces certainly offer freerunners a temporary reprieve from being ‘moved-on’ by police and private security teams. However, their temporary spatial legitimacy is always contingent upon their economically productive value to the wider symbolic economy of consumer space (Zukin 1995). The real purpose of this ostensibly considerate provision of ‘legitimate’ space is to corral parkour’s practice into a clearly demarcated space that highlights its illegitimacy everywhere else, thereby perpetuating, rather than resolving, the gross inequalities and spatial exclusivity that plagues contemporary cities. Similarly, the goods internal to childhood sports clubs and activities would be the physiological and psychological benefits of engaging in regular exercise; promoting values of teamwork and camaraderie; and trying to master and excel in the skills and techniques for no other purpose than the satisfaction derived from excelling and mastering those skills. However, much of contemporary

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childhood sports becomes imbued with neoliberal values of competition and winning. Many parents will be familiar with clubs placing primacy upon achieving the highest position in competitive leagues or upon the number of their players picked up by elite academies. Teammates are pitted against one another as competitors to get into the team; and those children with the greatest physical prowess are used in an instrumental way that subordinates a focus on skills development to one geared towards winning matches and competitions, potentially prompting early drop-out and an aversion to sport and physical activity.

Conclusion The deviant leisure perspective is an emerging and ongoing project that crosses several disciplinary boundaries and attempts to offer critiques of the current landscape of commodified leisure, consumer capitalism and the potentiality for myriad social harms. We have attempted to outline what we see to be some of the central tasks of a deviant leisure perspective. Namely, the need to question the dominant assumptions and characteristics of leisure; the need to return to motivation and understand why people appear so committed to consumer capitalism; and to consider what pro-social leisure might look like and the kinds of political-economic, ethical and social changes required to realise it. This being said, with the deviant leisure project only in its infancy we do not wish to be too prescriptive or foreclose discussion around the parameters or theoretical arguments of this emergent field. Therefore, we encourage readers to drive forward with new theoretical paradigms and dispense with our existing tools when new and more effective accounts present themselves. As new forms of leisure emerge and evolve alongside political events, technological advancements and ongoing transformations in work and leisure, the deviant leisure perspective must also be flexible enough to undergo internal critique and reconfiguration to address the challenges of a changing world.

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12 Beyond Meat? Taking Violence Against Non-human Animals Seriously as a Form of Social Harm Nathan Stephens Griffin and Naomi Griffin

Introduction If a single death is a tragedy, and a million deaths are a statistic, then how do we understand the 70 billion non-human animals killed every year for food, according to the UN (Sanders 2018)? Violence towards non-human animals is often entirely legal and socially normalised and unproblematic, and the plight of non-human animals tends to stand beyond the realms of concern for most social scientists (Peggs 2013). But that does not make it right. Whilst accepting the central zemiological premise that ‘crime has no ontological realit y’ (Hillyard and Tombs 2004: N. Stephens Griffin (B) Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] N. Griffin Durham University, Durham, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_12

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11), this chapter rests on the foundation that harm is real, embodied and endured by living beings, human and non-human. Over fifteen years ago, Hillyard et al. (2004) compelled criminologists to consider forms of social harm rendered invisible in mainstream criminology. As revolutionary and transformative as that clarion call to ‘take harm seriously’ was, in largely ignoring harm to non-human animals, the text reproduced an anthropocentric hierarchy of visible harm. Here we argue that, for zemiology to flourish as an approach, this implicit hierarchy must be abandoned and harms endured by all living beings, human and non-human, must be made visible. Adopting an explicitly zemiological approach, yet disregarding the myriad harms done to sentient nonhuman animals imprisoned, tortured, and murdered under capitalism (and other political and socio-economic systems), risks undermining the core aims of the zemiological project. As well as offering an overview of critical perspectives in green criminology and critical animal studies, we argue that violence against non-human animals is serious and significant, cannot be ignored and must be rejected. This chapter has two primary aims. First, it offers readers a partial overview of critical scholarship concerning violence against non-human animals. It draws together a range of core concepts, chiefly from the interdisciplinary fields of green criminology and critical animal studies to establish some of the theoretical foundations of non-speciesist approaches to social harm. Second, it outlines the case for conceptualising violence against non-human animals as a form of social harm, through examining various dimensions of harm. The argument is supported by contemporary scholarship, and in making it, the chapter contributes to on-going debates about the necessity for social science to reject, explicitly, violence towards non-human animals. The chapter also outlines potential steps to address the harms identified.

Background This section outlines some of the foundational concepts that have shaped the interdisciplinary terrain of scholarship concerning violence

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against animals. Whilst brevity precludes an exhaustive overview, texts for further reading are suggested at the end.

Green Criminology Whilst the discipline of criminology is largely founded on anthropocentric assumptions, non-human animals have not been entirely invisible within criminological research, and are the focus of research and writing particularly within green criminology. White (2013: 27) defines green criminology as a perspective that concentrates on exposing criminal or harmful environmental actions, and ‘provide[s] detailed descriptions and analyses of phenomena such as the illegal trade of animals, illegal logging, dumping of toxic waste, air pollution, and threats to biodiversity’. Nurse (2013: 3) argues that green criminology has the potential to contest and upend common-sense understandings of crime, for example through revealing how ‘harm to animals causes harm to wider human society’. Green criminology does not imply a specific theoretical approach, rather a tendency towards environmental topics of interest, which can include non-human animals (White 2013). However, the positioning of non-human animals within the field of green criminology remains unclear and contested (Taylor and Fitzgerald 2018) with different traditions within green criminology that rest on occasionally conflicting political and ethical assumptions. For example, White and Heckenberg (2014) identify three approaches to justice within green criminology; human rights and environmental justice approaches, which centre the impact of environmental crime and harm on humans and see environmental rights as an extension of human rights; ecological justice perspectives, which see humans as one component of complex eco-systems that should be preserved for their own sake; and animal rights and species justice perspectives, which are chiefly concerned with harm to non-human animals.

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Species Justice Approaches Speciesism Before discussing species justice approaches within criminology, it is useful to examine the philosophical roots of the concept of ‘speciesism’. The term was first used by British philosopher Richard Ryder in the 1970s (Ryder 1989), but came to wider prominence after the release of Peter Singer’s highly influential text ‘Animal Liberation’ in 1975. Singer expanded on these ideas, presenting a utilitarian case for the liberation of non-human animals. The concept of speciesism deconstructs popularly held beliefs around human and non-human animals, examining the different and discriminatory ways that species are valued and treated (Ryder 2000). It challenges justifications for violence and exploitation, and the fundamental assumption that human animals are superior to non-human animals. Singer (1975) asserts that non-human animals deserve ethical consideration, as sentient beings able to feel pain. It is legally and morally permissible to harm and slaughter non-human animals on an industrial scale globally, whereas, the slaughter of human animals is almost always legally or morally proscribed (Ryder 1998). Speciesism can therefore be understood as a hegemonic ideological assumption that allows practices of violence against non-human animals to abound. Speciesism also helps explain the relative invisibility of animals in social science, as social science broadly reproduces the speciesist logic that non-human animals are socially—and sociologically—unimportant (Peggs 2013). Tom Regan’s (1983) ‘The Case for Animal Rights’ developed these ideas further, arguing that non-human animals possess inherent rights as ‘subjects of a life’ and must not be used as means to an end. Regan’s work was significant in developing a deontological basis for animal rights, contrasting with Singer’s utilitarian arguments, which were not rights-based. Acknowledging and accepting that non-human animals deserve moral consideration does not necessitate a specific coherent political or policy response. Indeed, there have always been significant divisions among those who consider themselves animal advocates, for example between

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animal welfare perspectives, which seek better conditions (bigger cages), and animal liberation perspectives, which seek the abolition of animal industries altogether (empty cages) (Regan 2005). This chapter situates itself within the liberationist paradigm. The concept of speciesism has influenced green criminology, particularly among those within species justice approaches. Piers Beirne (1999 in Nurse 2016) sought to develop a ‘non-speciesist’ approach within criminology, centred on the notion that animals have the right to not be killed, and to be treated with respect. He argues that abuse of non-human animals should be a concern for criminologists because: non-human animals are already objects of specific legislation, therefore within the remit of criminological concern; animal abuse has been used to predict situations of inter-human violence; and animal abuse is interconnected with other forms of oppression. More recently, Beirne (2018) has used the term theriocide to conceptualise the diverse forms of human actions that cause the deaths of animals, promoting species justice and non-speciesist approaches within and beyond the discipline of criminology.

Non-human Victimology Species justice approaches have also considered how domestic and wild animals should be protected through criminal law (Nurse 2016). The UK Animal Welfare Act 2006 enshrines a legal duty to protect animal welfare. Still, non-human animals are often reduced legally to objects or property and generally not recognised as victims, even when direct targets of criminality (Nurse 2016), as they lack the required legal status (Nurse 2013). For Flynn and Hall (2017: 299) ‘victimology has been almost exclusively anthropocentric in its outlook’ arguing instead for a ‘non-speciesist’ victimology, which accounts for harms done to non-human animals. If victimology is primarily the study of victims and we accept that animals are victimised, this offers a compelling argument for the inclusion of animals within victimology. Flynn and Hall (2017) highlight forms of animal abuse and harm that are already criminalised (an acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the inclusion of harm to non-human animals

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in victimology, even within a legalistic approach), and they argue that as victimology can help guide policy and support social change, it should include non-human animal victims.

Critical Animal Studies Where green criminology lacks a coherent underlying ideological or conceptual framework, critical animal studies (CAS) rests on explicitly intersectional abolitionist principles. CAS developed alongside animal studies more broadly, but is committed to understanding the mechanisms that allow humans to exploit other species (Taylor and Fitzgerald 2018). In ‘Introducing Critical Animal Studies’, Best et al. (2007: 4) illustrate what makes CAS distinct from much of the preceding animal studies: Although scholars working in animal studies have made significant contributions to our understanding of the historical, sociological, and philosophical aspects of human/nonhuman animal relations, the discipline is strangely detached from the dire plight of nonhuman animals, human beings, and the Earth.

Nocella et al. (2014) illustrate that CAS increasingly provides counternarratives to prevailing research on non-human animals in academia, as either a-political or exploitative (e.g. animals experiments). CAS responds with overtly political research reimagining human-animal relations in a non-exploitative and non-speciesist way, ultimately striving for liberation for all (human and non-human animals) from oppressive capitalist structures (Best 2009; Best et al. 2007; Nibert 2017; Nocella et al. 2014). Best et al.’s (2007) introduction to CAS outlined ten principles, which cement its core aims: CAS must be interdisciplinary, political (rather than pseudo-objective), employ praxis, advance understandings of commonalities of different oppressions, and be anti-capitalist and anti-hierarchical. Furthermore, it must nurture alliance politics, champion ‘total liberation’ (human, non-human and environmental), work to deconstruct social binary thinking and, finally, it must encourage critical dialogue across a wide range of groups (within and, fundamentally,

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outside of academia). CAS therefore seeks an intersectional account of speciesism and social justice (Crenshaw 1989; Matsuoka and Sorenson 2018). Nibert (2017) identifies fundamental connections between the systematic oppression of non-human animals, environmental destruction and the everyday relentless harms caused by capitalism, to humans alongside other animals. As global capitalism is damaging to the planet, people and animals, anti-speciesist approaches must engage with the exploitative nature of capitalism. For Best (2009: 42): The profit imperative overwhelms the moral imperative; value is reduced to exchange value; everything, including human labor, becomes a commodity… In pursuit of the development and accumulation imperatives that drive its dynamic grow-or-die economy, capitalism devours nature, species, human lives, and indigenous cultures.

Much CAS research has illustrated how the oppression of animals is connected to human oppression (Adams 1990; Matsuoka and Sorenson 2018; Nocella et al. 2014; Taylor and Twine 2015). These themes are developed later.

Cognitive Dissonance and Carnism In order to employ a zemiological perspective to non-human animals it is helpful to engage with how CAS has problematised and re-imagined the processes enabling harm to occur. In many societies, there are expectations that people will care for animals (though the specificities vary culturally) alongside assumptions that people eat animals and animal products (Loughnan et al. 2010). This disjuncture is commonly conceptualised as ‘the meat paradox’ (Bratanova et al. 2011; Buttlar and Walther 2018; Joy 2010; Loughnan et al. 2010). Buttlar and Walther (2018) found that meat-eaters employ ‘moral disengagement’ strategies to circumvent the discomfort they feel due to ‘the meat paradox’. Loughnan et al.’s (2010) study suggested that to continue to enjoy eating meat, people perceive animals as unworthy and unfeeling.

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Carnism is a fairly recent theoretical development referring to the dominant paradigm that rarely problematises the ethics of meat consumption (Joy 2010). Carnist discourses, perpetuated through the media and the state/government (Joy 2010), allows sentient, living beings to be perceived only in abstract terms or as objects. The concept of cognitive dissonance has been employed to explain how carnist hegemony persists within populations that generally express sympathetic views to non-human animals (Piazzaa et al. 2015; Bratanova et al. 2011; Loughnan et al. 2010; Festinger 1957). It describes the stress individuals feel from holding conflicting beliefs. Joy (2010) explains that people employ strategies to counter its resultant stress, including denial, justification of suffering, and objectification of non-human animals. Nibert (2017) builds on his influential earlier work (Nibert 2002) in demonstrating how the biological manipulation of sentient beings, as objects and commodities for profit, is made possible by hegemonic framing of such cruelty as necessary. Within that hegemonic framework, those who practice non-violence towards animals are often subject to ridicule, misrepresentation and hostility (Stephens-Griffin 2017; Stephens Griffin and Griffin 2019; MacInnis and Hodson 2015; Cole and Morgan 2011). The theories of ‘speciesism’ and ‘carnism’ explain dominant values underpinning animal exploitation, where ‘the meat paradox’ and ‘cognitive dissonance’ help to illustrate the discomfort felt as a result of harm to animals caused by humans and the strategies employed to enable such harm to continue despite it.

Non-human Animals and Social Harm We now drill down into developments in the study of violence against animals. We argue that violence against non-human animals represents a form of social harm that zemiological approaches must resist. Beginning with a discussion of animals and the social world, this section explores three dimensions through which violence against non-human animals constitutes social harm: harm to non-human animals; harm to humananimals, and harm to the environment. The unfolding argument builds a

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non-speciesist case that non-human animals are part of the social world, and must be taken into account in conceptions of social harm. Social harm perspectives allow us to move beyond individualised notions of crime and criminals to reveal the myriad visible and invisible forms of harm caused by organisations, corporations and nation states. Hillyard et al. (2004: 1) argue that: the principal aim of a social harm approach is to move beyond the narrow confines of criminology with its focus on harms defined by whether or not they constitute a crime, to a focus on all the different types of harms, which people experience from the cradle to the grave.

Hillyard and Tombs’ (2004) social harm approach encompasses various dimensions of harm. Primary among these are physical harms, whether direct, indirect, deliberate or accidental. A social harm approach also encompasses emotional and psychological harms, financial/economic harms, and may also encompass notions of ‘cultural safety’, relating to autonomy and access to means of development and growth. However, the dominant social harm approach is explicitly anthropocentric in its focus on harm experienced by humans. The zemiological assertion that crime has no ontological reality, and that criminology perpetuates the ‘myth of crime’, is clearly expressed through the differential treatment of harm to non-human animals under criminal law. It is legal to kill some, and illegal to kill others (Herzog 2010; Joy 2010); that which is ‘criminal’ is often arbitrary and, in accepting legal definitions of crime, the discipline of criminology contributes to this incoherence. Similarly, the zemiological assertion that ‘crime’ excludes many serious harms is evidenced by socially harmful animal industries being largely absent from criminological research or teaching. As Hillyard et al. (2004: 2) argues: ‘it makes no sense to separate out harms, which can be defined as criminal, from all other types of harm. All forms of harms we argue must be considered and analysed together. Otherwise a very distorted view of the world will be produced’. A social harm approach provides the means to address the failure of traditional criminology to consider these hidden harms against non-human animals.

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Non-human Animals and the Social Non-human animals are social beings, they have social relationships and exist in a social world, with and without humans. This is perhaps obvious when discussing companion species like dogs and cats, but perhaps not when it comes to species less visible in everyday life. Take cows, for example, whose flesh and secretions are widely consumed and whose lives and deaths are seldom culturally visible. Cows have been shown to be intelligent with complex cognitive, emotional and social characteristics (Marino and Allen 2017). Cows can be optimistic and pessimistic, they are impacted by painful and stressful experiences and have revelatory ‘eureka’ moments (Marino and Allen 2017). Cows protect their young fiercely and can recognise 50–70 of their friends (Marino and Allen 2017; Fraser and Broom 1990). This is consistent with what we understand as fundamental to existing within a social realm. As social beings, many animals mourn the loss of companions, as observed in many species including dogs, cats, rabbits, rats, horses and birds (King 2013). Expressions of grief are measured in patterns of eating, sleeping, social behaviour, and visible expressions of affect, recognisable in human responses to loss (King 2013). The capacity to grieve for companions further emphasises their social experiences and the suffering experienced by animals embroiled in the animal-industrial complex. Just as non-human animals are themselves social beings, non-human animals are part of the social lives of human-animals, both literally and symbolically, yet are often excluded from traditional social science (Peggs 2013). We live with and among non-human animals; we form meaningful relationships with them; many aspects of society rely on their exploitation; we engage with cultural representations of them daily and these form the basis for meaning-making especially in childhood (Cole and Stewart 2014). Yet, as Tovey (2003: 197) argues ‘to read most sociological texts, one might never know that society is populated by non-human as well as human animals’. Social science disciplines have been constructed as if nature and non-human animals are unimportant (Murphy 1994), perpetuating the invisibility of non-human animals in conversations about the social.

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Violence is a social phenomenon, socially organised and socially institutionalised in various forms (Cudworth 2015; Stanko 2001), and non-human animals, as part of the social world, cannot be viewed as outside of this phenomenon. Cudworth (2015) uses the work of Tombs (2007) to illustrate how violence is often linked to widespread forms of inequality and social exclusion. Peggs (2013) argues that the recent increased focus on non-human animals is characterised by a lack of engagement with oppression, as a central feature of human-non-human relations. This poses a real problem for social science.

Eating Meat as Social Harm We now move to explore how violence to non-human animals can be understood as socially harmful to non-human animals, human-animals, and to the environment. These categories necessarily and inevitably overlap; however, these headings provide for greater clarity in discussion.

Harmful to Non-human Animals Whilst it may seem obvious that violence towards non-human animals causes them harm, it is worth examining the dimension of this harm in more depth. Cudworth (2015: 14) argues ‘violence towards domesticated animals is routinized, systemic and legitimated. It is embedded in structures of authority, such as the nation state, and in formations of social domination’. Globally, 99% of all domesticated animals are commodities in animal agriculture (Williams and de Mello 2007 in Cudworth 2015). Every year, 55 billion plus land-based non-human animals are killed in the farming industry (Mitchell 2011 in Cudworth 2015). But even those domesticated animals that inhabit more privileged positions are systematically killed, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates that between three and four million ‘stray dogs and cats’ were killed by shelters in 2012 alone (ASPCA 2014 in Cudworth 2015). We must also acknowledge other animal exploiting industries also

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cause harm to non-human animals, for example, global wildlife trafficking, which poses a threat to multiple species, not just charismatic megafauna1 (Arroyo-Quiroz and Wyatt 2019). Moving from the macro-picture, the harms faced by non-human animals on an individualised basis are varied and severe. Continuing with the earlier example, cows have a natural life expectancy of around twenty years, but on average rarely reach six before they are slaughtered (Mohd Nor et al. 2013). During the course of a cow’s drastically shortened lifespan, they can expect to suffer a variety of mutilations and forms of violence against their bodies. These include disbudding, the removal of horn buds; teat-removal, the removal of a ‘supernumerary teat’ with a blade or scissors (often without anaesthetic); tagging, of one or both ears; tail docking, done with a hot iron, by crushing, or by stopping blood flow with a rubber band; branding; either by hot iron, or freeze branding; and castration, which can happen at any age depending on the farmer’s preference (Compassion in World Farming 2012). The violence they experience is sometimes sexual in nature, relating as it does to reproductive systems. For cows to produce milk, they need to give birth. As a result, female dairy cows are kept in a perpetual state of pregnancy, usually by artificial insemination. One informal industry term used to describe the device used for artificial insemination is ‘rape rack’ (Adams 1990). After giving birth, calves are separated from their mothers very quickly, so that humans can consume the milk (Compassion in World Farming 2012). Cows and calves alike are known to respond to this separation emotionally, wailing aloud, with studies suggesting increased ‘eye white’, an indicator of anxiety and distress, following separation (Marino and Allen 2017). Calves are then either sold or reared as replacement stock; many male calves and surplus female calves, are slaughtered for veal (usually at around 5–7 months). Milking can be very painful and can happen as many as three times a day (Compassion in World Farming 2012). Once lactation ends, this process repeats, with cows giving birth on average every 400 days (Compassion in World Farming 2012). This continues until they can no longer yield milk. Cows are then killed 1 ‘Charismatic megafauna’ are species of animals who have symbolic or cultural significance or who are broadly liked by humans (such as Giant Pandas and Humpback Whales), and therefore more likely to valued and seen as worthy of human interest, respect and protection.

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variously: by a non-penetrating captive bolt gun or electrical stunning, whereby they are stunned or electrocuted unconscious, then have their throats slit; by a penetrating captive bolt gun, whereby a rod penetrates their skull to destroy their brain; or shot dead if injured and unable to travel to the abattoir (Compassion in World Farming 2012). This barely scratches the surface of how animal industries are harmful to non-human animals. These examples underline further the necessity of viewing violence towards animals within conceptions of social harm.

Harmful to Human-Animals We now explore how violence against non-human animals can be understood as harmful to human animals. Research indicates eating meat can be harmful to personal health. Springmann et al. (2016) suggest that switching to lower-meat diets could save around 8 million human lives globally, over the next 30 years. A 2019 study found that plant-based diets are associated with a lower risk of incident cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular disease mortality (Kim et al. 2019). Another found that men adopting vegan diets had a 35% reduced risk of developing prostate cancer (World Cancer Research Fund 2016). Qian et al. (2019) found that adopting a plant-based diet can reduce the risk of developing diabetes by 23%. The World Health Organization advises as the first step towards a healthy lifestyle: ‘Eat a nutritious diet based on a variety of foods originating mainly from plants, rather than animals’ (WHO 2019: n.p.). Research has demonstrated numerous negative effects of slaughterhouses on workers & communities, with empirical data suggesting that slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, rape, and other sex offences relative to other industries (Fitzgerald et al. 2009). The potential harm from animal products goes beyond the individual consumer. There are global health risks posed to human and non-human populations, from the presence of anti-microbial resistant bacteria in animal products for human consumption (Guetiya Wadoum et al. 2016; Losasso et al. 2018). Growth in multi-resistant microbes is often partly, if not largely, credited to the over and mis-use of anti-biotics in farmed

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animals (Anomaly 2009; Groot and van’t Hooft 2016), particularly due to the accelerated spread of intensive farming practices in recent years (Grace 2015). The effects are already identifiable, with some infectioncausing bacteria having developed resistance to most, if not all, available anti-biotics. The World Health Organisation recommends reduced antibiotic use in farmed animals to combat the global risk of anti-biotic resistance (WHO 2017).

Speciesism, Capitalism and Exploitation Capitalism is by its very nature exploitative, and animal industries exemplify that exploitation at its most stark and cruel, as discussed by Nibert (2017). The accelerationist expansionism of global capitalism has been a driving force behind the growth in animal industries (Twine and Taylor 2014). Drawing on Noske (1989), Twine (2012: 23) discusses the ‘partly opaque and multiple set of networks and relationships between the corporate (agricultural) sector, governments, and public and private science’ as the ‘animal -industrial complex’ . These networks reinforce and perpetuate the objectified, exploited status of non-human animals under capitalism. A criticism frequently levelled at those who refuse to consume nonhuman animals is that it is hypocritical for them to advocate for non-human animals whilst ignoring the plight of human workers, who suffer to provide plant-based alternatives to animal products. This argument ignores the treatment of workers in animal industries, where the exploitation is also often appalling. According to Milmo et al. (2018: n.p.) ‘employees in slaughterhouses and meat processing plants are subjected to some of the most dangerous working conditions in the United Kingdom, with 100 workers suffering major injuries - including eye damage and crush injuries to the head - in a single year’. Acknowledging the exploitation of workers is essential to critiquing capitalist exploitation. But when it is weaponised against veganism, ignoring the exploitation inherent in all sectors of industrial capitalism, the suggestion that plant-based industries are inherently more harmful to workers than animal industries, is demonstrably false. Veganism does not represent ethical purity (e.g. non-human animals are routinely killed in the

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production of plant-based products) and we should be sceptical of vegan consumerism, which reproduces harmful and uneven relationships of production under capitalism. We should also be wary of efforts to reduce and individualise these debates into arguments about the morality of one person versus another. The exploitation of non-human animals is a structural concern and must be part of a wider struggle against capitalism.

Speciesism, Sexism and Patriarchy Zemiological approaches might usefully reflect on the ways that harm to non-human animals and the environment can correspond closely with sexism and patriarchy, both in underlying justifications and effects. Linked to the destructive nature of capitalism, the entitlement that underlies patriarchy has been highlighted by ecofeminist Salleh (1989: 26) as the same attitude that allows humans to feel entitled to exploit animals: ‘There is a parallel in men’s thinking between their “right” to exploit nature, on the one hand, and the use they make of women on the other’. Carol Adams’ (1990) hugely influential and enduringly relevant text ‘The Sexual Politics of Meat’, connected feminism and vegetarianism. It was significant in explicitly outlining the interconnectedness of patriarchy and speciesism, and in calling for those who purport to be feminists to acknowledge the patriarchy intrinsic to animal industries; ‘Not only is animal defence the theory and vegetarianism the practice, but feminism is the theory and vegetarianism is part of the practice’ (Adams 1990: 217). She identified many continuities between patriarchy and animal exploitation, for example, how meat consumption has been linked to male strength/virility, essentialist notions of a hunter/gatherer gender binary between men and women and how compassion in general, and especially towards animals/earth, has been feminised and devalued accordingly. Adams (1990) also highlighted the necessary sexual violence of the meat and dairy industries, for example the huge reliance on exploitation of female reproductive systems, as seen in the above example (e.g. milk, breeding, eggs), as well as drawing

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conceptual linkages between war, violence and hunting. To destroy patriarchy, we must destroy every part of it: ‘we have to stop fragmenting activism; we cannot polarize human and animal suffering since they are interrelated’ (Adams 1990: 15). For Adams, to practice feminism one must also practice non-violence towards animals. Taking an intersectional feminist perspective, Lapina and Leer (2016: 89) illustrate the relationship between meat, class, gender and sexuality in their study of ‘meatscapes’ in Copenhagen. These are food outlets where meat is glorified and codified as masculine, ‘conveying ideas about masculine, carnivorous bonding/community and a masculine, heterosexual, middle-class gaze’. Sobal (2005: 136) argues that ‘foods are objects inscribed with many meanings, representing ethnicity, nationality, region, class, age, sexuality, culture and (perhaps most importantly) gender’. For Bogueva et al. (2017), links between red meat and national identity, social status and masculinity in Australia help explain how relationships between human and non-human animals are related to other oppressive societal systems. Academics have identified links between violence against non-human animals and violence against humans (Ascione 1998), which is also well established in popular cultural narratives. Macdonald’s (1963) ‘Homicidal Triad’ supports the notion that animal abuse is a warning sign for other forms of violence; bedwetting, fire starting and animal cruelty in childhood can be predictive of violent serial killers. Whilst arguing that an empirical basis for a link does exist, Nurse (2016) argues that the relationship between animal abuse and interpersonal violence is complex, depending on multiple factors. Some animal abusers also engage in forms of spousal abuse, child abuse and stranger violence, whilst others confine their abusive behaviour to non-human animals (Nurse 2011). The same author discusses the ‘progression thesis’, whereby offenders begin with animal abuse, and then progress into human abuse. From this perspective, violence against non-human animals can also be harmful to human-animals, but, as Nurse highlights, working to prevent harm to non-human animals, can also help protect victims/survivors.

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Speciesism, Racism and Colonialism For Harper (2010), women of colour practising non-violence towards animals, through veganism, can represent a means of resisting oppression and ‘decolonising black bodies from the legacy of racialized colonialism’ (Harper 2010: 157). She notes a tendency for mainstream veganism and animal liberation struggles to dismiss or marginalise people of colour, and to de-centre anti-racist struggles. Racism within animal advocacy goes further than just a failure to acknowledge and problematise whiteness, with groups like PETA also actively perpetuating racist tropes and ideas (Harper 2010; Heuchan 2015). Harper’s work rejects the assumed whiteness of veganism and animal liberation struggles, underlining the necessity for animal rights movements to be at the forefront of anti-racist work too. The CAS objective of ‘Total Liberation’ of humans, non-humans and the environment, according to Colling et al. (2014), is only achievable through radical decolonisation. Drawing upon Frantz Fanon’s (1968) work, they identify commonalities between the struggle against white supremacy and colonialism, and against violence towards animals, for example through the characterisation of colonised peoples as animals and processes of dehumanisation and objectification. Animal enterprises exist in direct continuity with the colonial projects of slavery and genocide (Colling et al. 2014). Therefore, CAS must be committed to dismantling the structures of white supremacy and colonialism. Whilst acknowledging commonalities in the logic and justifications of the oppressor, intersectional perspectives tend to reject narratives that directly equate animal exploitation with human slavery or the holocaust, which has been a feature of messaging in the area (Nagesh 2015). This is because such comparisons can be seen to co-opt another group’s brutal history of oppression to make a point. Attempts to ‘humanise’ animals in this way can easily lead to ‘dehumanisation’ of victims of genocide and slavery, which are phenomena situated within their own very specific social context and structures. Human-animal suffering and non-human animal suffering are fundamentally different. We must reject violence towards non-human animals without dehumanising victims of genocide, slavery and colonialism in the process.

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Further connections have been drawn between the logic of racism and speciesism. Gambert and Linné (2018) highlight how the altright has positioned dairy milk as a symbol for racial purity, thus connecting pseudo-scientific claims about milk, lactose tolerance, race, and masculinity. The proliferation of the abusive term ‘soy boy’ to describe ‘effeminate’ ‘politically correct’ men, portrayed as weak and lacking in traditional markers of masculinity, rest heavily upon colonialera stereotypes of so-called ‘effeminate’ plant-eating, which has links to Asian and other non-white cultures (Gambert and Linné 2018).

Harmful to the Environment The term ‘anthropocene’ has increasingly been used to describe the current geologic era, characterised by significant human impact on the earth’s ecology and ecosystems (Holley and Shearing 2017). Humans may be contributing to a new mass-extinction event (Milman 2018). Ecocide has been defined as: the extensive damage, destruction to, or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished. (Higgins 2012: 3)

Environmentalists have called for ecocide to be the fifth international ‘crime against peace’ (alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression) (Higgins 2010). Animal industries contribute to ecocide in manifold ways. The 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), reported that to keep to the goal of the temperature not increasing more than 1.5 °C, governments would have to slash emissions of greenhouse gases by 45% by 2030. Despite this, some world leaders engage in Climate Change denial, for example, former US President Trump withdrew from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which committed UN nations to address greenhouse gas emissions from 2020 onwards. We

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face an impending climate crisis, but these issues remain marginalized in mainstream political discussion in the UK. Environmental concerns must not be separated from those of nonhuman animals, or indeed humans. Meat is a huge global industry. One billion animals are killed annually in British slaughterhouses alone (Viva! 2019), and this contributes to environmental harm in various ways. Animal industries also contribute significantly to climate change and other environmental damage (Grossi et al. 2019). Add to this, the inefficient use of crops and water required to feed animals, which could be used by humans, the use of fossil fuel in animal industries (e.g. transporting livestock, refrigeration), deforestation for land-animal pasture, plus issues around animal methane (IPCC 2019). In November 2017, 15,364 scientists signed a Warning to Humanity, calling for a drastic reduction in per capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat, and other resources, to prevent climate catastrophe (Ripple et al. 2017). A concerted switch to plant-based diets could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two thirds, and would also result in various healthcare-related savings, as well as avoiding climate-related damage up to $1.5 trillion (Springmann et al. 2016).

Implications for a Less Harmful Society Academic Changes One way that academics can address both the issue of violence towards animals, and the related impending ecological catastrophe, is to ensure that Green Criminology and Critical Animal Studies become core features of the social science curriculum. This should be part of a wider process to revisit what we teach, and how we frame the subjects in which we have expertise, for example, the essential need to decolonise criminology curricula, and acknowledge connections between criminal justice, colonialism and ecocide. Academics must also see the struggle for environmental and species justice as running parallel with struggles against the neo-liberalisation and marketisation of academia, particularly the exploitation of precarious workers. Securely employed academic workers

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in the UK might join the University and College Union (UCU) and support their more precariously employed colleagues, whilst also encouraging the union to recognise the interconnectedness of environmental struggle to other struggles central to our futures.

Legal and Political Changes The struggle for a world entirely free from animal exploitation may seem hopelessly idealistic, yet it is already illegal to hurt some animals in some contexts and it is already accepted that animals have some rights (Nurse 2016). Academics, social scientists, and zemiological criminologists can and should exert their influence on policy and push for a world where these kinds of harms are less endemic. The exploitation involved in animal industries is an intrinsic aspect of the underlying logic of carceral capitalism and so it is our duty to resist both as related systems. Prominent academics might follow abolitionist figures like Angela Davis in throwing their weight behind animal rights and environmental causes (Vegan Society 2019a). Whilst experts can exert influence that can lead to legal and political changes, social change is perhaps the most important dimension through which harms to non-human animals can be reduced. Other activities include proactive support for animal rights, environmentalist activism and direct action, and resisting the damaging characterisation of these activists as ‘domestic extremists’ (Schlembach 2018; NetPol 2019).

Adopting and Promoting Veganism One practical action that could further advance society’s shift away from non-human animal products, is easing the adoption of veganism within our institutions. Institutional change helps to de-personalise and deindividualise discussions of veganism. Veganism as a set of rules can seem rigid and static. In practice, individual adherence to veganism is invariably rooted in deeply personal and complex social and biographical dynamics (Stephens-Griffin 2017). Normalising veganism in specific contexts could help to disentangle and disrupt carnist hegemony. For

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example, academic conferences and departments could adopt a plantbased catering policy, problematising the assumed necessity for meat and dairy at meals. Goldsmiths University, in London, recently decided to stop the sale of Beef products, acknowledging the disproportionate impact of Beef on the environment (Walker 2019). Academic departments can play an important role in addressing the impeding environmental catastrophe. We would like to see academics pushing for change in their own institutions. Again, whilst universities are managed based on the pernicious neo-liberal logic of capital accumulation, these sorts of changes are less likely. If you are an academic, a head of department, a senior faculty member, use your influence to push for practices that normalise veganism at work and take meat off the menu. Between 2006 and 2016, the number of vegans in the UK increased by 350% and veganism appears to be particularly popular among young people (Jones 2018). An Ipsos Morey’s survey found that there were 600,000 vegans in the UK in 2019 (Vegan Society 2019b). According to Google Trends, people are four times more likely to search for veganism than vegetarianism or gluten free. In 2018, the UK launched more new vegan products than any other nation globally (Mintel 2019). Veganism is growing. However, adopting veganism without dismantling capitalist relations of production will simply reproduce the same old harmful systems of exploitation discussed (Torres 2007). Veganism as a form of critical praxis works best in tandem with anti-capitalist, and other emancipatory and abolitionist struggles, and we must avoid divide-and-rule, zero-sum game politics, which pits causes against one another.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have provided an overview of critical scholarship concerning violence against non-human animals, drawing together a range of ideas from the fields of green criminology and critical animal studies. In doing so, we hope to have helped establish the theoretical foundations of non-speciesist approaches to social harm. We argue that zemiology must account for, and explicitly reject, violence against non-human animals as socially harmful.

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As many vegans are acutely aware, interpersonal debates around the lives (and deaths) of animals are often met with reactionary defensiveness. It is possible the toxicity of these debates has spilled onto the page. Assuming you have stuck with the chapter thus far, you may feel some discomfort, under ‘attack’ for eating meat. It feels unpleasant to be accused of malice or complicity in something harmful. But this feeling is significant. In arguing for the ontological reality that non-human animals are sentient and feel pain, and that violence against non-human animals harms them, and that this harm deserves serious consideration our aim is not to castigate meat-eaters, or pass moral judgement on individuals. No one is free from complicity in structures of oppression. Adherents to veganism also engage in harmful and oppressive systems under capitalism. Focusing on individual ‘perfection’ misses the point. Reducing what is essentially a structural, intersectional struggle, against diverse forms of oppression, to a moral judgement on an individual’s behaviour reproduces the hyper-individualist carceral logic of neo-liberal capitalism (Harvey 2007). It is not about individuals; it is about the collective. Let us move beyond the bizarre hypotheticals (Q: ‘if you were stranded on a desert island, would you kill an animal to survive?’ A: ‘possibly in desperation, but I’m more likely to kill you to end this conversation’). Let us not judge one another, but ask ourselves how we can do more to stop contributing to violence against human animals and non-human animals alike. Let us talk about violence against non-human animals as if it matters, because it does, without seeking to engage in a zero-sum game of compassion where concern for one cause, precludes concern for another.

Further Reading • Adams, C. (1990). The Sexual Politics of Meat. New York: Continuum. This hugely influential text provides a feminist analysis of the links between patriarchy and animal abuse, arguing that feminist analysis logically contains a critique of human/animal relationships. The text illustrates how hierarchies of species, which nurture the oppression of

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other animals and allow meat consumption are interconnected with hierarchies of race, class and gender within patriarchal societies. • Nocella, A., Sorenson, J., Socha, K., & Matsuoko, A. (2014). Defining Critical Animal Studies: An Intersectional Social Justice Approach for Liberation. New York: Peter Lang. This edited volume collects a number of essays broadly united under the heading ‘Critical Animal Studies’. It provides a very useful introduction to this diverse, interdisciplinary field, and includes chapters focusing on total liberation, the relationship between academia and activism, critical animal studies pedagogy, and more. • Piers Beirne. (2018). Murdering Animals: Writings on Theriocide, Homicide and Non-Speciesist Criminology. London: Palgrave. This text introduces the concept of ‘theriocide’ to describe the death of animals as a result of human actions. This new way of conceptualising harm to animals has had profound impact on enhancing interest in species justice within and beyond the discipline of criminology.

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Beirne, P. (2018). Murdering Animals: Writings on Theriocide, Homicide and Non-Speciesist Criminology. London: Palgrave. Best, S. (2009). The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: Putting Theory into Action and Animal Liberation into Higher Education. Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 7 (1), 9–52. Best, S., Nocella, A. J., Kahn, R., Gigliotti, C., & Kemmerer, L. (2007). Introducing Critical Animal Studies. Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 5 (1), 4–5. Bogueva, D., Marinova, D., & Raphaely, T. (2017). Reducing Meat Consumption: The Case for Social Marketing. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 29 (3), 477–500. Bratanova, B., Loughnan, S., & Bastian, B. (2011). The Effect of Categorization as Food on the Perceived Moral Standing of Animals. Appetite, 57 (1), 193–196. Buttlar, B., & Walther, E. (2018). Measuring the Meat Paradox: How Ambivalence Towards Meat Influences Moral Disengagement. Appetite, 128, 152–158. Cole, M. D. D., & Morgan, K. (2011). Vegaphobia: Derogatory Discourses of Veganism and the Reproduction of Speciesism in UK National Newspapers. The British Journal of Sociology, 62(1), 134–153. Cole, M., & Stewart, K. (2014). Our Children and Other Animals. Oxford: Routledge. Colling, S., Parson, S., & Arrigoni, A. (2014). Until All Are Free: Total Liberation Through Revolutionary Decolonization, Groundless Solidarity, and a Relationship Framework. In A. J. Nocella II, J. Sorenson, K. Socha, & A. Matsuoka (Eds.), Defining Critical Animal Studies—An Intersectional Social Justice Approach for Liberation (pp. 51–73). New York: Peter Lang. Compassion in World Farming. (2012). The Life Of: Dairy Cows. Compassion in World Farming. Available at: https://www.ciwf.org.uk/media/5235185/ the-life-of-dairy-cows.pdf. Accessed 29 October 2019. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum (Vol. 1989). Article 8. Cudworth, E. (2015). Killing Animals: Sociology, Species Relations and Institutionalized Violence. The Sociological Review, 63, 1–18. Fanon, F. (1968). The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove. Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. CA: Stanford University Press.

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Matsuoka, A., & Sorenson, J. (2018). Critical Animal Studies: Towards a TransSpecies Social Justice. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Milman, O. (2018, December 6). The ‘Great Dying’: Rapid Warming Caused Largest Extinction Event Ever, Report Says. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/06/global-war ming-extinction-report-the-great-dying. Accessed 15 September 2019. Milmo, C., Heal, A., & Wasley, A. (2018, July 29). Revealed: Heavy Toll of Injury Suffered by Slaughter Workers in Britain’s £8bn Meat Industry. INews. Available at: https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/revealed-heavy-toll-of-inj ury-suffered-by-slaughter-workers-in-britains-ps8bn-meat-industry-540909. Accessed 2 September 2019. Mintel. (2019). #Veganuary: UK Overtakes Germany as World’s Leader for Vegan Food Launches. Mintel . Available at: https://www.mintel.com/presscentre/food-and-drink/veganuary-uk-overtakes-germany-as-worlds-leaderfor-vegan-food-launches. Accessed 29 October 2019. Mitchell, L. (2011). Moral Disengagement and Support for Nonhuman Animal Farming. Society & Animals, 19, 38–58. Mohd Nor, N., Steeneveld, W., & Hogeveen, H. (2013). The Average Culling Rate of Dutch Dairy Herds Over the Years 2007 to 2010 and Its Association with Herd Reproduction Performance and Health. Journal of Dairy Research, 81(1), 1–8. Murphy, R. (1994). Rationality and Nature: A Sociological Inquiry into a Changing Relationship. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Nagesh, A. (2015, June 14). Vegans Need to Stop Comparing the Treatment of Animals to Slavery. Independent. Available at: http://www.independent. co.uk/voices/comment/meat-free-monday-vegans-need-to-stop-comparingthe-treatment-of-animals-to-american-slavery-10319301.html. Accessed 6 December 2017. NetPol. (2019). Domestic Extremism Definition. The Network for Police Monitoring. Available at: https://netpol.org/domestic-extremism/definingdomestic-extremism/. Accessed 29 October 2019. Nibert, D. (2002). Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Nibert, D. (2017). Animal Oppression and Capitalism (2 Vols.). ABC-CLIO. Nocella, A. J., II, Sorenson, J., Socha, K., & Matsuoka, A. (Eds.). (2014). Defining Critical Animal Studies—An Intersectional Social Justice Approach for Liberation. New York: Peter Lang. Noske, B. (1989). Humans and Other Animals: Beyond the Boundaries of Anthropology. Pluto Press.

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Nurse, A. (2011). Policing Wildlife: Perspectives on Criminality in Wildlife Crime. Papers from the British Criminology Conference, 11, 38–53. Nurse, A. (2013). Animal Harm: Perspectives On Why People Harm and Kill Animals. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Nurse, A. (2016). An Introduction to Green Criminology and Environmental Justice. London: Sage. Peggs, K. (2013). The ‘Animal-Advocacy Agenda’: Exploring Sociology for Non-human Animals. The Sociological Review, 61, 591–606. Piazzaa, J., Ruby, M. B., Loughnan, S., Luong, M., Kulik, J., Watkins, H. M., et al. (2015). Rationalizing Meat Consumption. The 4Ns. Appetite, 91(1), 114–128. Qian, F., Liu, G., Hu, F. B., Bhupathiraju, S. N., & Sun, Q. (2019). Association Between Plant-Based Dietary Patterns and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. JAMA Internal Medicine, 179 (10), 1335–1344. Regan, T. (1983). The Case for Animal Rights. London and New York: Routledge. Regan, T. (2005). Empty Cages. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Ripple, W. J., Wolf, C., Newsome, T. M., Galetti, M., Alamgir, M., Crist, E., et al. (2017). World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice. BioScience, 67, 1026–1028. Ryder, R. (1989). Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes Towards Speciesism. London: McFarland. Ryder, R. (1998). The Political Animal: The Conquest of Speciesism. London: McFarland. Ryder, R. (2000). Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes Towards Speciesism. Oxford: Blackwell. Salleh, A. (1989). Stirrings of a New Renaissance. Island Magazine, 8, 26–31. Sanders, B. (2018). Global Animal Slaughter Statistics and Charts. Faunalytics. Available at: https://faunalytics.org/global-animal-slaughter-statisticsand-charts/. Accessed 29 October 2019. Schlembach, R. (2018). Undercover Policing and the Spectre of ‘Domestic Extremism’: The Covert Surveillance of Environmental Activism in Britain. Social Movement Studies, 17 (5), 491–506. Singer, P. (1975). Animal Liberation. New York: Review Books. Sobal, J. (2005). Men, Meat, And Marriage: Models of Masculinity. Food and Foodways, 13(1–2), 135–158. Springmann, M., Godfray, H. C. J., Rayner, M., & Scarborough, P. (2016). Analysis and Valuation of the Health and Climate Change Cobenefits of

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Dietary Change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(15), 4146–4151. Stanko, E. (2001). The Day to Count: Reflections on a Methodology to Raise Awareness About the Impact of Domestic Violence in the UK. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 1, 215–226. Stephens Griffin, N. D., & Griffin, N. C. (2019). A Millennial Methodology? Autoethnographic Research in Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Punk and Activist Communities. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 20 (3), Art. 3 [47 paragraphs]. Stephens-Griffin, N. D. (2017). Understanding Veganism: Biography and Identity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Taylor, N., & Fitzgerald, A. (2018). Understanding Animal (Ab)Use: Green Criminological Contributions, Missed Opportunities and a Way Forward. Theoretical Criminology, 22(3), 402–425. Taylor, N., & Twine, R. (2015). The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: From the Margins to the Centre. Oxford: Routledge. Tombs, S. (2007). Violence, Safety Crimes and Criminology. British Journal of Criminology, 47 (4), 531–550. Torres, B. (2007). Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights. Oakland, CA: AK Press. Tovey, H. (2003). Theorising Nature and Society in Sociology: The Invisibility of Animals. Sociologia Ruralis, 43(3), 196–215. Twine, R. (2012). Revealing the ‘Animal-Industrial Complex’—A Concept and Method for Critical Animal Studies? Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 10 (1), 12–39. Twine, R., & Taylor, N. (Eds.). (2014). The Rise of Critical Animal Studies From the Margins to the Centre. London: Routledge. Vegan Society. (2019a, March 8). Influential Women in the Vegan Movement. Vegan Society Website. Available at: https://www.vegansociety.com/ whats-new/blog/influential-women-vegan-movement. Accessed 28 October 2019. Vegan Society. (2019b). Statistics on Veganism. Vegan Society Website. Available at: https://www.vegansociety.com/news/media/statistics. Accessed 28 October 2019. Viva! (2019). The Slaughter of Farmed Animals in the UK. Viva International Voice for Animals Website. Available at: https://www.viva.org.uk/what-we-do/ slaughter/slaughter-farmed-animals-uk. Accessed 28 October 2019. Walker, A. (2019, August 12). Goldsmiths Bans Beef from University Cafes to Tackle Climate Crisis. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.thegua

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Part IV Social Harm: Visions and Futures

13 Crime, Harm and Justice: The Utopia of Harm and Realising Justice in a ‘Good Society’ Lynne Copson

Introduction Critical criminologists have long and frequently highlighted the failure of criminal justice systems to operate impartially and realise justice. They have also revealed the tendency of criminal justice systems to produce more harm than they address and to target the actions of the relatively powerless at the expense of more powerful actors such as states and corporations (Hall et al. 1978; Coleman et al. 2009; Reiman and Leighton 2016). While many critical scholars have sought to address these limitations in order to better achieve justice, this chapter argues that such attempts frequently result in a reification of existing justice paradigms rather than more fundamental challenges to them. Instead, it argues, a more radical holistic reimagining of society, inspired by a social harm perspective, is required. L. Copson (B) Open University, Milton Keynes, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_13

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The chapter starts by identifying 5 key criticisms that critical criminologists and zemiologists alike have made of criminal justice that reveal its function as a system of injustice rather than justice. It then proceeds to identify two major responses to these shortcomings. These are identified broadly as impulses of reform and abolition, respectively. Highlighting in particular the role of penal abolitionism—a perspective both theoretically and practically committed to the abolition of criminal justice in general and the use of prisons in particular—the chapter argues that even approaches emerging from penal abolitionism risk implicitly if unintentionally reifying criminal justice. Such approaches are compared and contrasted with the more recent emergence of zemiology (or the study of social harm) which, it is argued, holds out significant promise for challenging the dominant and problematic conception of justice underpinning criminal justice. Specifically, the chapter shows how zemiology ‘encourages an openingup of understandings and responses to social problems beyond traditional disciplinary confines in order to produce greater social justice’ (Copson 2021: 178) by presenting ‘harm’ as a ‘replacement discourse’ (Henry and Milovanovic 2000: 71) to that of crime. In doing so, zemiology has the capacity to promote a ‘utopia of harm’ understood as a holistic reimagining of society and social processes in ways that, drawing on the work of Mannheim ([1936] 1960), transcend the status quo. However, the realisation of this utopia is by no means assured and, as this chapter concludes, much will depend on how the zemiological perspective is developed and used in the future.

Background The judicial system in general, and the criminal justice system in particular, is commonly held to be a key site for delivering justice by the liberal democratic societies of the Global North. However, in reality criminal justice systems reflect a particular conception of justice, how it is best achieved, and a particular standpoint from which these are determined. In doing so, they not only shape definitions, perceptions and experiences

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of what is harmful or unjust (or not), but also they theoretically legitimise and practically inflict further injustices. The limitations of criminal justice and the effectiveness of criminal justice processes for realising justice, both in theory and in practice, have long been recognised by critical scholars. The extent to which criminal justice systems effectively realise justice either within their own terms or more broadly, as well as their role in perpetuating and legitimating injustice and power inequalities have been questioned (Hillyard and Tombs 2007; Hudson 2006; Reiman and Leighton 2016). Consequently, there have been numerous attempts within criminology to tackle the shortcomings of criminal justice systems in order to deliver justice and address harm (see Matthews 2014). These range from attempts to reform criminal justice systems in order to address these shortcomings and better achieve justice in their own terms, and efforts to abolish them entirely. Penal abolitionists have been central in highlighting how criminal justice systems are inimical to justice and present manifestations of inequality, power and control. Arguing for the abolition of criminal justice in general, and prisons in particular, penal abolitionism embodies a form of praxis that ties a theoretical commitment to social change with a practical project concerned with dismantling ‘“criminal justice” logic and practice’ (Coyle and Schept 2018: 320). Theoretically, practically and politically, penal abolitionists fundamentally seek the development of a society in which prisons no longer exist, rather than the reform or improvement of prison systems. They do this not simply by theorising about penal abolitionism but through a practical commitment to building ‘new cultural institutions and practices’ (Coyle 2018: 336) that overthrow criminal justice systems, logics and processes. However, this is advanced through various means. For example, in searching for new institutions and practices, some penal abolitionists have advocated alternative processes through which justice might better be realised, including restorative justice programmes and the development of therapeutic communities (Ruggiero 2011; Scott 2013; Scott and Gosling 2016a, b). However, such measures often risk co-option within criminal justice systems rather than succeeding in fundamentally challenging them because they take criminal justice as the starting point for both theoretical analysis and practical reform (Copson 2016a).

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As a consequence, such approaches often end up offering an approach to penal abolition that is more figurative than literal. Others, such as Michael Coyle, highlight the dominance and internalisation of criminal justice logic within academic research (Coyle and Schept 2018: 320– 321) and argue for the importance of language in challenging paradigms of crime and criminal justice and realising the abolition of prisons (Coyle 2016, 2018). Specifically, Coyle calls for a ‘new era’ of penal abolitionism, with ‘new intellectual constructs’ (2016: 19), that avoids recourse to the language of crime, criminology and criminal justice and ‘invite[s] a discourse and a praxis that will...destroy structures of oppression that are centuries old’ (2018: 336). The approach advocated by Coyle resonates with zemiology, which takes as its starting the holistic analysis of social harms. In doing so, it avoids recourse to the language of crime and focus on criminal justice and ensures that questions of criminal justice and responses to criminal harms are not divorced from other aspects of social justice, such as health, education, the environment, housing or employment (see Copson 2021). Therefore, with the emergence of the social harm approach arguably comes an opportunity to radically reimagine justice in ways that perspectives within criminology have previously been unable. Through the holistic analysis of social problems it advances, the social harm perspective creates an opportunity to reimagine justice holistically and an invitation to imagine what a ‘good society’ might entail. It is in this way that the zemiological approach may start to be considered as offering a ‘utopia of harm’. In doing so, it builds on burgeoning interest in utopianism amongst critical scholars of crime and justice (see Malloch and Munro 2013; Bell and Scott 2016; Copson and Boukli 2020). While this might sound counterintuitive—utopias are often considered to be perfect, if impossible, places—it is important to recognise that there are various ways of understanding the term ‘utopia’ (Levitas 1990). One interpretation sees utopias as ‘alternative holistic models of society [... that] encourage us to think about the interrelationships of social processes’ (Levitas 2001: 450). Another, following the German sociologist Karl Mannheim, is as ideas which challenge the status quo and bring about the creation of a new social order. For Mannheim ([1936] 1960), these ideas are distinguished from ideology

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or ideas which reinforce and legitimate the social order. In the context of this chapter, therefore, utopia is understood not as a blueprint to be imposed, but as a process of opening up new horizons and reimagining the social world. In this sense, the shift to social harm as an organising concept and object of study as proposed by zemiologists facilitates what Levitas calls ‘the imaginary reconstitution of society’ (2007): it encourages us to imagine justice and the interrelationships of social processes and institutions, as well as the organisation of society holistically. In doing so, following Mannheim, these ideas have the potential to reimagine justice and challenge the status quo that a focus on criminal justice as the primary site for realising justice serves ideologically to reinforce (Copson 2016a). However, it does not necessarily entail these things. The germs of this more holistic vision can be recognised in changing approaches to tackling crimes such as problem drug use or knife crime, which are increasingly viewed as public health issues. However, the enduring legacy of the social harm perspective remains undetermined.

Criminal (In)Justice The criminal justice system, particularly as it has been designed, developed and often imposed by the western liberal democracies of the Global North, has long-presented a dominant account of what justice is and how best it is achieved. A criminal justice system typically presents a codified system of formal, procedural justice which ‘sets down legitimate processes for determining rule-breaches, offers protections for the accused, and governs who should make such determinations’ (Dekker and Breakey 2016: 188). It is underpinned by principles of proportionality, impartiality and equality before the law, reflected in the idea that ‘justice is blind’. However, since the emergence and development of critical criminology during the second half of the twentieth century, criminal justice systems and their capacity for realising justice have been challenged.

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Criminal justice is criticised particularly for its failure to achieve justice both in theory and practice. In summary, five key criticisms of criminal justice can be identified: Criminal justice causes excessive and disproportionate harm Criminal justice is not impartial Criminal justice only renders a select subsection of harms justiciable Criminal justice invites a limited range of responses to harm, many of which are ineffective Criminal justice privileges particular perspectives in the definition and administration of justice to the exclusion of others

Each of these five criticisms will now be explored in turn. 1. Criminal justice causes excessive and disproportionate harm Criminal justice has been criticised for producing greater harms than those it claims to address. For example, common sanctions, such as a fine or imprisonment, or even simply the possession of a criminal record, can ‘create wider social harms—which may bear little relationship to the original offence and pain caused’ (Hillyard and Tombs 2007: 14). These may include loss of one’s job, loss of home and social ostracism (Hillyard and Tombs 2007: 14), the effects of which may last a lifetime. The inability of offenders, many of whom are often already socioeconomically deprived and vulnerable, to fulfil the requirements of sentences, such as paying a fine, can lead to a ‘revolving door’ of offending. For example, Jo Phoenix describes how sex workers may either engage in further offending as a means of getting money to pay fines imposed on them or find themselves subject to a further penalty—such as imprisonment—when they are unable to pay a fine (Phoenix 2008: 301). Moreover, the impacts of criminal justice interventions are often felt widely, affecting not only individuals convicted of a crime but their friends and family members, most notably, their children (SSCJR 2019; Beresford 2018). Consequently, it undermines the principle that criminal justice systems should respond to crimes in proportion to the harm or wrong done.

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In addition, the prison in particular has been described as a system of ‘pain delivery’ (Christie 1981) with the so-called ‘pains of imprisonment’ (Sykes 1958) well-documented (see Jewkes 2005; Crewe 2011). However, these pains are not borne equally by all members of society. Research has pointed to their differential and disproportionate impact on certain groups, including women (Genders and Players 1987), foreign national (Warr 2016), immigrant and transgender prisoners (Longazel et al. 2016). While this is particularly evident in the context of imprisonment, it is equally true in relation to other forms of penalty, including fines and community service, for example (Malloch and McIvor 2011; Quilter and Hogg 2018). This therefore undermines the principle of equality upon which criminal justice is founded. 2. Criminal justice is not impartial As the unequal experience of the pains of imprisonment shows, formal equality before the law in theory can nevertheless result in substantive inequality in practice. That is, even where the same penalty is formally imposed, the impacts may not be felt equally. Think, for example, of a fine of £500. The implications of this fine and the costs involved will likely feel quite different for someone living below the poverty line than it might for a millionaire. As a consequence, there are concerns that, even if intended to be impartial in theory, the administration of criminal justice is not impartial in practice. Such worries stem, in part, from a concern that the disproportionate impact of criminal justice penalties which are necessarily mediated by structural inequalities cannot be recognised or accounted for in a formal system of procedural justice. Such issues reflect the ways in which the focus on procedural justice underpinned by a principle of formal equality before the law within criminal justice systems, abstracts justice from the broader contexts and circumstances in which individuals and events are situated. While sentencing guidelines within criminal justice systems may make some provision for mitigating factors such as a previous good record, ‘mental disturbance, financial pressures’ or a guilty plea (Ashworth 2002: 1094–1095) they are limited in scope and typically cannot take into account the structural factors that critical

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criminologists and social harm theorists alike recognise as important for understanding how and why particular groups of people—most notably the socially and economically marginalised—find themselves overrepresented as offenders and defendants in criminal justice systems around the world. More significantly, these measures fail to recognise or address concerns that the criminal justice system not only fails in its aims to be impartial, but operates fundamentally as a system of injustice as a result of systemic and institutional discrimination which influences the administration of justice. Evidence for this stems from analyses of the overrepresentation of particular socioeconomic and cultural groups within criminal justice systems and analyses of their experiences. Most notable amongst these is the overrepresentation of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) young men in both criminal justice statistics in general, and in prisons in particular. Data from the UK reveals that BAME people are more likely to be stopped and searched, arrested, prosecuted and convicted of crimes than their white counterparts and are also more likely to receive more severe sentences (Institute of Race Relations 2020). Similar patterns are also found in other countries of the Global North (see, e.g., JUSTICIA European Rights Network; The Sentencing Project 2018). Importantly, this is not simply a case of unwitting bias or the logical outcome of the disproportionate focus upon particular social groups, though that may play some role. Rather, evidence suggests a much more systemic use of power to marginalise and oppress already marginalised groups. This was perhaps most notable in the UK in Sir William Macpherson’s (1999) report following the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry—a public inquiry into the racially-motivated murder of an 18-year-old black man on 22 April 1993. The inquiry found both the individual police force involved (the Metropolitan Police Service) as well as other police services and national institutions to be ‘institutionally racist’. Meanwhile, critical scholars have continued to highlight the ways in which criminal justice processes are used to target and control particular minority communities who are presented as a threat to the dominant social order (Hall et al. 1978; Burnett 2009; Pantazis and Pemberton 2009).

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3. Criminal justice only renders a select subsection of harms justiciable Reflecting this view of criminal justice as a means of exercising power, control and reifying the dominant social order, criminal justice systems have also been criticised for their tendency to render only a certain subsection of harms justiciable. Specifically, criminal justice logics and paradigms typically ensure that only those forms of harm that fit the established criminal justice paradigm can be rendered justiciable, and only to the extent that they fit this paradigm. These are typically those forms of harm that can be attributed to an individual for whom direct responsibility for an incident can be attributed, rather than more powerful social actors such as states and corporations. Since Edwin Sutherland (Sutherland 1945, [1949] 1983) first introduced the concept of white-collar crime, critical criminologists have drawn attention to the ways in which criminal justice definitions and processes focus on the behaviours of often the most socioeconomically disadvantaged, while leaving unaddressed the analogously harmful activities of the socioeconomically powerful (Pearce 1976; Reiman and Leighton 2016). For example, the number of occupational accidents and diseases resulting in deaths far outstrips those resulting from homicide (Tombs 2007; Reiman and Leighton 2016). Yet such deaths are typically prosecuted as regulatory offences such as breaches of health and safety law rather than as manslaughter, if they are prosecuted at all. Notwithstanding the difficulties in prosecuting corporate bodies (Pemberton 2004; Hillyard and Tombs 2007; Tombs and Whyte 2015), as Nicola Lacey and colleagues have highlighted, treating such deaths as simple regulatory offences rather crime ‘both results from and reinforces the notion that some criminal offences are neither “really” criminal nor violent, despite causing death or serious injury’ (Wells and Quick 2010: 654). Meanwhile, zemiologists have pointed out in their critique of formal criminal justice systems, the ways in which these systems also leave unaddressed a significant range of wider, structural harms for which no individual or group can be held responsible, including for example, such harms as those resulting from neoliberal capitalism, sexism, racism,

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ableism, heterosexism and other forms of structural inequality (Hillyard et al. 2004). This is despite the fact that such systems can be just as harmful—if not more harmful—than many of the harms that are criminalised. Through a focus on individualised, discrete instances of abstracted harms, the criminal justice system neglects a whole host of structural harms for which no clear, direct and identifiable agent can be held responsible. In doing so, it fails to recognise such harms as unjust— they are instead presented as ‘natural’ or ‘inevitable’ features of social life—outside the scope of formal criminal justice intervention. 4. Criminal justice invites a limited range of responses to harm, many of which are ineffective One consequence of adopting this narrow view of those harms which are justiciable is that criminal justice systems also necessarily imply a limited range of responses to those harms they do recognise. The judiciary have recourse to a limited range of sentencing measures, such as imprisonment, fines and community service as means of punishing, deterring and/or rehabilitating offenders. However, these all focus on addressing the behaviour of individual offenders—reflecting their status as the perceived primary cause of the crime or harm. In this way, the criminal justice system implies that the focus of justice should be upon the behaviour of individuals, leaving unaddressed the broader social conditions in which criminal events, victims and offenders are situated (Christie 1977; Reiman and Leighton 2016). Indeed, Nils Christie highlights the tendency for criminal justice systems to abstract harms, problems or ‘conflicts’ (Christie 1977) from their wider social context. This has been a key area of criticism for both penal abolitionists and zemiologists. In particular, both Nils Christie (1977) and Louk Hulsman (1991) have highlighted the way in which the criminal justice system stages and presents social problems in particular ways. Specifically, within criminal justice systems, cases are typically brought by the state against a particular individual or group of individuals, with victims of crime typically cast, at best, in the role of witness.

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In addition to concerns about the failure of criminal justice interventions to address the underlying social causes of crime, there is also scepticism regarding their effectiveness for tackling the harms of the powerful. For example, there is a limited range of criminal justice sanctions available for corporate wrongdoing. Corporations usually find themselves facing fines (Tombs and Whyte 2015; Whyte 2019). Despite sounding costly, in reality such fines typically form a small proportion of a company’s income (Greife and Maume 2020). Moreover, these costs are rarely borne by the companies themselves—with any additional costs normally absorbed or passed on to consumers or workers (Tombs and Whyte 2015). For example, in 2010 the oil company, BP, was prosecuted in relation to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill that occurred at a deep-water oil rig located in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite receiving a then record fine of $65 billion, as Dave Whyte notes, ‘those fines failed to make any difference to BP’s profit over safety approach to management’ and ‘[t]he bill for Deepwater Horizon has […] been absorbed largely by the recent sharp rise in oil prices’ (2019: 297). Such examples raise questions therefore, about both how effective criminal justice responses are in achieving justice either in their own terms or more broadly, as well as in whose interests they operate. 5. Criminal justice privileges particular perspectives in the definition and administration of justice to the exclusion of others There have been accusations that criminal justice typically privileges particular voices and neglects, or actively excludes, others. For example, criminal justice stands accused of failing to recognise the needs and experiences of victims in general. It is also accused of delivering ‘white man’s justice’ (Hudson 2006)—that is, a particular account of justice, as determined from the standpoint of white, middle-aged, socioeconomically privileged men, from the western liberal states of the Global North. In doing so, criminal justice systems at best neglect alternative perspectives regarding both what justice is and how to achieve it, and, at worst, actively silence them (Hudson 2006). In doing so, they arguably inflict further injustices.

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In recent years, for example, increasing attention has been brought to issues such as indigenous justice, environmental justice and species justice, with critical scholars pointing out that the ways in which justice is defined and implemented by the powerful countries of the Global North do not always reflect or represent the perspectives of other, less socially and economically powerful groups (Cunneen and Tauri 2019; Westerhuis et al. 2013). In such circumstances, the administration of criminal justice as defined by the western liberal democracies of the Global North can often feel less like justice and more like injustice.

Summarising the Limitations of Criminal Justice In summary, these limitations of the criminal justice system for realising justice both in its own terms and more broadly indicate that, rather than being a system of justice, criminal justice systems are perhaps more appropriately understood as systems of injustice. As Anthony Pemberton (2020: 361) highlights, it is important to recognise that injustice is not simply a failure to realise a pre-defined standard of justice but a distinct experience, an ‘ontological assault ’ upon taken-for-granted ways of being in the world. To say that criminal justice is a system of injustice, therefore is not to simply say that criminal justice systems fail to achieve justice in their own terms—although this may be true and this has certainly been a site of criticism and reform for some. Rather it is to highlight their role in actively producing injustice through the systemic marginalisation and oppression of particular sociocultural groups—most notably women, BAME groups and those from the Global South. Following Anthony Pemberton (2020), underpinning such criminal justice systems is a logic that interprets justice in terms of preserving an established social order rather than interrogating what justice is or how it might be realised in practice. In this way, the criticisms highlighted show how criminal justice systems are not only accused of failing to realise their own ideal of impartial, proportionate, equitable justice, but actually operate to inflict injustice, by reflecting and reinforcing the dominant social order and the

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interests of the socioeconomically powerful. Meanwhile, they systematically neglect the experiences and needs of victims and offenders and the circumstances in which criminal harms arise, and legitimise many of the most significant harms people experience within society.

Responding to Criminal (In)Justice These shortcomings of criminal justice systems are well-recognised and have animated the search for alternative approaches to realising justice in both theory and practice, particularly amongst critical criminologists. Included amongst these have been attempts to adopt alternative means of realising and distributing justice, such as restorative justice approaches and the further inclusion of victims in criminal justice procedures through, for example, increasing use of victim impact statements (Strang and Sherman 2003; Dignan [2007] 2012; Sanders and Jones [2007] 2012; Copson 2016a). However, there is a division between attempts which seek to reform the criminal justice system in order to better achieve justice and those who argue for its total abolition. This is ‘a tension that strikes at the very heart of the criminological project itself, reflecting criminology’s normative concern with questions of “justice”, and its practical project concerned to develop policies to address crime and/or harm’ (Copson 2016a: 79; see also Copson 2013). It also reflects the distinction noted above, between efforts to improve the administration of criminal justice in its own terms in order to achieve justice, and approaches which deny the possibility of this, viewing criminal justice paradigms instead as fundamentally systems of injustice, power and control.

Reforming Criminal Justice Some critical scholars advocate to improve the existing criminal justice system, to address its shortcomings and better achieve justice. This approach is reflected, for example, in the work of those feminist criminologists who have sought to better recognise, in both policy and

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legislation, the harms of domestic abuse and sexual violence (Cook and Jones [2007] 2012; Walklate 2008). It is also found in attempts to reduce the excessive and unequal harms of criminal justice sanctions for particular social groups, particularly women (Carlen 2002; Corston 2007; Scottish Government 2012). It is underpinned by an implicit view that the ideal of justice animating criminal justice is essentially unproblematic, it is simply the disjuncture between this ideal and its realisation in practice that needs addressing. Others, however, suggest a more radical alternative—one that fundamentally dismantles and replaces existing criminal justice responses—is necessary for achieving justice: anything short of this will not only fail to address the harms and inequalities perpetuated by criminal justice, but will necessarily reproduce and reinforce existing inequalities and the silencing of the already marginalised. As Barbara Hudson (2006: 30–31) puts it: Those who argue for ‘law’s progressive potential’ are generally arguing for use of legal measures to reinforce the message that dominant society is against certain behaviours and for the provision of effective remedies for acknowledged harms.

In particular, she notes that the harms experienced by women and BAME groups are typically only acknowledged and addressed to the extent that they can be presented within liberal, western paradigms of justice, determined from the perspective of white men. The distinction between these approaches arguably reflects a divergence in what is seen as the central problem with criminal justice. Those who focus on reforming criminal justice arguably reflect a view that the primary problem with criminal justice processes is their failure to achieve justice in their own terms or fulfil a pre-defined standard of justice. For others, it is not simply that criminal justice fails to achieve justice in its own terms, it is that it is fundamentally a system of injustice to which a radical alternative is needed. Notable amongst these are penal abolitionists.

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Abolishing Criminal Justice Penal abolitionism is a critical perspective both theoretically and practically committed to the abolition of the criminal justice system in general and the use of prison in particular. It is underpinned by a view of justice as social justice. This radical vision of justice promotes the holistic redistribution of social goods (Scott 2007: 78). Reflecting this, its proponents advocate for alternative structures for realising justice, that better recognise and respond to the needs of victims, offenders and communities, and which treat crimes as social problems rather than expressions of individual pathology or failure. In addition to advocating approaches which return ‘conflicts’ to the individuals and communities directly involved in them (Christie 1977) in similar ways to restorative justice (Ruggiero 2011; Ryan and Ward 2015), they argue for alternative approaches to imprisonment. Amongst these, David Scott and Helena Gosling have advocated the development of therapeutic communities as a radical, ‘abolitionist real utopia’ (Scott 2013) alternative to imprisonment (Scott and Gosling 2016a, b). These are systems that ‘are predicated upon helping the individual rather than punishing them’ and offer ‘a progressive and contradictory space that undermines the logic of penalisation because its overriding philosophy is fundamentally grounded in humanitarian values such as empathy, respect for oneself and respect for others’ (Scott and Gosling 2016b: 182). Described as an alternative intervention ‘before, instead of , and better than’ prison (Scott and Gosling 2016a: 53), genuine therapeutic communities offer spaces which recognise individuals and their needs holistically, listen to their needs and voices, and promote self-directed, community-supported strategies of change to reduce harms.

Zemiology and Abolitionism The concept of harm is also of central importance to zemiology. However, while the concept of harm is important to both abolitionism and zemiology, abolitionism nevertheless typically takes its starting point

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as a criticism of the criminal justice system (Copson 2016a). This is important because it facilitates the co-option of intended radical alternatives as ‘add-ons’ (Mathiesen 1986: 86) to criminal justice. Too often apparently radical measures that have been intended to address the inequalities and injustices perpetuated by criminal justice systems have found themselves absorbed within them, presenting a veneer of respectability and social justice to a fundamentally unjust system—a risk which is well-recognised by abolitionists themselves (Ruggiero 2011; Scott and Gosling 2016a, b). For example, even measures developed to try to better recognise the experiences of victims and tackle some of the problems with criminal justice, such as victim impact statements and restorative justice measures are often absorbed within existing criminal justice systems, as sites of reform rather than radical change (Copson 2016a). As Anthony Pemberton points out: ‘[m]uch of the currently existing modes of participation and input for victims can be viewed as attempts to create spaces of countering injustice within the landscape of justice processes’ (2020: 375). When individuals have experienced an ‘ontological assault’ that disrupts their self identity, such as when they have been a victim of crime, participation through victim impact statements and restorative justice measures can offer a means for challenging established criminal justice processes and the concept of justice underpinning them, calling attention not just to their failure to achieve justice in their own terms, but questioning the role such processes play in the systemic infliction of further injustice. However, as Pemberton also highlights, ‘the hedged off game-like quality of a process of law’ undermines this potential, focussing instead on orienting such contributions to achieving a pre-defined goal of criminal justice, such as shaping sentencing (2020: 375–376). In this way, intended radical alternatives often find themselves transmogrified into reforms of existing criminal justice processes as a result of the pervasiveness of criminal justice logics: they improve the internal administration of justice according to criminal justice systems’ own aims, but do not counter the systemic injustice they inflict. In doing so they implicitly serve to reinforce the status quo and ideologically

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(in Mannheim’s sense) reinforce criminal justice systems, lending them respectability, rather than truly dismantling or transcending them. The root of this problem arguably lies in the tendency for such penal abolitionists to take criminal justice processes as both the focus of their critique and the practical starting point for dismantling the criminal justice paradigm. In doing so, such approaches necessarily continue to implicitly take for granted the importance of crime and criminal justice paradigms as the starting point for effecting social change and, as a consequence, can struggle to escape it (Copson 2016a). This may be contrasted with the approach of other penal abolitionists who highlight the pervasiveness of criminal justice logics for shaping research and policy agendas (Coyle and Schept 2018). They instead emphasise the importance of new concepts and language as the starting point for escaping criminal justice paradigms and the injustices they inflict (Coyle 2016, 2018).

Realising Justice in a ‘Good Society’ In its focus on identifying new forms of language as a starting point for challenging the injustices of criminal justice and analysing and responding to social problems more effectively, zemiology both resonates with, and distinguishes itself from, penal abolitionism. Zemiology takes as its starting point the holistic analysis of social problems without necessary recourse to the language of crime or a focus upon criminal justice. With this comes an opportunity to reimagine justice and society holistically. Like abolitionism, the focus on social harm within zemiology offers an implicit alternative vision of justice which challenges that reflected and reinforced by criminal justice processes. As with abolitionism, this can broadly be described as a view of justice as social justice. Zemiology also similarly presents a challenge to the vision of justice that is reinforced by the language of crime and, by extension, criminology in all its guises. However, unlike penal abolitionism, zemiology is not primarily animated by a commitment to penal abolition although it is likely many of its proponents would support it. Indeed, to even call oneself a penal abolitionist necessarily arguably continues to invoke the language of criminal justice. Rather, zemiology arguably presents the logical conclusion of

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the approach advocated by Coyle in that it seeks to escape recourse to the language of criminal justice and penal systems in their entirety by establishing an alternative discourse around social harm. In doing so, zemiology facilitates an alternative vision of justice to that reflected by criminal justice paradigms and encourages ‘the imaginary reconstitution of society’ (Levitas 2007) through the analysis of social harm. Specifically, zemiologists argue ‘[a]ll forms of harms [...] must be considered and analysed together. Otherwise a very distorted view of the world will be produced’ (Hillyard et al. 2004: 2). So too must justice demand a more holistic reimagining of society that reflects and responds to all such forms of harm. Since criminal justice systems can be considered but one element of the way in which we organise society they cannot ever represent or fulfil the demands of justice in their entirety. This social harm approach implies a vision of justice that is sensitive to different knowledges and experiences through the emphasis it places on the ‘subjugated knowledges’ neglected by criminal justice processes (Hillyard and Tombs 2007: 21; see also Copson 2016a: 88). These are those forms of knowledge which ‘have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naïve knowledges located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity’ (Foucault [1976] 1980: 82). They include the voices of those marginalised by the ‘white man’s justice’ of the Global North noted previously. In this way, zemiology seeks to find new ways of doing justice. It is a perspective, therefore, that is committed to giving voice to alternative perspectives on what justice is and how it might be realised in practice that subvert and challenge the established social order and the models of justice that currently maintain it.

The Utopia of Harm Understood in this way, zemiology can be considered to contain within it an impulse that challenges the status quo that has been reflected and reinforced by the focus on criminal justice both as the primary site for realising justice and , for critical scholars, the starting point for reimagining justice (Copson 2016a). It is in these ways that we might begin to

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talk about ‘the utopia of harm’ implicit within zemiology. It is important to understand that this is not a utopia understood as a blueprint or goal for the good society, but more as a process of opening up possibilities for imagining a good society, that is imagining society in a different way— as it might be hoped for—that transcends and overturns existing ways of organising the social world, based on the lived reality of the present (Levitas 2017). Zemiology does this, primarily, by offering harm as a ‘replacement discourse’ to the language of crime, through which it seeks to disrupt established ways of viewing the world and open possibilities for imagining justice—and the social world more widely—differently. A ‘replacement discourse’ can be understood as ‘the attempt to substitute new, less harmful discursive practices and their associated constructions for those that are more harmful’ (Henry and Milovanovic 2000: 271). The origins of this concept lie in the subdiscipline of constitutive criminology. This is a subdivision of critical criminology which views knowledge, including criminological knowledge, as a form of discourse that is produced and used to express or resist power (Henry and Milovanovic 2000: 270). Like other critical criminologists, constitutive criminologists are critical of criminal justice as a source of great harm. They are also committed to the realisation of social justice, which, they argue, can only begin with a dismantling of discourses around crime and criminal justice and their replacement with an alternative. The focus on social harm operates in this way to present a purposive attempt to challenge existing relations of production through the establishment of an alternative discourse to that of crime[…]. It also encourages an opening up of understandings and responses to social problems beyond traditional disciplinary confines in order to produce greater social justice. (Copson 2021: 178)

Zemiological Justice By severing any direct reference to crime, moreover, this perspective reflects a more holistic notion of justice than that reflected in criminal justice systems. Instead of rendering only a small subsection of harms

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justiciable, for zemiologists issues such as access to health care, housing, education, recreation or environmental well-being are seen as fundamental to achieving justice and are not distinct from or subordinate to the harms and injustices currently dealt with by criminal justice interventions. Nor do particular views of justice, specifically those that reflect and serve the interests of the socially and economically powerful, or that prioritise the views of humans over other non-human animals or the environment, dominate. If anything, the emphasis on giving voice to ‘subjugated knowledges’ within zemiology emancipates ideas of harm and justice from both the purview of criminal justice and the standpoint of white, privileged, western men from the Global North whose interests such justice systems serve. Moreover, it actively counters the injustices of criminal justice paradigms outlined previously in this chapter. By seeking alternative accounts of what is harmful, how harm might be addressed and where it is manifest, a focus on social harm promotes the holistic analysis of social problems and responses to them, outside criminal justice paradigms. In doing so, it challenges the established forms of power and social order those paradigms serve. One way of doing this, for example, is in the suggested development of ‘life-histories and biographies’ in order ‘to produce objective measures of what people consider are the most harmful events so that an index of harm can be produced’ (Hillyard et al. 2004: 268). Such approaches not only facilitate the unearthing of alternative concepts of what justice is—or might be—as viewed from different standpoints, but also alternative suggestions for how it might be achieved in practice without recourse to the limited range of responses offered by criminal justice systems. By emphasising the holistic analysis of harms, zemiologists emphasise the indivisibility of experiences of harm—and the means to remedying them—from broader questions of justice across all areas of social life: how we source food, how we educate people, how we travel to work, how we treat the sick and elderly. I have explored these ideas in my own work considering the danger of contemporary penal populism in the context of mass incarceration (Copson 2014: 62):

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questions of penal policy cannot (and, crucially, should not) be abstracted from such questions as housing policy, welfare provision, education, healthcare or taxation: we need to consider society as a whole, in order to understand current responses to crime and justice as a particular expression of more universal organizing principles and, ultimately, to create a ‘space of hope’ [(Harvey 2000)], in which the status quo (including but not limited to, penal policy-making) can be more effectively challenged.

By emphasising social harm and the voicing of ‘subjugated knowledges’ zemiology encourages a more joined-up approach to social problems. This is an approach that not only resists the dominance of criminal justice systems as the primary site for realising justice but actively challenges it. It does this by implying a view of justice in terms of a more fundamental reimagining of society as a whole rather than focussing on simply improving or abolishing criminal justice alone.

Reimagining Justice: A Public Health Approach to Homicide This alternative approach to interpreting harm and envisioning justice is perhaps most readily identifiable in analyses of homicide and particularly the work of Danny Dorling, a geographer who specialises in the analysis of social inequalities. Dorling’s contribution to Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously, the leading text which introduced zemiology as a distinct field of study in 2004, analyses homicide data in England and Wales and Scotland, over the twenty-year period between 1981 and 2000 (Dorling 2004). This analysis reveals how patterns of homicide are situated in broader social contexts of inequality and exclusion and must be understood as such. Later, Dorling (2008) is critical of the criminal justice focus on individual acts of homicide at the expense of focussing on broader social conditions and has argued for the need to situate homicide in broader patterns of inequality and mortality. With colleagues, he argues that, in contrast to conventional approaches to criminal justice, murder needs to be understood, not simply as a discrete phenomenon, but as a socially structured one in order to address it effectively. As Shaw et al. note,

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Murder has commonly been perceived as a matter of crime and criminology rather than as a marker of societal or public health. The immediate circumstances of particular deaths have therefore been a primary concern rather than the social and economic environment of murder as a cause of death. (2005: 52)

By emphasising the way in which homicide is situated within broader patterns of inequality and premature mortality that are woven into the very fabric of society, social harm analyses of particular harms, such as that offered by Dorling (2004), anticipate the imagining of a better society. The public health approach advocated by Dorling and colleagues (Shaw et al. 2005) reflects a new way of understanding and responding to social problems which has the potential to dismantle the established paradigm of criminal justice and the harms and injustices associated with it.

Current Developments in Policy and Practice With the limitations of criminal justice well-recognised, there has been a growing shift away from the language of crime and towards adopting the language of harm and public health for conceptualising and responding to social problems. This can be seen in a growing number of specific areas, including problem drug use, knife crime, and the impacts of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matters movement, each of which is discussed briefly below.

Harm Reduction Initiatives The emergence of ‘harm reduction’ initiatives in response to problem drug use reflect a public health approach to the harms associated with drug use and rejection of the punitive criminal justice model associated with the ‘war on drugs’ (see Marlatt 1996). Rather than invoking criminal justice apparatus, harm reduction approaches emphasise a need to understand the harms of drug use holistically in the context of users’ broader circumstances, to reduce the harms associated with drug use as

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far as possible—and the failure of criminal justice paradigms for doing so. Such harm reduction strategies include measures such as providing access to clean needles for intravenous drug users, testing drugs’ purity and providing information and support for drug users who want help to reduce or stop their drug use (see Hunt et al. 2003). Similar approaches have also been advanced in relation to addressing the harms of sex work (see Rekart 2005; Cusick 2006).

A Public Health Approach to Knife Crime There have also been recent calls to adopt a public health approach to understanding violence in general by the World Health Organisation and others (WHO/Europe 2020) and for tackling knife crime in particular (Scottish Government, n.d.). For example, the Mayor of London’s London Knife Crime Strategy (2017: 44) highlights that A public health rather than purely criminal justice approach - that focuses on creating positive change, addressing underlying vulnerabilities, reducing risk factors, and strengthening protective factors has been shown to be most effective in reducing knife crime.

Recognising the need for the development of more holistic, structural responses to addressing harm, it also advocates ‘bringing together partner agencies to provide a comprehensive package of support around health, education, housing and employment’ (Mayor of London 2017: 43) in order to tackle knife crime. The emergence of such approaches reflects growing awareness of the limited scope a focus on criminal justice offers for addressing harms, as well as the need to recognise many harms, particularly those harms that are criminalised, in more holistic ways. That said, its impact should not be overstated and it, like many apparently ‘radical’ alternatives before it, such as those suggested by abolitionists noted previously, remains ripe for co-option within existing criminal justice responses. Indeed, the London Knife Crime Strategy is necessarily focussed upon knife crime and outlines close working relationships with criminal justice services and personnel. As such, it still takes as its starting point criminal harms as

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defined by criminal justice institutions and actors. Equally, those areas where the public health approach has seen most development remain those that have historically been subject to criminalisation, but for which criminalisation has been deemed disproportionate or ineffective in recognising and addressing harm, such as drug use and prostitution. Consequently, it may be questioned whether such approaches are focussed more on remedying and improving existing criminal justice paradigms than fundamentally challenging and dismantling them.

Reimaging Justice in the Context of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matters Finally, there are signs that the public health approach is gaining traction in other areas, most notably following the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on BAME communities and the 2020 Black Lives Matters protests across the Global North. As a result, there are increasing calls to recognise racism and racial inequality or injustice as a public health issue (Singh 2020), reflecting the need to recognise the interconnections between different forms of violence and death and for the holistic reimagining of the social world. As Delan Devakumar and colleagues argue: Society is unwell. The symptoms— racialised violence, and excess morbidity and mortality in minority ethnic populations—reflect the cause: an unjust and unequal society. Scientists and doctors, by remaining technocratic and apolitical, are complicit in perpetuating discrimination. As a health community, we must do more than simply describing inequities in silos, we must act to dismantle systems that perpetuate the multiple intersecting and compounding systems of oppression that give rise to such inequities and injustices. (2020: e112)

Next Steps and Future Directions The development of a growing awareness of public health as an alternative policy response certainly suggest an appetite, at least in some

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quarters, for thinking differently about how we respond to social problems. While the direct relationship between such shifts and the advent of the social harm approach cannot be proven (Copson 2021), it arguably reflects the fact that the time is ripe for thinking differently about justice, what it consists in and how this is best achieved, as well as for potentially reimagining society. As has been highlighted in this chapter, the injustices of the criminal justice system and its failures in recognising and responding to the needs and experiences of victims, offenders and communities are wellrecognised. Yet frequently measures aimed at challenging this system find themselves transmogrified into ideological reinforcements for the existing social order rather than alternatives that challenge it. As such, it remains unclear whether recent moves towards public health reflect a genuine paradigm shift in the conceptualisation and realisation of justice, or simply another ideological tool aimed at reinforcing the status quo. That is, are they animated by a spirit that seeks to challenge the fundamental injustices of existing paradigms and dismantle them or merely improve them? And even if they are animated by such a spirit, given the pervasive logic of criminal justice highlighted by Coyle and Schept (2018) will they nevertheless find themselves manipulated into reinforcing, and legitimising, that logic—as many of the radical efforts of penal abolitionists have been? The following section outlines a number of steps that seem vital if the radical potential of the social harm approach and the utopia of harm it anticipates is to be realised. As the Black Lives Matters movement and the response to the COVID-19 global pandemic bring into relief the insufficiency of criminal justice paradigms for understanding justice, this chapter concludes by arguing that zemiology must establish its distinct contribution to reimagining justice and distinguish itself from criminology if it is to resist ideological co-option and realise the utopia of harm it promises.

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Extending the Public Health Approach The growing momentum of the Black Lives Matters movement and the devastating impact of COVID-19 across the world suggest opportunities to encourage a more holistic understanding of how health and wellbeing are predicated on broader structural inequalities both within and between states, as well as the social systems of health care, education, housing and welfare that are in place. That said, this trajectory should not be overstated. As noted above, the tendency thus far has been to concentrate public health and holistic responses upon areas which usually fall within the purview of criminal justice but where the criminal justice system has been found most wanting. The public health approach is also typically applied in relation to those areas of offending and those groups of people who are most readily perceived as vulnerable, where the lines between victim and offender are more easily blurred in popular and political consciousness, especially young people and women. There thus remains the danger— as with the example of The London Knife Crime Strategy—that this commitment to public health will, too, become an adjunct to established criminal justice regimes, an ideological tool that reinforces the criminal justice status quo, rather than a tentative step towards the utopia of social harm. This risk is heightened by the uneasy and often ambiguous relationship zemiology continues to bear to criminology (Copson 2018, 2021).

Resisting the Language of Crime and Criminology As I have argued elsewhere, ‘[i]f the social harm perspective proposed in Beyond Criminology is not to become an addendum to the criminological enterprise, it must harness its radical potential once more’ (Copson 2021: 185) and resist inclusion within the broader field of criminology. This means reasserting its commitment to the language of social harm and the rejection of crime, to ensure it operates as a true ‘replacement discourse’ that challenges the dominant constructions of social problems and conceptions of justice that are manifest in criminal justice policies.

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The focus must be on showing the connections between different sites of harm to show how they necessarily feed into and reinforce multiple inequalities and injustices and on encouraging a joined up response to address them. As I have argued elsewhere in the context of penal populism and mass imprisonment: What is needed[…] is a means by which we can reconnect[…] particular debates concerning crime, control, and justice to broader, universal concerns and thereby make them relevant and accessible to the general public from whom they have become alienated. (Copson 2016b: 178)

This requires the social harm approach to untether itself from the language of crime and focus on the criminal justice system or its problems as the primary site for action and change as has so often been the case for critical criminological scholars.

Unearthing ‘Subjugated Knowledges’ Developing intellectual commitments to unearthing ‘subjugated knowledges’ and ‘biographies of harm’ might encourage an articulation of harm and, by implication justice, away from the dominant perspectives of privileged white, western, middle-class, middle-aged men from the Global North. Finally, developing the social harm approach means continuing the work of Dorling and others (Shaw et al. 2005; Dorling 2004, 2008; Singh 2020); of finding ways of intervening in current policy debates and issues that highlight the need to think holistically about harm and reimagine what justice is and how it might be realised, beyond and without necessary reference to, criminal justice paradigms.

Summary Conclusion This chapter has identified five key criticisms of criminal justice systems that have been made by critical criminologists and zemiologists and has outlined various responses to these. In particular, it has highlighted a distinction between efforts that have been made to reform criminal

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justice systems so that they might better achieve justice in their own terms, and those which claim the complete abolition of criminal justice is essential for realising justice and countering the injustices wrought by criminal justice paradigms. However, it has argued that any attempts to address the inequalities of criminal justice are necessarily limited so long as they are formed within criminology and take criminal justice as the focus of their analysis and starting point for practically realising alternatives. Frequently recast as ‘add-ons’ (Mathiesen 1986: 86) to established criminal justice systems, they risk operating ideologically to reinforce the status quo rather than radically transcend it. By contrast, the zemiological perspective with its focus on social harm as a ‘replacement discourse’ (Henry and Milovanovic 2000: 71) contains within it a utopian potential to encourage the reimagining of justice through the holistic analysis of harm and ‘subjugated knowledges’ it promotes. This is not an idea of utopia as often understood as the outline of a blueprint to be imposed, but a process of reimagining the social world and what a good society might look like, and an invitation to transcend the status quo. While the first breaths of such an approach developing can be found in contemporary public health initiatives, there remains the very real risk that zemiology will face similar co-option within criminal justice frameworks unless and until it rejects the discourse of crime and finds ways to intervene in current debates that can move beyond the criminal justice agenda.

Further Reading • Copson, L. (2016). Realistic Utopianism and Alternatives to Imprisonment: The Ideology of Crime and the Utopia of Harm. Justice, Power and Resistance, Foundation Volume, 73–96. This explores Mannheim’s distinction between ideology and utopia as they relate to abolitionism and zemiology, respectively, as well as the idea of zemiology as a replacement discourse to crime. • Hillyard, P., Pantazis, C., Tombs, S., & Gordon, D. (Eds.) (2004). Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously. London: Pluto Press.

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Various chapters in this edited collection are relevant to understanding the zemiological perspective and its critique of criminology including Ch. 1 by Paddy Hillyard and Steve Tombs, titled ‘Beyond Criminology?’, while Ch. 11, ‘Prime Suspect: Murder in Britain’ by Danny Dorling shows why conventional crimes need to be explored more holistically. • Hudson, B. (2006). Beyond White Man’s Justice: Race, Gender and Justice in Late Modernity. Theoretical Criminology, 10 (1), 29–47. This provides a good overview of the way in which criminal justice definitions and processes privilege the perspective of particular groups, specifically white men. • Levitas, R. (2013). Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Various chapters in this monograph are relevant to understanding the concept of utopia as a method or process rather than a goal and its relationship to social research. The introduction is particularly helpful for providing an overview. • Pantazis, C. (2008). The Problem with Criminalisation. Criminal Justice Matters, 74, 10–12. This provides a brief introduction to the problems with criminalisation identified by zemiologists and their commitment to a more holistic reimagining of justice.

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14 Rebuilding the Harm Principle: Using an Evolutionary Perspective to Provide a New Foundation for Justice Ed Gibney and Tanya Wyatt

Introduction After John Stuart Mill (1859) defined the ‘harm principle’, it quickly came to dominate legal debates about crime and the appropriate response of the justice system. This effectively replaced all official talk of morality in modern secular societies. However, every life causes harm to the lives of others. For example, all nourishment comes from either ending the life of another sentient creature or extracting resources from the environment Gibney, E., & Wyatt, T. (2020). Rebuilding the Harm Principle: Using an Evolutionary Perspective to Provide a New Foundation for Justice. International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 9 (3): 100–115. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v9i3.1280.

E. Gibney (B) Cullercoats, UK T. Wyatt Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_14

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that could have been used by another. Without an accepted definition of harm or a method to adjudicate between competing claims of harm, the harm principle as the underlying justification for criminal law in liberal democracies has effectively collapsed (Harcourt, 1999). The way that simple harms are normally justified, or traded off one for another, is by claiming that one harm is allowed when it is in service of a greater good. For example, the temporary emotional harm caused to a three-year-old boy who is stopped from freely running wherever he wants to go is justified by the fact that this restraint will keep him away from deadly harmful traffic. The problem with trying to use the harm principle to determine the laws for a society is that there is no philosophically justified summum bonum (i.e. ‘highest good’) that would enable one to choose from among complex and competing claims of harm. However, this paper will argue that an evolutionary perspective1 can give us a pragmatic summum bonum, which leads to a new definition for harm that can stand the test of time without collapse. We begin with a brief description of the importance of the harm principle. This is followed by details about its collapse, the accompanying collapse of justice, and the consequences of each downfall. We then build a case for a new definition of ‘good’, from which we can derive what harm is in a way that repairs the harm principle and restores its ability to underpin criminal law and the principles of justice in society.

The Importance of the Harm Principle The social effort to avoid harm is truly ancient. For example, the three dominant monotheistic religions in the West trace their governing rules back to the Ten Commandments, which prohibit several types of perceived harm, including murder, theft, adultery and blasphemy. Even these earliest written religious rules, however, are unlikely to mark the 1

Use of an evolutionary perspective can be derived from Smith (2016: 2), who described biophilosophy as ‘a biologically informed approach to doing philosophy’, which stands in contrast to the philosophy of biology, which philosophises about biology. In the same way, an evolutionary perspective uses the latest findings from the study of evolution—a process that can be generalised to more than just biology—to inform its approach to philosophy/ethics.

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beginning of our concern with harm. Looking at the proto-norms and social habits of present-day non-human animals gives clues to our own evolutionary history, and these show efforts to avoid harm too. For example: female chimpanzees have been seen to drag reluctant males towards each other to make up after a fight, removing weapons from their hands, and high-ranking males regularly act as impartial arbiters to settle disputes in the community … [T]hese hints of community concern [are] another sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and that we do not need God to explain how we got where we are today. (De Waal, 2010: para. 26)

These recent findings are the latest results of a process that began with the dawning of empiricism and the scientific method during the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. That era marked a turning point in human history, in which previous religious justifications for social control were questioned and found wanting. In turn, this spurred revolutions against purportedly divine monarchies and ushered in the current modern age of liberalism and freedoms for individuals, as chosen by democracies. Such a broad movement required the ideas of many philosophers and political activists, but the work of three men can be highlighted for their particular importance. John Locke is considered the ‘father of liberalism’ (Korab-Karpowicz, 2010; Sharma & Sharma, 2006) and he argued for our freedom to pursue happiness (Locke, 1689, 2010); Jeremy Bentham (1789/1970) took this further by defining utilitarianism and asking whether non-human animals can suffer; and John Stuart Mill (1859: 6) in his essay On Liberty extended utilitarianism and articulated the harm principle, saying: the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others … The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

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As Feinberg (1984) noted, Mill argued throughout On Liberty that the harm principle is the only valid principle for determining legitimate invasions of liberty. Mill wrote that only conduct that breaches these terms can properly be made criminal. Crime itself has no ontological reality— it is a social construct that has varied across time and space (Hillyard & Tombs, 2004)—so social agreement about harm is indeed necessary for the construction of criminal laws and the justice systems that result from those laws. As Harcourt (1999) further detailed, this principle of avoiding harm has, in fact, dominated subsequent legal debates about crime and the response of the justice system to such crime, effectively replacing all official talk of morality in modern secular societies.

The Collapse of the Harm Principle Almost from the beginning, however, it proved difficult to uphold such use of the harm principle. To Harcourt (1999: 129), ‘the simplicity of the original harm principle would veil an intense struggle for the meaning of harm’. This struggle is evident within Mill’s work itself. Although his treatise was called On Liberty, it contained two maxims that pulled in opposite directions and ended up promoting illiberal outcomes. The first maxim, the harm principle shown above, said individuals are free whenever they are doing no harm. The second maxim, however, focused on the case in which the opposite occurs. Mill (1859) noted that when individuals act in ways that are prejudicial to others, they are accountable for this and may be subjected to social or legal punishments. This has been called the ‘social authority principle’ (Menezes Oliveira 2012), which, for Mill: produced a blueprint for a highly regulated society: a society that regulated the sale of potential instruments of crime, that taxed the sale of alcohol and regulated the public consumption of alcohol, that regulated education and even procreation, and that prohibited public intoxication and indecency. (Harcourt, 1999: 121–122)

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Over the ensuing decades, a back-and-forth struggle between liberty and social authority occurred. Varying interest groups influenced what lawmakers deemed harmful, and this resulted in the alternating expansions and contractions of legal restrictions. In 1984, Feinberg published the first volume, Harm to Others, of his landmark four-volume work, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, which explored the contours that these differing interpretations of the harm principle produced. Like Mill, Feinberg’s (1984: 214) confidence in the robustness of the original harm principle eroded somewhat over the course of his writings (Harcourt, 1999), but even at the outset, he noted: insofar as our models for understanding harm are broken bones and stolen purses, we can preserve that illusion and think of harm as a simple, determinate, even purely empirical notion. The analysis proposed in this and the preceding chapters, however, reveals that harm is a very complex concept with hidden normative dimensions, and that partly because of this, the harm principle cannot be applied in a plausible way in large ranges of circumstance without supplementary criteria (or ‘mediating maxims’), some of which are provided by independent moral principles.

As an example of these independent moral principles, Feinberg (1984, emphasis added) himself included several morally laden but undefined phrases in his mediating maxims, such as ‘the consequence of wrongful acts’, ‘morally indefensible conduct’, ‘malicious interests’ or ‘patently wicked or morbid interests’, ‘mere transitory disappointments’, ‘the gravity of a possible harm’, ‘that interest which is the more important ’, ‘how vital they are’ and ‘their inherent moral quality’. Both the left and right wings of societies have since moved into this undefined ethical vacuum and attempted to apply their own definitions of morality in order to use the harm principle to support their own underlying moral convictions. As a result, liberalism is now the domain of both progressives and conservatives (Harcourt, 1999). Perhaps more obviously, progressives have invoked the harm principle to argue for the rights of minority groups of varying ethnicities, religions, and sexual preferences. However,

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conservatives have also used the harm principle to regulate pornography, prostitution, disorderly conduct, homosexual conduct, alcohol consumption, drug use, fornication and adultery (Harcourt, 1999). As a result, scholars have ended up with watered-down and relativistic definitions of harm. For example, harm has been described as: • ‘a normative concept that reflects underlying social judgments about the good and the bad’ (Lin, 2006: 901, emphasis added) • ‘a setback to human interests that community norms have deemed to be significant ’ (Lin, 2006: 901, emphasis added) • ‘a wide range of immoral, wrongful and injurious acts that may or may not be deemed illegal’ (McLaughlin & Muncie, 2013: 430, emphasis added) • ‘a normative concept, [and so] specific forms of harm need to be analysed in ways that offer specific facts about their nature and extent’ (White, 2013: 19, emphasis added) • ‘a behaviour that produces unnecessary ecological harm’ (Lynch et al. 2013: 1005).2 These are accurate descriptions of the way harm is currently defined, but they are effectively useless for anyone wishing to make decisions from among competing claims that invoke the harm principle for either 2 Lynch (2014a) uses what he calls a ‘specialised approach’ that is especially problematic for the field of green criminology, given its widespread use and unearned criticisms of the rest of the academia. Lynch et al. (2013), Lynch (2014b) and Long et al. (2014) use the term ‘treadmill of production’ (ToP) to simplistically blame capitalism for environmental degradation, both ignoring the roles that communism, democratic socialism, absolute monarchies, science, technology and international relations have played, and simultaneously excluding the possibility or fact that proper regulations can or have channelled capitalist economies in better directions. See McAfee (2019) for a recent defence of capitalism along these lines. See Elkan (1982) for further criticism of Schnaiberg’s (1980) original ToP idea. Lynch et al. (2013), Lynch (2014a) and Long et al. (2014) have also used the term ‘ecological disorganisation’ to argue that humans are a negative external force on the natural order, which they consider to be good and stable. This ignores the facts that humans are part of the natural world and the evolutionary history of Earth has included several (unstable) mass extinction events. It also blatantly commits a naturalistic fallacy (see Curry 2006 for details of this term from moral philosophy). Lynch et al. (2013) claim that their definitions of environmental harm are objective because they are scientific, but science can only measure changes in environments; science cannot define which changes are harmful or not. Only a philosophical argument can define harm, but Lynch, Long and Stretesky have not made such a case. See Gibney (2015) for more on the is–ought divide.

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liberty or social authority. Harcourt (1999: 119–120) made this point repeatedly when stating: today, the issue is no longer whether a moral offense causes harm, but rather what type and what amount of harms the challenged conduct causes, and how the harms compare. On those issues, the harm principle is silent … As to these questions, the harm principle offers no guidance. It does not tell us how to compare harms … The debate is no longer structured. It is, instead, a harm free-for-all: a cacophony of competing harm arguments without any way to resolve them … The harm principle has exhausted its purpose. The triumph and universalization of harm has collapsed the very structure of the debate.

The Collapse Spreads Diagnosis of the collapse of the harm principle came principally from the struggle to judge between competing claims of harm to human interests. Even among so-called environmental disputes, debates often remain anthropocentric, with little or no regard for justice for non-humans. For example, perpetrators labelled as green criminals have themselves claimed to be victims of harm due to economic pressures or threats to their traditions (Wyatt, 2017). Some of these people are seen as more ‘worthy’ of sympathy than others, whereas states can be viewed as ‘lesser’ victims than individuals, and corrupt states as potentially not victims at all. This is what Wyatt (2013) has characterised as a ‘hierarchy of victimisation’, but any attempts to justify one hierarchy over another collapse right along with the harm principle. Of course, there are also wider-than-mere-human concerns on which liberal secular governments have struggled to render judgements. Criminal law clearly prioritises the wellbeing and comfort of people over the interests of all other species (Halsey & White, 1998; Washington et al. 2018; Wyatt, 2017). Even within attempts to adhere to a non-human perspective, anthropocentric hierarchies creep in where the interests of non-human animals are prioritised according to human-centred values such as sentience, charisma or usefulness for biotechnology (Wyatt,

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2017). This has been characterised as speciesist—a prejudice or biased attitude favouring the interests of one’s own species against those of other species (Beirne & Cazaux, 2006; Ryder, 2010). Out of these struggles to judge harms, competing lenses on justice have been proposed— both ecocentric holistic perspectives and biocentric atomist perspectives (Goyes & Sollund, 2018). This leads to several varieties: there is ‘social justice’ for inter-human concerns, ‘environmental justice’ for ecological harm disproportionately affecting some human communities, ‘species justice’ for harm done to non-human animals, ‘ecological justice’ for harm done to nature in general, and ‘eco-justice’ for an unspecified consideration of all of these concerns (White, 2013). Whereas measuring and conceptualising harm is key to White’s (2013) approaches to justice, nowhere does he explicitly define harm itself. As Washington et al. (2018) asked, how do we decide what is truly injustice from among these perspectives? How do we arbitrate hard cases where the interests of individual organisms, species and ecosystems do not align? As these questions point out, once our understanding of harm collapsed, our sense of justice collapsed too, wherever decisions needed to be made between unavoidable harms.

The Consequences of These Collapses Clearly, we are getting these decisions wrong and deep problems have arisen. The collapse of any guiding principles has resulted in widespread social and environmental harm, and deep existential risk for life. Many social harms have been noted (Raymen 2019) that are currently legal. These include the rise of far-right nationalist groups (Winlow et al. 2017); crises in housing and employment (Lloyd, 2013; Madden & Marcuse, 2016); resource wars (Parenti, 2011); a libertarian financial elite, generating widening gaps of inequality (MacLean, 2017); and a socially corrosive consumer culture generating harm, indebtedness, and significant mental health issues (Cederström & Spicer, 2015; Raymen & Smith, 2017). Among the recognised environmental harms that are still permissible and go largely unchallenged (Wyatt, 2017) are institutionalised harms

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such as using cyanide in mining (Halsey 1997); factory farming of nonhuman animals (Wyatt, 2014); permissible amounts of air, soil and water pollution (Halsey & White, 1998); and the problems of climate change (White, 2013). In fact, there are relatively few environmentally destructive activities that are completely illegal, even though such environmental degradation has been claimed as a crime against humanity that causes severe and unnecessary human suffering that unquestionably degrades the quality of human life (Lennard & Parr, 2016). This is deeply problematic for the continuation of life on Earth. Human-caused extinctions began during the Late Pleistocene era, as Homo sapiens spread out of Africa into Eurasia and beyond (Harari, 2015). Now, there is broad consensus that we have entered Earth’s sixth mass extinction event (Ceballos et al. 2015), with one million species facing extinction due to human activity (Intergovernmental SciencePolicy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services 2019). Rockstrom et al. (2009) theorise that there are nine Earth systems that must remain within certain levels to support human life. At least two of these ‘planetary boundaries’ have been crossed—concerning biodiversity loss and the nitrogen cycle—even though: transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental-toplanetary-scale systems. (Rockstrom et al. 2009: 32)

As of January 2018, the doomsday clock has been set to just two minutes to midnight—its smallest number to date—due to ‘the looming threats of nuclear war and climate change’ (Chan, 2018: para. 3).

How to Rebuild the Harm Principle These consequences cause deep regret, but like all regrettable actions they provide an opportunity to learn. The collapse of the harm principle— along with the wider collapses of justice—has forced us to recognise that

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there is harm in most human activities (Harcourt, 1999), and this realisation may help a new moral structure to emerge. As Dworkin (1999) wrote, there is no principled distinction between harmful and immoral behaviour such that one and not the other can be used to justify criminalisation. Every moral choice brings harm to someone—that is precisely why it is a moral choice. Which morals, however, are we to use to identify harms? As described in this article, zemiologists cite a persistent influence from liberal individualism on the current approaches to social harm (Pemberton 2015). According to Raymen (2019), this liberalism has: concentrated liberty and moral authority within the sovereign individual, leaving the individual free to pluralistically pursue his or her privately defined notion of the Good life. [However,] such individualism fundamentally precludes any consensus from ever being reached.

This is why liberty alone cannot be the paramount claim—it cannot resolve conflicts between multiple infringements on liberty. As Feinberg (1984: 10) said: a liberty-limiting principle does not state a sufficient condition because in a given case its purportedly relevant reason might not weigh heavily enough on the scales to outbalance the standing presumption in favor of liberty … Moreover, no liberty-limiting principle claims to put forth a necessary condition for the justification of criminal statutes either.

Badiou (2001) further suggested that liberalism is a negative basis for ethics that has it the wrong way around. The evil of harming another is noted first, and then society attempts (but fails) to derive a definition of good from that. For all these reasons, Raymen (2019) has argued that zemiologists and criminologists must abandon liberal individualism and instead form an idea of the good , from which harm can then be defined. Pemberton (2015: 32) has begun such an effort by noting ‘we gain an understanding of harm exactly because it represents the converse reality of an imagined desirable state’. His approach is rooted in theories of human need, and others in the field of zemiology have advocated this as well (Copson, 2011; Hillyard & Tombs, 2017). However, based on the

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widespread environmental and ecological harms listed in this article, we argue that any theories of the ‘good’ must go far beyond mere human need.

Evolutionary Ethics to Redefine Good Current theories of the good traditionally fall into three camps: consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics (Hursthouse & Pettigrove, 2018). So far, none have managed to stand on their own to reach broad acceptance among professional philosophers (Bourget & Chalmers, 2013). However, we believe that an evolutionary perspective can be used to modify each camp in such a way that they can be combined into a new and stronger position that provides a definition of ‘good’ that addresses all potential harms.

Consequentialism First, when considering consequentialism, it helps to think about evolutionary consequences. The fundamental way that all evolutionary processes work is by the repetition of three steps—variation in a population, some selection mechanism, and then the retention of just a portion of the original population (Breslin, 2010). There may be a few different selection processes—natural selection, sexual selection, multilevel group selection, and even rational selections of cultural memes—but after any one of them, there are only two possible outcomes in any evolutionary process: retention or extinction. Without proof of an afterlife, that is all we know with any degree of certainty. But whose retention matters? Philosopher Peter Singer (1981) said it would be a logical error to look at the history of evolution and try to make the case that any one person, social group or even species was deserving of special interests; therefore, we ought to give equal consideration to all of these groups. Singer said that we could use reason and empathy to expand our circle of moral concern to include all sentient creatures. This is a step in the right direction, but by giving everyone

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equal consideration Singer provided no way to judge between competing interests—he left us still squabbling between various circles of insiders and outsiders. However, looking at our evolutionary history shows that we are all inside the same circle. All of life is related and interrelated. This is something that evolutionary scientist E. O. Wilson (1998) talked about extensively when he attempted to unite all the different fields of biology, which he felt were becoming too siloed and separate from one another. Wilson proposed to do this by organising these fields into concentrically larger circles based on the magnitude of time and space. As Wilson (1998) said, biology starts with biochemistry at the smallest levels, which under certain conditions forms molecular biology and then cellular biology, before the creation of individuals who can be studied in various forms of organismic biology. Those individuals can then be examined in their different social groups, which live in different ecosystems and adapt slowly over evolutionary time frames. This comprehensive view yields Fig. 14.1, which contains all of the major fields of biology and can, therefore, act as a guide for how to study—or morally consider—all of the life that has ever existed or ever will. Figure 14.1 helps illustrate the ultimate evolutionary consequence that ethical systems need to consider. No matter what squabbles exist while trying to prioritise claims of harm within or between any one of these individual circles, the most important, overriding goal that rises above everything is that all of this ought to continue. Keeping the entire project of life going is a necessary and sufficient objective moral goal, since the failure to reach it would mean universal death and the end of all moral considerations. Once it is agreed that that consequence ought to be avoided, then these scientific fields can start to provide a list of what life needs to continue its journey. What are some of those needs? Humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow (1943) famously developed his ‘hierarchy of needs’, which lists what it takes to satisfy a human’s requirements for everything from basic, simple, physiological needs, all the way to complex and subjectively identified forms of self-actualisation. This kind of extensive list, one that builds up upon itself, is exactly what we would expect to see after long evolutionary timescales because the history of life is not a story about

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Seven spheres of biology (Adapted from Wilson, 1998)

a simple on–off switch. The history of life has been an incredibly slow and painstaking series of tiny steps that finds as many ways as possible to make survival better and better and more and more secure. Faulty steps are eventually pruned away in favour of ones that last. As important as Maslow’s research has been, he—like most psychologists and philosophers—was only looking at one small slice of the entire picture of life. Maslow was focused on the needs of one individual species. We can now do better, though, using Fig. 14.1 as a guide to help determine what all spheres of life need. Gibney (2017) offered precisely this type of list by describing how to replace Maslow with an evolutionary hierarchy of needs.

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First, Maslow’s categories were generalised so that they could be applied to any form of life. ‘Physiological’ needs of humans are merely the brute ingredients necessary for ‘existence’ that any form of life might have. For that existence to survive through time, the second-level needs for ‘safety and security’ can be understood as promoting ‘durability’ in living things. The third-tier requirements for ‘love and belonging’ are necessary outcomes from the unavoidable ‘interactions’ that take place in our deeply interconnected biome of Earth. The ‘self-esteem’ needs of individuals could be seen merely as ways for organisms to carve out a useful ‘identity’ within the chaos of competition and cooperation, characterising the struggle for survival. Finally, the ‘self-actualisation’ that Maslow had difficulty defining could be seen as the end, goal, or purpose that an individual takes on so that they may (consciously or unconsciously) have an ultimate arbiter for the choices that have to be made during their lifetime. This is what Aristotle called ‘telos’. Second, Maslow’s pyramid is better replaced by a tree—a common picture that is often used with discussions of the ‘tree of life’ in evolutionary studies. This symbol also provides a host of helpful metaphors. Base physiological needs of existence form the sturdy trunk that funnels nutrients from below and allows other aspirations to gradually stretch skyward. The second-level needs for durability form a protective canopy under which we might take shelter or nourish others. The middle layers could grow wildly or be cultivated in an infinite variety of shapes, and the highest level seeks energy from above to provide direction for the whole entity. Thus, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs could be replaced and reconfigured to depict the wellbeing needs for any individual, as seen in Fig. 14.2. This is now a metaphorical image that can be used to examine a much broader hierarchy of needs for human and non-human individuals. However, life is far more than just the separate interests of isolated individuals. There is interplay up and down the entire web of interconnected and interrelated life. Thus, a hierarchy of needs could be developed for all of life by analysing each and every major level of biology using this revised image of evolutionary needs. It is beyond the scope of this paper to justify all of the details of such an effort (for more, see Gibney, 2017), but the most important takeaway from an initial

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Fig. 14.2 2017)

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The shift from Maslow’s view to an evolutionary view (Source Gibney,

attempt at this is just how reliant each element of life is on the rest of life. For example, individual human needs can never be met without good societies, productive ecosystems, and enough time to adapt to any changing evolutionary conditions. And all of these are only possible if the biochemistry and other internal processes are healthy too. In fact, since life is only as strong as its weakest link, the health and wellbeing of each and every level within all seven spheres of biology is vital. As Feinberg (1984: 37) wrote while summarising Rescher’s work: deficiencies in one place are generally not to be compensated for by the superiority in another; there are few, if any trade-offs operative here— just as cardiovascular superiority does not make up for a deficient liver so added strengths in one sector of welfare cannot cancel out weaknesses in another.

Finding the right balance among all of life’s needs is, therefore, the key to understanding how to continue to survive. In other words, no matter how much we focus on one seemingly individual tree, it is actually part

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of an interwoven forest of life. Taken together, such a forest of needs could provide the basis for a full and complete view of life. Hence, it is this view that forms and informs an evolutionary consequentialism that seeks to avoid extinction by maximising the survival of life. As Gibney (2015: 24) argued: 1. Life is. 2. Life wants to remain an is. 3. Therefore, life ought to act to remain alive.

Deontology This modification of the first camp within ethics is only part of the redefinition of what good is. But it does lead to the second camp, which is deontology, or the search for moral rules and duties. All the evolutionary consequentialism laid out in the previous section points us to this rule: act for the long-term survival of life. This sounds simple enough, but its implementation is far from easy because it requires the balancing of many interests, across all forms of life, in both the present and the future. This evolutionary rule stands in contrast to the utilitarian ideas that were developed by Bentham and Mill as they formed the original harm principle. They tried to simplify moral rules down to just one variable: act so as to maximise total wellbeing in human society (De Lazari-Radek & Singer, 2017). However, when we graph the quantity of wellbeing against the quantity of people (see Fig. 14.3), we demonstrate how that oversimplification led to what Parfit (1984) called ‘the repugnant conclusion’. He noted that according to utilitarian rules, a world with 100 billion people in it might be considered better than having two billion people, simply because the total wellbeing would be higher. Considering average happiness, however, shows that it might be very high for those two billion people, whereas 100 billion might all be barely above suicidal misery. Unfortunately, the utilitarian rule does not provide any guidance on how to avoid that repugnant outcome. The problem with utilitarianism—and its current version of the harm principle—is that it fails to recognise the natural limits that are placed on

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Fig. 14.3

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Repugnant view of life

biological creatures confined to a single planet. These utilitarian theories were developed before the weight of evolution was understood, before the science of ecology was developed, and before the consequences of the industrial revolution were felt—before overpopulation fears, ozone holes, climate change and other planetary boundaries became real harms that could no longer be avoided, as well as real barriers to any utility we could have hoped for. While simple utilitarian thinking would drive the world towards 100 billion miserable humans, an evolutionary view of life recognises that they would be miserable precisely because they would be butting up against real constraints in the largest spheres of life—the ecological constraints that affect the continued evolution of all species. Thus, both the number of organisms and the quality of their lives ought to exist within some range that balances the progress needed to improve the robustness of life, against the fragility that comes from having too many needs that cannot all be met. In other words, there is a curve for population quantity and quality in which having too little life would be existentially fragile because life would barely be hanging on, but having too much life would also be existentially fragile because it would be at higher risk of collapse. In the middle, life could find comfortable ground

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on which survival may become more assured and more wellbeing could be gained. Such a curve would solve the repugnant problem and look like Fig. 14.4. Along the X-axis in Fig. 14.4, it is currently unknown what percentage of resources being consumed would lead to the highest quality and most robust lives for organisms on Earth, but the two end points of 0 and 100% would certainly lead to the end of life. Attempting to increase the quantity of wellbeing in the world by simply consuming more and moving to the far-right end of Fig. 14.4 risks slipping into universal death in the way that Leopold (1924/1991) described potato bugs— as eating all of the potatoes into extinction and, thus, extinguishing themselves. As reported by Washington et al. (2018: 370): Vitousek et al. (1986) estimated that about 40% of Net Primary Productivity (NPP) in terrestrial ecosystems was being co-opted by humans each year … If it were to approach 100% of NPP, then natural ecosystems would collapse everywhere, as would our civilization which fully depends on nature.

Fig. 14.4

Evolutionary view of life

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Along the Y-axis, the value for the quality of life increases from the absolute zero of universal death. This is analogous to the definition of temperature as existing above absolute zero degrees kelvin—there is only energy above this temperature, and there is only wellbeing above universal death. The heights reached on the Y-axis are so far undefined by any unit of measure, but they reflect higher levels of robustness (i.e. lower levels of fragility), which are gradually being understood by advances in the social, ecological and evolutionary sciences (Taleb, 2010). The various curves in Fig. 14.4 are shown to represent ‘shifts in levels of cooperation’, which reflect the work of evolutionary biologists Maynard Smith and Szathmáry (1999). They described eight major transitions in the history of evolution that took life from its simplest origins of replicating molecules to its most advanced form of adaptability. Each of these transitions could be thought of as a new curve in Fig. 14.4, with each arrangement yielding more robustness and enabling new and higher qualities of wellbeing. The biological details of these major transitions are complex and beyond the scope of this paper, but it is important to note that each of them occurred when formerly separate and competitive biological elements discovered new ways to join up and cooperate with one another and begin to evolve together. That provides a vital clue to the third and final camp of evolutionary ethics.

Virtue Ethics Virtue ethics originated chiefly with Aristotle (Hursthouse & Pettigrove, 2018), who tried to find character traits that were always virtuous in and of themselves. Other philosophers, however, always found exceptions when using these traits might not be virtuous. One famous example is that honesty may not be virtuous if a Nazi comes to your door and asks you where you are hiding a Jewish child (Varden, 2010). In other words, virtues need to be understood in context as helping one to act towards a consequence or a goal. In a similar way, the latest studies in evolutionary biology have uncovered many of the virtues that help life reach its own survival goals. These include suitability to an environment, adaptability, diversity, a balance between cooperation and competition, limited scales

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for trial and error, humility in the face of epistemic uncertainty, and growth in our learning and progress so we can predict changes in our environment and respond accordingly (Gibney, 2015). Note that this final camp is where the egregious problems of previous attempts at evolutionary ethics (e.g. eugenics and Social Darwinism) can now be thoroughly refuted. Proponents of those failed ideas may have grasped the consequences and some of the rules of evolution, but not the virtues that actually succeed. Nature is not always ‘red in tooth and claw’, as Tennyson (1849: Sec. 56) described. Rather, the survival of the fittest is actually the survival of the most adaptive and cooperative. These virtues are our best guides wherever future consequences are most uncertain—as in questions of optimal human population, for example, or what the best distribution of resources ought to be. Until limited experiments of trial and error can illuminate a way forward, means that are consistent with end goals are to be preferred. Cooperative consensus should be sought over totalitarian dictates wherever possible. Without such consistency of principles, short-term gains are much more likely to lead to long-term losses, and evolutionary views always strive to include the longest views possible.

Redefining Harm So, now that all three traditional camps of ethics have been modified by evolutionary thinking, they can be put together and summarised into the following three interlocking principles: 1. Evolutionary consequentialism: avoid extinction and maximise survival. 2. Evolutionary deontology: act for the long-term survival of life. 3. Evolutionary virtue ethics: study what works and balance the needs of all life. This is a summary of our full position on evolutionary ethics and it illuminates our definition of the summum bonum as ‘the survival of life’. Note that this inversion of the greatest good—from striving towards

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some top-down goal into the guarding and extending of a bottom-up effort—is exactly analogous to the way Darwin flipped the design of the natural world from an intelligent creator on high to an enormous series of vanishingly small evolutionary steps up from the simplest of origins. This greatest good, then, leads to a revised definition of harm as ‘that which makes the survival of life more fragile’. This definition contains an objective outcome, which means potentially harmful actions can now be studied empirically within the biological sciences, and any harmful activities may be weighed against one another. This will not always be easy or even possible to do (in which case virtue ethics may guide us in limited trials and errors, as described above), but this ability to comparatively ‘weigh’ harms is precisely what is required to correct the currently collapsed state of the harm principle.

Discussion and Conclusion John Stuart Mill’s harm principle has collapsed after 150 years of use as the underlying philosophy for justice behind modern liberal democracies. To fix the concept, we proposed a new definition of good. From this, a broad universal goal can be recognised, specific objectives to reach that goal can be listed in detail, and recognition of the natural limits placed on the wellbeing of all living organisms on Earth can provide a clear picture of how to avoid the repugnant conclusion of utilitarian thinking. ‘Good’ is now defined as that which leads to the long-term survival of life over evolutionary time lines. Harm is not to be understood on mere individual, social or even ecological levels—it is that which makes the survival of life more fragile. Only the widest moral consideration of all possible living beings will lead to a revised evolutionary definition for harm that can support the harm principle. An evolutionary hierarchy of needs can be generated for each and every sphere of life, which, if met, will lead to higher levels of wellbeing for whatever the natural limits of life on this planet are, depending on the amount of cooperation those forms of life achieve. The previous method of making social governance decisions based on a negatively defined avoidance of harm is no longer the best way to legally restrict human endeavours. Striving instead for

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the positive outcome of meeting the evolutionary needs of life in general will provide huge benefits for individuals, societies, ecosystems and all future generations of life. These recognitions lead to profound consequences for ethics, law and criminology. As Halsey (1997: 217) made clear, criminologists have ‘failed to explicate the many theoretical and practical implications arising from the continued existence of so many legal yet ecologically damaging practices’. The law is intended to prevent and limit harmful behaviours. Thus, even if such harms currently fall outside of legal codes, they are not only a legitimate topic of examination but also a necessary one (Wyatt, 2017). Schwendinger and Schwendinger (1975) have acknowledged that research like this inevitably engages with value judgements and moral questions; if done openly, this is not a reason to avoid complex and controversial topics. Leopold’s (1949/1970) land ethic, Naess’s (1973) deep ecology, Singer’s (1981) expanded circle of moral concern, and many other efforts (for a survey of the origins of modern environmentalism, see Pepper, 1996) have all made strong philosophical cases for the moral consideration of non-human needs, but all have so far failed to resolve the tension between competing claims of harm and priorities. Perhaps now further progress can be made. Some countries have already taken steps that align with the evolutionary ethics and hierarchies of needs outlined in this paper, although they have not used these definitions for their justification and the merit of their implementations has surely been debatable. For example, Bolivia has changed its constitution to recognise the rights of Mother Earth or ‘Pachamama’ (Vidal, 2011). In 2008, the people of Ecuador voted by a 63% majority for a new constitution, the first in the world to comprehensively recognise ecosystem rights and nature rights (Walters, 2011). Ecuador’s constitution now gives nature ‘the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution’ (Vidal, 2011: para. 13). Further, Gross National Happiness was instituted as a goal in Bhutan’s Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan 2008. In the business world, companies use a ‘balanced scorecard’ (Kaplan and Norton 1992) to examine all the processes in their organisations that lead towards a single goal: profitability. The authors of this paper look forward to hopefully seeing a country soon acknowledge

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that meeting an evolutionary hierarchy of needs (i.e. a balanced scorecard for all life) should be the primary goal of their government, since it will lead towards a single, universal and objective moral goal—the survival of life. Such a goal may sound anti-human to some, as it will surely lead to short-term or narrow harms to some human interests. However, to reiterate, every moral choice harms someone—that is precisely why it is a moral choice. Three-year-olds do need to be restricted; they need to be stopped from blundering into traffic. As Washington et al. (2018: 370) state: given that ecological integrity is an indispensable prerequisite for human existence, let alone flourishing, true eco-centrism cannot be misanthropic or anti-human, even if, in some situations, ecojustice may need to be paramount.

In the words of Rowe (1994: para. 13): ecocentrism is not an argument that all organisms have equivalent value. It is not an anti-human argument nor a put-down of those seeking social justice. It does not deny that myriad important homocentric problems exist. But it stands aside from these smaller, short-term issues in order to consider Ecological Reality. Reflecting on the ecological status of all organisms, it comprehends the Ecosphere as a Being that transcends in importance any one single species, even the self-named sapient one.

Legislation Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan 2008.

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15 An Exploration of Security Privatisation Dynamics Through the Lens of Social Harm Helena Carrapico

Introduction When asked to think about the privatisation of security, most people in the Western world tend to imagine security guards at the entrance of official buildings or bouncers outside nightclubs. They also tend to equate security privatisation with a few companies operating in what is still perceived as the domain of the State. The current reality of security production and provision, however, could not be further from this perception, with the private sector now being an ubiquitous and defining feature of the security field. Understood as the transfer of ownership or competences from the State to the private sector, resulting in the provision of security goods and services by the latter (Leander 2010a), security privatisation covers a very large range of professional H. Carrapico (B) Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_15

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practices including corporate security and surveillance, private military security companies (PMSCs), and security support services, such as the ones fulfilled by banks, insurance companies and transport firms (Bures and Carrapico 2017). Although the work of these companies is often perceived as mundane and unimportant, it has not only become central to the organisation of the security field, but it is also contributing to security governance by shaping how security is understood, how it should be provided and to whom (Carrapico and Farrand 2017). Most of the literature analysing security privatisation stems from the disciplines of International Relations and Criminology. Whereas the International Relations’ literature has been mainly focused on the work of Private Military and Security Companies (Abrahamsen and Williams 2010; Singer 2007; Spearin 2017), the Criminology literature has shown a greater interest in internal security firms, in particular policing (Churchill et al. 2020; White 2010; Zedner 2006). Although they have evolved separately, it is possible to identify six common themes: (1) the growing privatisation dynamics in the field of security and the extent to which the Weberian State is being replaced with a hybrid concept combining State and private companies (Abrahamsen and Williams 2010); (2) the consequences of security privatisation for the protection of the population, democratic accountability and national security interests (Leander 2010b); (3) the re-conceptualisation of security in light of privatisation dynamics (Leander 2005, 2010a; White 2018); (4) the explanatory models for privatisation decisions in the field of security (Kruck 2014); (5) the organisation and evolution of the security market (Krahmann 2010); and (6) the acquired capacity of private security companies to take part in policy-making and shaping security governance (Carrapico and Farrand 2017). Although one of the themes focuses on the consequences of security privatisation, both bodies of literature have yet to look at this field through the lens of Social Harm. This chapter argues that the Social Harm/Zemiological approach has the potential to be used as an analytical tool to render visible a range of harms that are currently being hidden by the mainstream and naturalised neoliberal discourse on security privatisation. Neoliberalism is a political economic approach based on the idea that human well-being and development could best be achieved through the prioritisation of the private

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sector, including the promotion of free trade and private property, the de-regulation of the market, and the reduction of the State’s involvement in the economy (Harvey 2007). In turn, a Social Harm perspective shifts the focus from the narrow concept of crime to the broader understanding of harm, thus moving away from the individual level, involving a clear perpetrator and a victim, to the structural level, where harm is the result of societal organisation. This chapter proposes to contribute to the operationalisation of the Social Harm approach by exploring one of the main areas of internal security privatisation, border management in the UK. It starts by providing an overview of privatisation trends within internal security, focusing in particular on the activities that have been transferred to the private sector, including both companies whose main business is security and those whose main business lies elsewhere. The second section of the chapter then explores the broad area of UK border management, by focusing on two case studies: the privatisation of visa and immigration application systems and the privatisation of the migrant detention system. Both case studies are analysed through a harms-based framework, highlighting the risk of individual and structural harm, including commodification, exploitation, inequality and criminalisation stemming from these forms of privatisation. The chapter concludes by arguing that the forms emerging from privatisation practices in border management can be partly countered through increased private company accountability, although such change would require wider changes to the UK’s political, legal and societal approach to immigration.

Background The 1970s witnessed the emergence and expansion of Neoliberalism, which has tended to present State intervention as cost-ineffective, detached from the reality of economic needs and prone to changeability due to its direct relation to elected governments (Moe 1990). As the diffusion of neoliberal thought gradually shaped Western political agendas, it brought with it a greater acceptance/normalisation of the outsourcing of traditional core State functions, including that of security provision (Krahmann 2010).

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Furthermore, it is important to situate these economic changes in the political landscape of the 1970s’ economic crisis, followed by that of the end of the Cold War. Countries responded to the fiscal crisis by reducing public policy budgets, which in turn limited the way criminal justice systems addressed crime and insecurity, despite an increase in the public demand for security provision (White 2010). The end of the Cold War led to significant changes to national military apparatuses and witnessed the introduction of new and complex security concerns, often orchestrated by non-State actors, which States felt unprepared to respond to. The austerity context combined with geopolitical changes and a political economic approach favouring market-led policies created the window of opportunity for the private sector to enter this field. Private security companies presented themselves as offering value for money, efficiency, innovation, and a reduction in State responsibility. Since then, private companies have entered most sub-areas of internal and international security, including the policing and surveillance of public and private spaces, intelligence gathering, peacekeeping and peace enforcement, border, migration and asylum management, the training of law enforcement and security forces, counter-terrorism and counterorganised crime and cybersecurity. The remainder of this section provides a succinct mapping exercise indicating the extent of private security companies’ activities. Where the areas of migration and asylum are concerned, companies such as G4S, Serco and Airbus take part in border controls, in the detention of irregular migrants and their return to the country of origin (or country of transit), in the processing of asylum claims, in the housing and integration of successful asylum seekers (Heijer et al. 2016; Rodenhäuser 2014). In fact, depending on the host country, a refugee wishing to claim asylum might not come into contact with a public institution throughout the entire process. These companies are also central in the development of border control technologies. The Airbus-produced software STYRIS® , for example, collects and processes maritime surveillance data in real time from sensors, such as radars, weather stations and sonars, to facilitate the identification of migrant smuggling operations, facilitate security decision-making and improve interception (Airbus 2018). STYRIS® is an integral part of national and EU border agencies, as well as of the European Border

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Surveillance System, Eurosur (World Border Security News 2019). In the field of policing, businesses such as Securitas, My Local Bobby and TM Eye patrol the streets, conduct criminal investigations, respond to incidents, support victims and families, develop the databases and systems used for police cooperation, and collect and transfer surveillance data (Lemieux 2013; Mitsilegas 2015; Sandhu and Haggerty 2016). Some of these companies, like Sodexo Justice Services, are also very active in the criminal justice system, not only managing prisons and probation systems, but also running criminal justice-related services such as court interpretation, prisoners’ access to health, training, radicalisation prevention and rehabilitation programmes, and catering, or even providing prisoners with employment (Maculan et al. 2013). Another key area in this mapping exercise is the defence field, with private military security companies operating in most conflict zones. Businesses such as Academi, G4S and Aegis Defence Services conduct a large range of external security activities including threat reduction, risk assessment and management, humanitarian missions, landmine clearance, disaster relief and wildlife preservation (Singer 2007). In addition to private actors whose main business is security, this field also includes companies that focus on other markets, but whose activities are crucial for security, in particular counter-terrorism and counterorganised crime. This is the case of companies working in the areas of banking and finance (Vlcek 2017), insurance (Petersen 2008), transport (Aarstad 2017), and other critical infrastructure areas such as telecommunications (Carrapico and Farrand 2017). In the area of transport, for instance, businesses are responsible for providing States with passenger data to be used for counter-terrorism purposes (Enerstvedt 2017). In the banking sector, companies are tasked with monitoring transaction data and reporting on suspicious activity like money laundering (Bures 2016).

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The Case Study of Border Management in the UK: How Privatisation Engenders Commodification, Exploitation, Inequality and Criminalisation The gradual privatisation of security (which, acceptably, has varied from country to country) represents more than a change in who is producing and providing security. By positioning private companies at the heart of the security field, this shift has also led to a change in the way security is understood, how it should be provided and to whom (Carrapico and Farrand 2017). In this context, security is no longer about collective responsibility, public service, national security, or even about responding to existing crimes. It is, instead, about individual responsibility, tailormade security products/services, and reducing uncertainty (Abrahamsen and Leander 2016). Such understanding reflects the merger of a commercial rationale and a security one, which prioritises a risk and futureoriented approach, efficiency, resilience, cost reduction, the interests of shareholders, and profit. The societal impact of such shift is, however, significant. The remainder of this chapter explores this impact through the usage of a case study focusing on one of the main sub-fields of internal security privatisation, border management, which is populated by a mix of companies conducting security activities on a voluntary and involuntary basis. The choice of case study methodology is based on the fact that security privatisation is an extremely diverse phenomenon in terms of the sub-field the companies operate in, the nature of the security activities involved, the voluntary character of the public–private cooperation, and the organisational structure (there is no such thing as a public– private partnership model but rather hundreds of different ones). Thus, trying to flesh out a harm typology for the privatisation of security as a whole would be self-defeating and not particularly useful, as the harm occurring in the context of Private Military Security Companies is very different from the one taking place in banking-based security activities, for instance.

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Privatised border management involves a considerable range of activities from traveller screening to visa and citizenship processing, maritime border surveillance, and detention centre management. These companies work alongside public actors such as the Home Office or the UK Border Force, as well as non-state actors such as charities, religious organisations, and private citizens in a volunteer position, forming a vast security network where it is not always easy to distinguish between public and private nodes. This case study explores the social harms involved in two of the above-mentioned activities: visa and immigration processing and migrant detention and deportation.

Visa and Immigration Privatisation Over the past 15 years, visa and immigration application management in the UK has been delegated to private companies, such as WorldBridge, VFS Global (non-UK-based applicants) and more recently Sopra Steria1 (UK-based applicants), with this shift being justified on the basis of growing demand and cost-effectiveness. An important part of this narrative is that these companies offer the capacity to address large-scale demand from geographically very disparate areas, through technologically advanced solutions, unburdening the state from a function it was no longer able to fulfil adequately (Sánchez-Barrueco 2018). In greater detail, these companies create and manage the system for visa and immigration applications, create a national and international network of face-to-face contact points, guide the migrants through the application system, and collect the data/documentation necessary for the application (Sopra Steria 2020). Although the evaluation of applications and decisions remain the responsibility of UK Border Force (Kaneff 2013), private companies undeniably shape the outcome by creating and managing the application process. From a Social Harm perspective, these companies have an impact on the individual lives of migrants and their families, as well as on the UK society.

1 Sopra Steria was awarded a £91 million contract for the management of the UK visa and immigration system in September 2019.

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From an individual perspective, the current system involves migrants travelling to application centres in order to provide biometric data and upload any required documents. For those already based in the UK, as there are only 6 free centres,2 applicants often have to travel to the closest application centre, where they have to pay fees (£69.99 on weekdays, £135 outside of office hours). This usually involves travel costs in addition to the cost of taking a day off work and the visa application itself (between £1,220 and £1,408 for a long-term Tier 2 visa) (Gherson Immigration 2020). The lack of available time slots combined with the fear of deportation, however, often forces applicants to choose premium slots priced between £200 and £800 (Tims 2019). Until recently, Sopra Steria had also sub-contracted another firm, BLS, to run mobile offices offering applicants the possibility of applying from the comfort of their home for a fee ranging between £3,600 and £9,100 (Warrell and Staton 2019). Furthermore, any applicant wishing to contact UK Visas and Immigration Services to inquire as to the status of their application now needs to go through Sitel UK, a company that has been awarded a contract to deliver the international and domestic customer service operations. Applicants contacting Sitel UK by e-mail or calling the company from overseas are requested to pay for the service (including £5.48 per email response) (UK Visas and Immigration 2017). Finally, there is also no shortage of private companies working in the margins of the visa and immigration structure providing advice to corporate and private clients on how to navigate an application system that is complex and knowledge intensive. Despite these support structures, migrants have reported that the application system is overly complicated, leading them to submit applications that risk being rejected on administrative grounds (Bulman 2019). The way the visa and immigration system has been privatised puts applicants in a dual position: at the same time as the system forces migrants to secure their immigration status (or face deportation) and frames this process as a matter of individual responsibility, it also treats them as clients who benefit from support and premium lounges. This 2 Among the 56 UK Visa and Citizenship Application centres that Sopra Steria runs, only 6 provide their services for free (Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Croydon, Glasgow and Manchester).

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dual treatment, however, contributes to hiding the commodification of individuals’ migrant status and the exploitation of a group of people who, for the most part, is already at greater risk of poverty and social alienation (Eurostat 2020). It is worth noting that since 2014, the overall cost of a visa application has increased by 72% (Tims 2019). Furthermore, the combination of high costs and the complexity of the system itself clearly create additional barriers to migrants’ settled life in the UK by exacerbating inequality among applicants. Those who are wealthy enough to afford the process and the support system have a clear advantage over those who struggle financially and are more likely to experience the UK’s ‘hostile environment’. The harm created by the privatisation of the visa and immigration management services is, however, not limited to the individual level. From a structural/societal perspective, this process contributes to three distinct forms of social harm: community segregation, political radicalisation and lack of democratic accountability. By fostering increased levels of poverty among migrants and submitting them to this convoluted process, this form of privatisation is also facilitating the alienation of this population and its segregation as second class residents, which, in turn, reifies community self-perceptions of non-belonging. It also normalises the idea, among the general population, that migrants wishing to take residence in the UK should do so at their own cost, which implies ideas of migrants as burdens to host societies, rather than as an added value. Such negative view reinforces intolerance and anti-immigration sentiment among the general population and minimises the importance of any possible actions deriving from these feelings, such as violent attacks on migrants. Finally, this form of privatisation also contributes to a reduction in democratic accountability, thus affecting the good governance of the political system (Gammeltoft-Hansen and Sorensen 2012). Visa and immigration application management companies are not required to comply with the same transparency and accountability standards as public bodies, including, for example, not being subject to the Freedom of Information Act (Information Commissioner’s Office 2019). This lack of transparency prevents the public from evaluating how this public service is being managed, including how personal information is being protected, which is particularly relevant for companies such

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as Sopra Steria that manage large databases for different countries and the European Union. If the public is not able to properly scrutinise the activities of companies delivering public services, it will also not be able to ensure the improvement of those services.

The Privatisation of Migrant Detention The privatisation of detention refers to the management by private actors of detention facilities aimed at establishing the identity of asylum/migrant claimants who are considered to be at risk of absconding, and aimed at preparing the removal of migrants who do not have authorisation to enter/remain in the UK. Similarly to the previous section, this part of the chapter will explore the individual and societal harm that is taking place as a result of the privatisation of this internal security function. At the time of writing, the detention services are composed of nine facilities (seven immigration detention centres and two short-term holding facilities3 ), eight of which are privately run by Serco, G4S, Mitie, GEO Group and Capita. There are also short-term holding rooms at different ports, airports and prisons that are also managed by some of these companies in coordination with the UK Border Force and the Prison Services (The Migration Observatory 2019). It is estimated that these facilities hold an average of 1,500 to 3,000 individuals at any one time, with 24,333 people having gone through the detention system in 2019 (Home Office 2019), and the majority of them spending an average of 28 days in detention (House of Commons House of Lords Joint Committee on Human Rights 2019). Migrants are usually taken to a detention centre as a result of having their asylum claim refused, having overstayed their visa, or having committed a criminal offence, although some might also be brought in while their immigration status is being investigated. Even though the decision to detain an individual is 3 List of UK immigration removal centres at the time of writing (April 2020): Brook House (Gatwick), Colnbrook (Middlesex), Dungavel House (South Lanarkshire), Harmondsworth (Middlesex), Larne House (Antrim), Morton Hall (Lincolnshire), Manchester short-term holding facility, Tinsley House (Gatwick), and Yarl’s Wood (Bedfordshire). The only public centre is Morton Hall, which is run by the Prison Service on behalf of the Home Office.

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taken solely by the Home Office, private companies are responsible for transporting and hosting the person, including the provision of healthcare and safety, which gives them a substantial responsibility over the welfare of migrants. This responsibility was discursively framed from the 1970s onwards as necessary in order to respond to the increasing number of migrants wishing to establish themselves in the UK, to address the poor conditions of existing public immigration centres by introducing competition, and to contribute to the Government’s objective of actively reducing immigration flows (Canning 2016; McDonalo 1994). George and Button (2000) also mention that the privatisation of detention was adopted as a way to avoid the use of prison officers, which was considered as too oppressive for the management of migrants. Unlike the example of visas and immigration, the privatisation of detention has received a large amount of attention from the media (BBC One—Panorama 2017; Gammeltoft-Hansen 2012), the Parliament (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee 2019; House of Commons House of Lords Joint Committee on Human Rights 2019), and academia (Bacon 2005; Bosworth 2014; Canning 2018; Lahav 1998; Menz 2009). The reason for this area being in the spotlight is mainly related to the unusual levels of violence, rates of sexual violence, failure to provide medical care, and human rights’ violations resulting in considerable harm including death (Shaw 2016). A 2015 Channel 4 documentary on Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre and a 2017 BBC One Panorama documentary focusing on the Brook House Centre were particularly revealing of the widespread institutionalised harm, and of the failure of private companies to abide by Detention Centre Rules of 2001.4 As a result, the individual forms of harm caused by the privatisation of this sector have been extensively covered and include physical, psychological, and economic harm, affecting both migrants and staff members. 4

The Brook House facility was the focus of a BBC Panorama expose in 2017 that revealed persistent detainee abuse by staff members and other detainees. The piece of investigative journalism, which included covert footage of abuse, led to national outrage regarding the conditions in which migrants are held in the UK, and served as a catalyst for a number of inquiries, including a Parliament inquiry into the management of migrant detainment facilities by private companies (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee 2019).

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The main cause of the physical harm is the long-term confinement in prison-like conditions, which is enabled by the capacity of the Home Office to indefinitely detain migrants. The centres are reported to be cramped, with economies of space being a priority over personal space (Lampard and Marsden 2018). These conditions are rendered more challenging by the lack of certainty regarding the length of the process, the difficulty in accessing funded legal advice, and reduced level of legal protection for individuals in immigration centres (House of Commons House of Lords Joint Committee on Human Rights 2019). In addition, physical harm also stems from an environment characterised by staff and other migrant abuse, and that results in an unusual number of hospitalisations (Townsend 2019). This high incidence of physical abuse is partly explained by the problematic management model of mixing former offender migrants, who are often violent, and migrants who have been detained for administrative reasons (for investigating their immigration status). The psychological harm is related to the detention conditions, the incapacity to fulfil personal and professional plans, and the uncertainty regarding the future. Although at-risk individuals should not be detained in these facilities, there is clear evidence that the medical screening conducted by companies upon migrants’ arrivals is not efficiently identifying pre-existing mental health problems (Shaw 2016). One of the reasons for this failing is that the burden is put on the migrant to demonstrate that he/she is at risk of harm if they were to be hosted in these facilities. There is also an intimate link between mental health deterioration and physical harm as can be evidenced by the 3,000 hunger strikes that have occurred in immigration detention centres since 2015 (Hill 2019). In addition to the impact we see on migrants, the privatisation of immigration detention centres has also had consequences for the staff members, given the pressure to adapt to what is often a violent working environment, characterised by long shifts (13.5 h shifts), reduced pay, limited training, poor staffing, and continuous exposure to difficult moral and ethical dilemmas. The problematic working conditions are reflected in an extremely high staff turnover (Lampard and Marsden 2018).

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Where economic harm is concerned, it is important to add to the above-mentioned financial exploitation of the staff members, the destitution of the migrants and their families, which is linked to the interruption of professional activity. There is provision for migrants in detention to work although they do so for a symbolic wage, so they have no capacity to support their families (Bales and Mayblin 2018). As employment protections do not apply to migrants in detention, the private companies pay them as little as £1 an hour for maintenance jobs. Furthermore, the economic harm is particularly prevalent among the non-asylum seeker population, as its entitlement to free legal aid was cut in 2013 (in England and Wales). As a result, access to legal counsel for immigration cases implies vast financial efforts on the part of the migrants and their families. A 2019 survey on legal advice, conducted by the charity Bail for Immigration Detainees (2019), showed that only 64% of migrants in detention have legal representation, with a considerable number arguing that the cost of legal advice is beyond their means. If migrants attempt to conduct research on their own to try and further their immigration case, they are often confronted with a lack of supporting structures, namely poor access to the Internet (large number of blocked sites) and to educational resources to base themselves on. From a structural/societal perspective, the privatisation of migrant detention centres contributes to similar forms of social harm as the privatisation of the visa and immigration application services, namely community alienation and segregation, and lack of democratic accountability. It also contributes, however, to a distinct form of harm, that of immigration criminalisation. Where community alienation is concerned, the private management of detention centres is perpetuating inequality, not only among the migrants in detention, but also among their communities. Those migrants who are most vulnerable are less able to challenge their detention and further their case for remaining in the UK. This is particularly the case, as detention centres have failed to create education structures or structures that ensure automatic access to legal representation. This lack of support has a direct emotional and financial impact on the families and impoverishes the migrant communities, making them vulnerable to exploitation and a range of crimes (Hannah and Peter

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2014). Furthermore, the hostile environment in the centres, characterised by violent practices and very limited legal protection, reinforces the segregation of the migrant communities. It reinforces the communities’ perception of being treated differently from UK citizens and feelings of being unwelcome, of being powerless to help their members in detention, and of constant fear of changes to their immigration status. The hostile environment also contributes to furthering the criminalisation of immigration. Migrants in detention are hosted in prison-like conditions, characterised not only by the restriction of freedom, but also by long hours of cell confinement. They are all but in name treated as prisoners, with the difference that they have fewer legal rights, leading to a problematic blurring between criminal and administrative detention (Bloom 2015). Although there has been an attempt on the side of the UK Government to address the problems in the immigration detention system, including those occurring in the centres, current practices still fall considerably short of recommended changes (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee 2019). Furthermore, these private practices reflect the idea that the State rejects any responsibility for individuals it considers as irregular, and that their treatment can be justified on the basis of their framing as a threat to the UK economy and security. This criminalisation, in turn, reduces the level of trust that migrant communities have in State institutions, making them less likely to report abuse/crime for fear of being mistreated, making it more difficult for the State to address insecurity. Finally, the privatisation of immigrant detention also affects democratic accountability. Firstly, evidence has emerged regarding a lack of transparency and accountability mechanisms within the centres themselves, which is reinforcing individual and structural forms of harm. The absence of effective improvement mechanisms, such as whistle-blowing, lead to migrants being afraid to complain about serious incidents, for fear that it will affect their immigration processes, and staff members feeling that they would not be listened to or have no power to influence their working conditions (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee 2019). All incidents are internally reviewed by the private companies and by the Home Office, but no independent review is conducted (Amnesty International UK 2011). In fact, the increased interest on the

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part of the Parliament for the way private detention centres are being run stems, not from an internal accountability mechanism, but from leaked footage and media investigation (BBC One—Panorama 2017). Secondly, at the same time as this new-found interest revealed the centres’ internal management problems, it also exposed the private companies’ lack of accountability towards society. Although private companies seem to accept the criticism that independent reviewers and the Parliament have published, there have been no financial, administrative or criminal consequences for them (National Audit Office 2019). In fact, following the 2017 Brook House scandal mentioned above and subsequent reviews, the managing company, G4S, declared that it no longer had an interest in renewing its immigration detention contracts, as this market was becoming less profitable, and that it was focusing its attention on further prison contracts instead (Busby 2019).

Implications for a Less Harmful Society Is the privatisation of security causing more harm than benefit in UK society? As can be seen from the two case studies in border management, private companies are replicating and further expanding forms of individual and structural harm already present in this area. The management and operationalisation of their business activities have had consequences, not only for the way specific groups in society are perceived and acted upon, but also for the way society as a whole understands the concepts of security and security accountability. Does this mean that we should strive to have a society where private companies are not allowed to deliver public services, in particular those that engage in the safety and security of individuals and their communities? Although there has been little evidence of the benefits of privatisation in the field of security (Canning 2016), and there is indication that companies have a vested interest in expanding the provision of security services to maximise their profits (Bacon 2005), there is insufficient research comparing the outcomes of public versus private provision of security services. There is, however, a considerable literature establishing the problematic consequences of security privatisation, in particular the lack of

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accountability for private companies’ security practices and their shaping of security governance. The common element in this literature is the absence or erosion of regulation. As Pemberton (2015) clearly demonstrated for privatisation in general, there is a link between the degree of deregulation and the harm that privatisation causes. The UK is on the far end of the regulation/deregulation spectrum, with the relationship between the State and private companies being characterised by thin legislation, self-regulation and trust relations (Button 2011). This regulatory context has enabled situations where private security companies are regularly seen to fail in the delivery of public services (ranging from the provision of security teams for the Olympic Games to the loss of control over HMP Birmingham) and yet there is an absence of legal and economic consequences for them. In fact, their track record in securing State contracts shows that the view on the private sector being more cost-effective remains unshaken. There is therefore an important role for academic research to play in further identifying the social harm stemming from security privatisation and in better understanding its relation to deregulation. Given that economic freedom and market self-organisation lie at the heart of Neoliberalism, it would namely be important to understand to what extent greater accountability is possible within the current economic system. Furthermore, it would also be relevant to explore the connections between accountability and political will in the context of an increasingly harmful and openly violent migration policy.

Conclusion This chapter aimed at exploring the privatisation of security through the theoretical lenses of a Social Harm approach. Over the past few decades, we have witnessed the gradual privatisation of public services guided by neoliberal thought, namely the conviction that the private sector is best placed to deliver these services in a more professional and cost-effective way. This privatisation trend has also reached the security sector, an area traditionally associated with State sovereignty. It is now possible to find private-sector participation in security areas as different as border control,

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asylum and migration management, the criminal justice system, policing, surveillance, counter-terrorism, counter-organised crime, and defence. The common feature in all these areas is that the private sector now has the capacity to contribute to security governance by shaping how security is understood, how it should be provided and to whom. By focusing on the case study of UK border governance, the chapter analysed two areas of privatised practice: visa and immigration application management and immigration detention centres. It established that the privatisation of these services has contributed to the increase in individual forms of harm, namely physical, psychological and economic harm as a result of the exploitation, commodification, alienation and criminalisation processes migrants are subjected to. It also discussed the structural/societal harm that is stemming from this form of privatisation, in particular community segregation and lack of democratic accountability. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the lessons learnt from the string of multiple private-sector failings and the importance of regulation for harm reduction.

Further Reading • Abrahamsen, R., & Williams, M.C. (2010). Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press. This research monograph conceptualises the privatisation of security not as a simple transfer of ownership from the State to the private sector, but rather as global networks, namely security assemblages, that go beyond the classic distinction between the public and the private. By focusing on four African country case studies, the authors explore how these security assemblages change local power and governance dynamics, shaping our understanding of security, what it means to be secure, who is entitled to be secure and how. • Abrahamsen, R., & Leander, A. (Eds.). (2016). Routledge Handbook of Private Security Studies. Routledge Handbook Series. London and New York: Routledge.

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This edited collection is an excellent starting point for readers who are searching for an introduction to security privatisation. The first chapter provides an overview of the main debates and privatisation trends, whereas the remaining sections cover the different security roles performed by private companies, their regulation, and their impact on society. • Bures, O., & Carrapico, H. (Eds.). (2017). Security Privatization: How Non-Security-Related Private Businesses Shape Security Governance. Springer International Publishing. This edited volume contributes to the academic literature on security privatisation by pointing out that the range of private companies taking part in providing security goods and services goes considerably beyond the businesses whose main activity is security. Following a re-conceptualisation of the role of private actors in its introductory chapter, the edited volume provides a large number of in-depth examples of businesses that voluntarily and involuntarily take part in the production of security and that stem from areas as different as transport, insurance, banking and Internet provision. • Harvey, D. (2007). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. This book on the origins of Neoliberalism is targeted at the wider public. It is particularly useful for anyone wishing to understand the economic and political rationale at the basis of security privatisation. It focuses on the emergence of Neoliberalism in the 1970s and its successful expansion throughout the world from a critical perspective. • Krahmann, E. (2010). States, Citizens and the Privatisation of Security (1st ed.). Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press. This research monograph is a very insightful study on the changing nature of the use of force and its control. The historical perspective it provides on the security privatisation debates, from the eighteenth century until the present day, explains particularly well how the privatisation rationale supported the transition from a Weberian approach to a multi-stakeholder one. This is a comparative study that opposes UK, US and Germany’s views on security privatisation.

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16 Looking at Crime and Deviancy in Cyberspace Through the Social Harm Lens Anita Lavorgna

Introduction In our hyper-connected world, digital technologies and social media in particular are so embedded in our everyday lives that we are increasingly part of a ‘digital society’ (Lupton 2014; Stratton et al. 2017). It is becoming difficult to imagine many crimes that do not involve an ‘online’ component, as in cyberspace—that is, the virtual and figurative space created within the Internet—offenders are finding a new environment in which to operate. Cyberspace, per se, is simply a social space connecting people and facilitating commerce. However, some of its characteristics (it is virtually unlimited, and it enables instantaneous communication for the propagation and sale of ideas, goods and services, with huge possibilities for deception) make it particularly prone to A. Lavorgna (B) University of Southampton, Southampton, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_16

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exploitation, and to the carrying out of countless illicit and malicious behaviours in very effective ways. Academic literature on crime and deviance in cyberspace has boomed in recent years, with studies mostly focusing on acts against the law (cybercrimes in a strict sense) (see, among others, the seminal works of Holt and Bossler 2015; Wall 2007; Yar 2013). Some authors have also started to shed light on behaviours that break an accepted code of behaviour, even if they might not necessarily infringe a specific law—consider, for instance, antisocial behaviours carried out in online virtual words, or the creation of false news stories being propagated online (Lavorgna 2020; Steinmetz and Nobles 2017). This chapter will present an account of the merits of adopting a ‘social harm approach’ in investigating both crime (something that by definition occurs when a law is broken) and deviance (i.e. behaviours that break an accepted code of behaviour, even if they might not necessarily infringe a specific law) in cyberspace. Such an approach allows us to be critical of the social construction of a concept—that of ‘cybercrime’—while it is still evolving, with legal frameworks and social perceptions on cyber-harms, threats and risks yet to be settled.

Background More than a decade ago, Pemberton (2007) lamented the degree to which mainstream criminology seemed to ask questions and address the issues demanded by the crime control industry. Unfortunately, this problem appears to also affect much of the cybercrime scholarship. Indeed, cyber-criminology, since its emergence and progressive establishment as a branch of criminology, has mostly focused on a relatively limited range of core topics, ranging from hacking and malware attacks to online fraud and child sexual exploitation, often with a positivistic, but at times acritical focus, and with most attention focused on policing and forensic investigations of these crimes (Powell et al. 2018), especially in the Anglo-sphere (Lavorgna 2020). In this regard, cyber-criminology has been depicted as a discipline that has too often ignored or underestimated the persistence of social inequalities in online victimisation,

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and hence has often failed to capture the seriousness of many harms that are facilitated by digital means, but which are very tangible and real for their victims (Powell and Henry 2017). Furthermore, cyber-criminology has suffered from being too often rather acritical and descriptive, relying on data provided by the cybercrime control industry, which has a vested interest in emphasising certain dangers of the online realm, while applying quality and ethical standards in data collection that might not be aligned with the expectation of academic rigour (Wall 2008). Similar to what has happened with offline, traditional types of crime (see Pemberton 2007), the work of critical criminologists has been of the upmost importance, not only in better conceptualising certain cybercrimes (see, for instance, Steinmetz 2016), but also to broaden and deepen criminological knowledge by challenging the very restricted view of ‘what cybercrime is’ to shift attention to other forms of crime and deviance in cyberspace (such as certain crimes against persons, or crimes of deception). These might otherwise have been largely overlooked. In this way, new forms of cybercrime, capable of causing great human suffering have started to receive attention. There are, however, other forms of deviance (online or otherwise Internet-facilitated), which are still relatively overlooked by criminologists, probably because these activities are not always and unambiguously against the law: consider, for instance, the dissemination of potentially dangerous or fraudulent health information online (Lavorgna and Di Ronco 2017; Lavorgna and Sugiura 2018). Again, there is a parallel with what Pemberton (2007) stressed with regard to (offline) structural harms that traditionally fell outside the boundaries of criminology, and that were revealed through the work of activists, journalists and critical scholars in other disciplines. Also, in the case of these harmful online activities, investigative journalists, debunkers, NGOs and specialists in other disciplines (such as medicine) have often shed light on existing, but overlooked significant harms. In the contemporary world, there is an inherent need for cross-disciplinary endeavours in understanding and addressing many forms of crime and deviance, because of their growing complexity, first and foremost in cyberspace. The social harm perspective can thus help to move beyond the sometimes overly strict boundaries of criminology (or of comparable disciplines in other countries, such as

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the so-called sociology of deviance in Italy) to focus on what matters most—i.e., how to reduce suffering—while at the same time allowing us to bring our understanding and conceptualisation of (cyber)crimes beyond state definitions of crime (Hillyard et al. 2004), a much-needed approach in investigating events and behaviours that often transcend national jurisdictions. Hillyard and Tombs (2008) identified many other reasons as to why looking at ‘harms’ might be preferable to looking at ‘crimes’. Some of their critiques are particularly cogent when it comes to online behaviour. For instance, they stressed how, on the one hand ‘crime’ evokes a certain level of seriousness (hence giving legitimacy to the expansion of the crime control industry), even if most events defined as crimes can be relatively minor. On the other hand, the term ‘crime’ excludes many serious harms that are ignored by criminal law, or that are seen as marginal to the dominant policy, legal, enforcement and even academic agendas. This misalignment between criminal law and harmful (or potentially harmful) antisocial behaviour is particularly evident in cyberspace. In fact, while modern criminal justice systems are ‘designed’ to deal effectively with low-volume, high-impact crime, cybercrimes are often high-volume, even if apparently low-impact (Dupont 2017). However, low-impact acts can lead to large aggregated losses and significant harm (Wall 2007). By relying on a social harm approach rather than on a legalistic approach to crime, it is easier to shed light on the real impact of crime and deviance, for instance by noticing the extent to which the experience of harm can be cumulative (Pemberton 2007). Additionally, there are many deviant behaviours online that escape the stringent definitions of criminal law, which might be considered as ‘microdeviations’ and, as such, may be ignored by authorities, due to the normality of (some) deviance (Popham 2018). This does not mean, however, that they should not be taken into consideration—first and foremost by criminologists, who should look beyond strict legal definitions to examine social context and investigate why certain activities are labelled as ‘crimes’, while others are not. Furthermore, looking outside the legal definitions of crime is particularly important in a socio-legal context—that of cyberspace—which is evolving extremely fast, with legal frameworks and social perceptions on cyber-threats and risks yet to be

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settled (Lavorgna 2020). Such ongoing evolution depends not only on the emergence of technological innovations, but also on the changes taking place in the political and economic arenas of our ‘information age’, changes which have important legal and ethical implications (Boyle 1996). Deviance, and the relationship between deviance and crime, have always been insightful concepts to understand the power relationships in society, as they can be used not only to label harmful behaviour, but also to stigmatise and disempower certain social groups (Adler and Adler 2006). Furthermore, observing how these concepts change through time and space affords us an excellent viewpoint of broader societal changes. These perspectives also hold true in cyberspace. In the following sections, after a brief digression on the types and characteristics of harm in cyberspace, I will focus on two cyberspacefacilitated crimes/deviant behaviours for which the social harm approach can be particularly useful to further our understanding of the issues at stake, and even better think about preventive and mitigating interventions: online copyright infringements and online health frauds.

Harms in Cyberspace: Same Wine, New Bottles? Agrafiotis and colleagues (2016, 2018) proposed a taxonomy of cyberharms which includes physical, psychological/emotional, economic, political/governmental, reputational, and cultural harms. In this context, cyber-harm is defined as ‘the damaging consequences resulting from cyber-events, which can originate from malicious, accidental or natural phenomena, manifesting itself within or outside of the internet’ (Agrafiotis et al. 2016: 2). Cyber-harms, exactly as in the case of traditional forms of harm, can be suffered by the primary victim (who experiences the criminal or deviant act), but also by secondary victims (who suffers financially or emotionally from the crime even if they are not directly affected by it, such as family and friends of primary victims), and even tertiary victims (those who experience the harm produced by the crime only vicariously, for instance when victimisation extends to the societal level) (Berg 2009; Lavorgna 2020; Virtanen 2017). Also,

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cyber-harms can interconnect in various ways: they can be experienced in parallel (simultaneous harm, e.g. when the victim suffers both a financial and a psychological harm in an online fraud), one can be induced by another (cascading effect, think of the reputational harm suffered by a financial institution after it experienced financial harm consequent to a cyber-attack), or one harm may lead to a more severe, subsequent harm (latent harm)—consider for instance the severe, long-term emotional impact of ‘romantic’ frauds, after the more immediate financial and psychological harm immediately suffered by the victim (Agrafiotis et al. 2016). Even if there is a clear parallel between traditional forms of harm and cyber-harm, to the extent that one might question the need to identify separate categories for the latter (hence the wine and bottle metaphor, see also Wall 1997), there are still problems in fully recognising many of the harms (and especially physical and psychological/emotional harms) occurring via digital means. It has been suggested that this might be due to the narrative that has traditionally surrounded cyberspace and the field of cybernetics—a narrative whose roots come from a tradition of early techno-optimists stressing the utopic possibilities offered by new technologies, which emphasises transcendence and a sort of disembodied vision of the relationship between humans and machines (Brydolf-Horwitz 2018). An effect of this narrative is that cyberspace is assumed to be not (or less) ‘real’, because the body is not directly involved (Campbell 2004; Deschamps and McNutt 2016). This perception, unfortunately, is far from realistic. Rather, research suggests that through cyberspace, certain harms can even be worsened and furthered. Think, for instance, of the harms impacting on the private and public dimensions of sexual violence, as images can be recorded and shared, and once this is done it can be extremely difficult, if not impossible to remove them completely from the public domain (Powell and Henry 2017). On the other hand, however, for specific forms of cybercrime (such as crimes against devices, certain types of market-based crimes and crimes against property, such as intellectual property infringements) the extent of harm (especially economic harm) is often emphasised, especially in reports produced by the cybersecurity industry, or by stakeholders in those markets (e.g. the music industry) (Lavorgna 2020). Of course,

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this is not to minimise these types of harms in cyberspace; nonetheless, it should be kept in mind that certain industries might have a vested interest in emphasising the dangers of the online realm. For instance, if technological infrastructures are depicted as fragile, consumers will spend more to protect themselves, and support public spending on cybersecurity (Steinmetz 2016). When looking at crime and deviancy in cyberspace through the social harm lens, we should not forget to maintain a critical approach so as to identify and assess harms properly.

Case Study I: Copyright Infringements and the Amplification of Harm The first case study is one of copyright infringement, which is the most common type of intellectual property violation taking place in and through cyberspace. Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind, literary and artistic works, designs, symbols, names and images (WIPO 2017). The legal frameworks regulating intellectual property have the difficult task of protecting the ‘intangibles’, finding an equilibrium in the shifting balance between the need to promote innovation and creation (giving authors an incentive for their work through specific protections such as copyright, defined as the set of rights protecting the creator’s work), and allowing access to scientific, industrial, literary and artistic knowledge and experience, therefore fostering an environment in which innovation and creativity can thrive (Gosseries 2008; Lambrecht 2017; Landes and Posner 2003; Lessig 2004; Netanel 2003). As cyberspace is inherently constructed by intangibles, the commercialisation of the Internet and the emergence of ever-changing technologies have had an impressive impact on the implementation and management of intellectual property regulation, paving the way to a whole bundle of new challenges. Cyberspace, among other things, allows intangibles to be transmitted rapidly, bypassing many distribution costs, as well as border controls. The copies disseminated are virtually identical, as their quality does not generally deteriorate in the process (Lavorgna 2020). After all, every technological change has brought with it new challenges for intellectual property protection: from ‘warez’ sites in the 1990s

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for illegal software distribution, to smartphone apps for illegal music downloads in recent years. Or consider how digital media allow people to share, shape and re-mix copyrighted content, for instance with the viral distribution of memes and GIFs (Lavorgna 2020; Smith Ekstrand and Silver 2014). States regulate intellectual property infringements in very diverse ways. However, some general trends can be identified, first and foremost the fact that intellectual property rights have expanded significantly over the last four decades in duration, scope and reach (Lavorgna 2020; Lessig 2004). Disputes have become increasingly common and complex due to advances in technology and the relative anonymity enjoyed by individual infringers. At the same time, there has been an escalation in the politicisation of this topic, which has been transformed into a matter of ‘security’. As explained by Farrand and Carrapico (2012), intellectual property infringements have been increasingly regulated through criminal law rather than via civil remedies, being increasingly framed as a threat to consumers, economies and even governments by linking them to organised crime groups (even if this fact is not supported by strong empirical evidence). The copyright industries—those who create, produce and distribute copyrighted materials, such as music, movie and software-related industries—are those who generally push for the criminalisation of copyright infringement practices, and have a clear vested interest in overstating their losses for lobbying purposes (Yar 2008), and in reinforcing ‘the starving artist cliché’ to stress the seriousness of intellectual property violations. In the public imagination, one way in which copyright infringements have been framed as a security issue has been by using the terms ‘piracy’ or ‘theft’ to refer to them, a terminology that is not value-free. In 2013, a District Court in the United States arrived at the point of banning the Motion Picture Association of America (the trade association representing the six major Hollywood studios) from using pejorative words like ‘piracy’, ‘theft’ and ‘stealing’ during a trial, as they could mislead the jury (Disney Enterprises Inc. v. Hotfile Corp., 11-20427, S.D. Fla. 2013, see also Lavorgna 2020). We know, however, that there is not always a direct correspondence between how a certain behaviour is defined in current regulatory systems,

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and the severity of a harm caused by it (Brydolf-Horwitz 2018; Nutt et al. 2007; Yar 2012). To borrow Lasslet’s words (2010), social harm and crimes have a contingent, rather than a necessary connection, as they are analytically distinct phenomena. The types of, and the extent to which social harms are related to copyright violations, indeed, are issues still open to debate: some research suggests that, for instance, those downloading movies for free might never be paying for the same content, meaning that there is no significant loss for the movie industry (McKenzie 2017). In many socio-cultural contexts, there is no social shame or stigma attached to this type of violation (Cvetkovski 2014; Lysonski and Durvasula 2008). Furthermore, some artists—the supposed primary victims—believe that sharing their work allows the democratisation of music, the creation of music cultures, and the reaching of a wider public. In their view, certain types of copyright violations should therefore not be criminalised (Condry 2004; Lavorgna 2020; Lessig 2004). In this context, it might be problematic that most policy makers, and even many research studies tend to be acritical on the assumption that IP infringements are always to be considered criminal, as these types of violations are rarely perceived as illegal or deviant, or considered amoral or unethical (Gray 2012; Hinduja 2007). It is not surprising that many legal interventions which have tried to address this issue failed to do so, as they ignored the socio-criminal framework in which they were intervening, as well as the long-term effects of copyright and its violation in terms of creative output and social welfare (Danaher et al. 2017; Hinduja 2007). This problem holds true even more in recent years, when decision-making regarding if or when online content should be blocked, filtered or removed has been increasingly delegated to digital intermediaries (such as video-sharing platforms), which are ultimately left to decide what unauthorised use is an infringement to be enforced. In the long run, this entails a risk of negatively impacting on cultural diversity, as these private intermediaries take their decisions on the basis of profit maximisation, not on the thriving of artistic and cultural expression (Jacques et al. 2017; Lavorgna 2020).

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Case Study II: Health Frauds and the Under-Recognition of Harm In the context of cybercrime, it has already been argued that in many legal traditions, victims may be overlooked by criminal justice systems for doctrinal and conceptual reasons. Indeed, the law has high standards of proof for securing criminal convictions (an essential feature of the rule of law): there is the need to have a clear actus reus (a criminal act, explicitly recognised by the law); the mens rea (‘the guilty mind’, i.e. the offender’s awareness that his/her conduct is criminal, or at least of his/her culpability); and the reliance on jurisdictional boundaries to allow prosecution. These legal requirements, however, are not always easy to satisfy in cyberspace, which can leave the victim defenceless (Lavorgna 2020). This problem is particularly evident when it comes to health-related fraud, which is the focus of our second case study. Health fraud is here broadly defined as those cases where misleading medical information or quack therapies are fraudulently disseminated online. With cyberspace being increasingly used to support health-related decision making and to market health products (Mackey and Liang 2017), health frauds propagated online are becoming particularly worrisome. When fraud, deceit, or simply misjudgements occur, the social implications are extremely relevant, as health-related fraudulent behaviour may cause financial, physical and psychological/emotional harm to the primary victims, as well as public health problems, and loss of confidence in the professional scientific and medical norms. In this way, severe harm can be inflicted not only on ill people or others in their immediate circle (if the fraud victims are seeking medicines or medical information on behalf of others), but also on broader society (Lavorgna and Di Ronco 2017; Lavorgna 2020). Consider, for instance, the proliferation of fake online pharmacies selling substandard, spurious, falsely labelled, falsified or counterfeit medical products (Antonopoulos and Hall 2016; Hall and Antonopoulos 2015, 2016; WHO 2018); or how the online spread of anti-vaccine (anti-vax) information (originating from a scientific fraud) has been causing outbreaks of controllable diseases such as measles and mumps in several countries over the last decade (Godlee 2011; Lavorgna and Di Ronco 2019a; Poland and

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Jacobson 2011). Similarly, the online dissemination of medical quackeries (e.g. fake cancer ‘cures’) is a concerning development in health fraud. Online communities and social media debates can become very polarised, as dissenting voices can be easily shut down, and it might be difficult for naïve users to distinguish between fake and real expertise. In this context, quacks and fraudsters have an ideal platform to present themselves as health experts, praying on the desperation of vulnerable patients and their loved ones (Cattaneo and Corbellini 2014; Lavorgna and Di Ronco 2017). It is important to note that not all these cases are frauds stricto sensu, as the element of mens rea is not always present in providers of dangerous health practices (Lavorgna and Horsburgh 2019). In addition, for a harmful behaviour to be prosecuted through the criminal justice system as a crime, the element of mens rea generally needs to be present—an approach that is not always satisfying, as intent can be difficult to prove, and in certain cases indifference could also be culpable (Hillyard and Tombs 2008; Reiman 1979). Nonetheless, it is evident that this type of health fraud can cause broad social harm (if not also criminal harm). Looking at the dangerous behaviours exemplified in this section through the social harm lens, rather than through a legalistic interpretation of crime, can therefore be beneficial from several perspectives. First of all, this approach broadens the scope of criminological enquiry to an important, yet often overlooked, research area (Hillyard et al. 2004; Lavorgna and Di Ronco 2017), allowing criminologists to gaze out from the narrow boundaries of criminal justice (Lavorgna and Ronco 2019a). Second, by recognising the harm principle, or ‘harm to others’ (Feinberg 1984) as legitimate grounds for criminalisation in modern liberal societies (Peršak 2007; Simester and von Hirsch 2011), this approach emphasises how the current regulatory system might not fully consider the harm posed by certain dangerous practices, shedding light on the need for better regulatory and awareness-raising interventions to prevent and mitigate the harm posed by online health frauds, and reduce their negative impact on society. Third, in line with what Brydolf-Horwitz (2018) stressed in her account of the incremental and long-term consequences of cyber-bullying, the social harm approach would allow us to overcome the problem that, even if, for some crimes, the peculiar features

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of cyberspace add new dimensions to the harm suffered by victims, as these harms may not be sufficiently visible, no meaningful response is undertaken by the authorities until too late (after their deaths by suicide, in the cases of the four women addressed by Brydolf-Horwitz). Despite the growing awareness of the ubiquity of certain online crimes, legal and even social recognition of the harm produced is still lacking. Similar considerations can be drawn for many other (cyber) crimes against persons, and many (cyber) crimes of deception and coercion, especially when the motivations of the perpetrator are not limited to financial gain, but specifically target the emotional and psychological sphere of the victims, or where social engineering techniques are extensively used (Lavorgna 2020). Last but not least, as the notion of what a ‘health fraud’ varies in time and space, if only because scientific norms evolve, and health standards are at times culture-dependent (see Urquiza-Haas and Cloatre 2019), a social harm approach can allow for more ‘flexibility’. It can also foster new critical thinking by focusing on the actual harms, rather than on the letter of the law, and can thus facilitate international, comparative and even cross-disciplinary research on the topic, in the attempt to increase awareness, reduce victimisation, and mitigate harm to past and current victims or unwary supporters of harmful health-related practices (Lavorgna and Di Ronco 2019b).

Implications for a Less Harmful Society In order to mitigate harms facilitated by cyberspace, first of all, it is important to acknowledge that it is increasingly difficult to separate the online and offline realms in our lives, with the consequence that, in many cases, cybercrimes are not confined to cyberspace, but rather spill over into the physical space. No matter how futuristic a technological innovation may sound, it originates from, and will have repercussions on the physical, mundane existence. Hence, only by focusing on the local and human dimensions of cybercrime can we contextualise the issues at stake, improve our understanding, devise effective approaches to limit new and

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emerging forms of crime and deviancy, and offer adequate support to those affected (Lavorgna 2020). Second, it is important to raise critical awareness across the technology industry on the role and responsibilities of commercial companies in the context of crime and deviancy in cyberspace, as those devising, creating and disseminating technological innovation often seem reluctant to fully recognise the responsibilities that come with their immense power. By looking at harms rather than crimes, it is easier to move beyond discussions on the allocation of legal responsibility to individuals, and to better reflect on issues of collective, corporate or even moral responsibility (Hillyard and Tombs 2008). Last but not least, to facilitate thinking and strategies for crime prevention and control, and harm mitigation, harm-reduction strategies can be particularly useful in assisting the strategic assessment of areas where policy attention should be prioritised (Agrafiotis et al. 2016). In fact, more traditional approaches, focusing on specific threats, risk being overreliant on acritical assumptions on a given threat, its source, its severity, and its characteristics. Furthermore, by overlooking harms there is an additional risk of also overlooking less evident forms of victimisation and negative impact. However, because of the inherent complexity and transdisciplinarity of harm-reduction strategies in cyberspace, and because of the pluralisation of security actors offering formal and informal systems of prevention and control, trusting partnerships between the academic world, the private sector and law enforcement are of the utmost importance to tackle the contemporary challenges (and those ahead) in an effective way. Similarly, genuine collaboration among disciplines is increasingly needed to properly unpack this complexity (Lavorgna 2020).

Conclusions Even if social harm-based approaches have not been extensively used to address crime and deviance in cyberspace, the literature and examples covered in this chapter have pointed to how this type of approach could indeed be of great utility to improve our understanding of cybercrimes, and better think about preventive and mitigating interventions. We have

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seen how, for certain behaviours facilitated by cyberspace, by looking at social harm, we can draw attention to actions, victims and perpetrators otherwise neglected by the criminal justice system, and allow research communities to better grasp their characteristics and impact. We have also seen how the same approach can help us to debunk certain securitisation attempts. This is particularly important in the context of cyberspace, as securitisation of cybercrimes (which can become very invasive or pervasive with the trend towards greater investment in technology-led security systems) seems to be at least partially manufactured through poor evidence and questionable statistics (Webber 2014). A further implication of this is that the social harm perspective could also be of great utility in informing public debate, and especially in moving discussion beyond the traditional ‘law and order’ approach to think about alternatives to the criminal justice system for crime prevention and control, especially in areas where traditional forms of crime control have proved ineffective (Hillyard and Tombs 2008; Pemberton 2007). When it comes to crime and deviance in cyberspace, this approach is particularly promising, as definitions, policies and strategies in this area are fast evolving, but there is still a window of opportunity to set a better, more informed and balanced paradigm and agenda for crime prevention and control before the crystallisation of the existing and upcoming agenda.

Further Reading • Agrafiotis, I., Nurse, J. R. C., Goldsmith, M., Creese, S., & Upton, D. (2018) A Taxonomy of Cyber-Harms: Defining the Impacts of Cyber-Attacks and Understanding How They Propagate. Journal of Cybersecurity, 4 (1). This article offers a reflection on how ‘harm’ has been conceptualised in disciplines such as criminology and economics, and offers a taxonomy of cyber-harms encountered by organisations. • Lavorgna, A. (2020). Cybercrimes: Critical Issues in a Global Context. London: Macmillan International.

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This textbook brings a new critical perspective in the area of cybercrime scholarship, giving emphasis to topics and approaches often neglected in previous publications on the topic; furthermore, it is directed at a multidisciplinary audience, and relies on multidisciplinary literature. • Stratton, G., Powell, A., & Cameron, R. (2017). Crime and Justice in Digital Society: Towards a “Digital Criminology”? International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 6 (2), 17–33. • This article relies on the concept of ‘digital society’ to inform and inspire innovative scholarship, while recognising how the conventional scope of cyber-criminology has neglected a wide range of ways in which cyberspace enables social harms. • Powell, A., & Henry, N. (2017). Sexual Violence in a Digital Age. London: Palgrave Macmillan. This book is very effective in conceptualising the nature and impacts of technology-facilitated sexual harms by critically examining the body as a site and target of power in digital life, and by offering a theory of digital embodiment which can be useful to better understand various forms of digital harm.

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17 Harm and Migration Chris Moreh

Introduction In its most elementary understanding, the concept of migration denotes the movement of people across geographic space. It is an essential capacity of human beings and it has been a constitutive force in the shaping of our evolutionary and cultural history for over 100,000 years (Timmermann and Friedrich 2016). It is only when such movements transgress ethnocultural boundaries or administrative jurisdictions that migration gains its modern political meaning and can become problematised in relation to social harm. This chapter aims to provide a broad overview of the various different ways in which international migration can be associated with social harms. Its main goal is to introduce the phenomenon of migration in all C. Moreh (B) York St John University, York, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_17

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its paradoxical complexity and to relate the findings from recent migration scholarship to the issues raised by the social harm approach (Boukli and Kotzé 2018; Dorling et al. 2008; Hillyard et al. 2004; Pemberton 2015). The first section of the chapter places contemporary discourses around migration in a historical context, tracing them back to the beginnings of social scientific interest in the topic. Through this conceptual mapping exercise, the section also argues that a holistic understanding of the social harms associated with migratory processes requires a broad and flexible theoretical framework. The second section discusses, in turn, three dimensions of migration-related harms: those associated with the causes of migration, those entailed by migration processes themselves and those stemming from attempts to control the movement of people. In all three dimensions, the analysis will focus on the intentional harms that are nonetheless ‘constituted by either foreseeable events or resulting from contexts that are alterable social relationships’ (Pemberton 2015: 25, italics in original). Grasping the great variety of harmful effects tied up with migratory processes is particularly important today, after population movements have significantly diversified and ‘migration has gained increasing political salience over the past decades’ (De Haas et al. 2020: 11). Assessing the consequences of this politicisation is becoming an ever more necessary undertaking in order to understand contemporary societies themselves.

Background Explicitly zemiological appreciations of migratory phenomena have focused primarily on the exclusionary immigration and asylum policies and control mechanisms that target the most vulnerable of migrants at the borders of powerful states (Canning 2018; Soliman 2019; Webber 2004). These cases, however, represent a small fraction of the various population movements that exist worldwide. While this narrow focus is understandable given the urgency of the processes they describe and the magnitude of the harms they identify, it is also a reflection of the limits

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imposed by the inherent ‘value-orientation’ of the social harm approach (Pemberton 2015: 15). In his groundbreaking book Harmful societies, Simon Pemberton (2015: 1; emphasis in original) derives the social harm perspective from Friedrich Engels’s 1845 study of The Condition of the Working-Class in England , which he considers to be ‘one of the original, if not the original, social harm analysis’. What lends it the cornerstone status of the zemiological tradition, in Pemberton’s assessment, is Engels’s structural mode of explanation and his understanding of the harms that had befallen the urban working classes in the course of industrialisation as ‘entirely preventable’. While the question of migration is not raised in Pemberton’s study, it features prominently in that of Engels, who gives a detailed account of the effects of Irish immigration on the lives of English workers. Engels’s treatment of the topic, however, is one of the weaker elements in his broader structural analysis. While in his sociography the English working class had unquestionably fallen victim to the ‘social murder’ committed against its members by ‘the ruling power of society’ (Engels 2010 [1845]: 393–394), the squalor of Irish immigrants is to a great extent attributed to ‘the Irish character, which, under some circumstances, is comfortable only in the dirt’ (2010 [1845]: 337). In his analysis, Irish immigration was ‘gradually forcing the rate of wages, and with it the Englishman’s level of civilisation, down to the Irishman’s level’ (2010 [1845]: 377), and, ultimately, ‘the degrading position of the English workers, engendered by our modern history [i.e. industry; author’s note], and its immediate consequences, has been still more degraded by the presence of Irish competition’ (2010 [1845]: 392). Many of the concerns raised by Engels—if not the language itself— still sound strangely familiar today. The phenomena they describe have since been explored in depth. The ‘dual labour market’ theory of Piore (1979), for instance, posited that advanced industrialised labour markets become split into primary and secondary, lower-level, segments, with international migrants becoming ‘downward assimilated’ into the latter (see Portes and Zhou 1993). Neo-Marxist approaches have meanwhile developed more refined structural analyses of the uses and abuses of migration policies by the ruling classes, in which the detrimental effect

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of immigration on the bargaining power of labour unions remains an important point of contention (Castles and Kosack 1973; Streeck 2016). However, Engels described only a limited side of the story of migration and the harms associated with it. Other political economists examining the same phenomena have provided complementary assessments, which are equally foundational to much contemporary migration theory. If Engels can be said to represent a socialist stance, the work of John Stuart Mill and of Max Weber can be taken to describe the liberal and nationalist perspectives accordingly, and they both provide valuable insights for understanding migration today. Mill is probably best known (and criticised) among zemiologists for his famous liberal conception of freedom, which he defined in his 1859 book On Liberty as the absence of outside interference in one’s actions as long as those actions do not cause harm to other people’s own exercise of freedom. Although this work does not address the question of migration, Mill treats the subject at length in his earlier Principles of Political Economy (1848), where he argued for a national policy to support largescale migration to the farther reaches of the British Empire as a solution to overpopulation and poverty. He was writing at the height of the Great Irish Famine (1845–1850) which led to unprecedented levels of Irish emigration both to England and across the Atlantic. In a truly structural explanation, he saw this migration as resulting from ‘the threefold operation of the potato failure, the poor law, and the general turning-out of tenantry’ (Mill 1965: 194). Already in the first edition of Principles, he described the ‘extraordinary case’ of Irish migration as evidence that ‘spontaneous emigration may, at a particular crisis, remove greater multitudes than it was ever proposed to remove at once by any national scheme’ (1965: 194). This ‘unparalleled amount of spontaneous emigration’ was ‘at once voluntary and self-supporting, the succession of emigrants being kept up by funds contributed from the earnings of their relatives and connexions who had gone before’ (1965: 967). By the time of the sixth (1865) edition of the book, this form of migration was no longer a unique case but a ‘new fact in modern history’ instigated by the ‘extraordinary cheapening of the means of transport’ and the increase in ‘knowledge … of the condition of the labour market in remote parts of the world’, signalling the advent of

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an age in which human flourishing will depend ‘so little on governments, and so much on the general disposition of the people’ (1965: 378–379). Mill’s insights contain the essence of what would later become known as ‘migration network theory’ and the concept of ‘cumulative causation’ (Massey 1990), which explain how migratory patterns become self-perpetuating through cross-national ties and remittances, both financial—money sent back home—and social—the flow of information, ideas, identities, social capital and other non-material assets. His strong belief in the emancipatory potential of ‘voluntary’, free migration remains the general attitude among mainstream economists and particularly those promoting the more radical idea of ‘open borders’ (Caplan and Weinersmith 2019). Those who argue that eliminating barriers to labour mobility worldwide would lead to gains in the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of between 50 and 150%, despite such unrestricted mobility having ‘complicated effects’ for non-migrants (Clemens 2011), are effectively following Mill’s guidance that the benefit of migration ‘should be considered in its relation, not to a single country, but to the collective economical interests of the human race’ (1965: 963). For critics, however, this so-called neoliberal ideology supports migration and open borders only with the covert aim of ‘destabilizing protective labour regimes’ (Streeck 2016: 26). In contrast to Engels and Mill, Weber adopted what he called a ‘“nationalistic” criterion of evaluation’ (1994: 16, emphasis in original) when assessing the Condition of Farm Labour in Eastern Germany (1892). In this work, he famously charged the German landowning class with undermining the livelihoods of German farmworkers and replacing their labour with that of Polish migrants. As a solution, he advocated for ‘the closing of the eastern frontier’ and the dismantlement of the landed aristocracy’s large-scale enterprises for the benefit of the ‘nation state’ (Weber 1994: 12–13). Yet, his analysis of migratory phenomena is more complex and paradoxical than his nationalistic policy recommendation. On the one hand, he echoes Engels—especially his later collaborative works with Marx— in describing unskilled migration as a ‘weapon in the already anticipated

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class struggle, directed against the awakening self-confidence of the workers’ (Weber 1924: 502). On the other hand, he complements this class-based structural analysis with a cultural one more typical of his later sociological work. This comes to the fore particularly when he examines why German day-labourers migrate away to the new industrial towns. The reasons for this migration, he argues, are not material; instead, it represents a reaction to the deeply engrained social structure of the German countryside, which restricts social mobility almost entirely. It is an escape from a world that ‘contains only masters and servants’, and in which the latter ‘will be faced for ever after only with the prospect of toiling away on someone else’s land to the tolling of the estate bell’ [sic]. The new opportunity structures created by industrialisation give rise to an ‘inarticulate, half-conscious urge’ calling on a latent ‘primitive idealism’ reanimated by ‘the magic of freedom’ (Weber 1994: 8, emphasis in original). There is a fundamental tension between the two theories of migration represented in Weber’s work, one which has shaped migration research ever since. His insights underpin the more recently conceptualised ‘aspirations–capabilities model’ that treats migration ‘as a function of capabilities and aspirations to move within a given set of opportunity structures’ (De Haas et al. 2020: 63). At the same time, the ‘economic nationalist’ (Weber 1994: 20) stream of Weber’s thought has been kept alive by those who long advocated for a ‘principle of nationality’ in adjudicating on questions of migration (Miller 1995), and has seen a dramatic resurgence in recent national-populist movements (Eatwell and Goodwin 2018; Goodhart 2017). Grounding an analysis of social harm associated with migratory phenomena on only one of the broad perspectives outlined above would pose serious limitations. In different ways, all three see migration as tied up in ‘relations, processes, flows, practices, discourse, actions and inactions that constitute the fabric of our societies which serve to compromise the fulfilment of human needs and in doing so result in identifiable harms’ (Pemberton 2015: 24). Migration can be, simultaneously, a consequence of harmful social structures, an active element of them, or a challenge to their operation. A holistic exploration of migration-related harms would therefore look at all three dimensions: harms associated

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with the causes of migration; harms associated with migratory processes themselves; and harms associated with the management of migration.

Migratory Dimensions of Social Harm Harmful Causes of Migration According to United Nations population data, there were 272 million international migrants worldwide in 2019 (IOM 2019: 19). Although this number is a small fraction of the global population—which reached 7.7 billion in 2019, it continues an increasing trend showing that the world is becoming more migratory year on year. International migrants choose to move across national borders for various reasons, with those migrating for work accounting for around two-thirds of all migrants (IOM 2019: 33). Other common migration motives relate to family, study or business opportunities. While many of these migrations are voluntary, resulting from decisions made by individuals and their families, differentiating between migratory agency and structural constraints is less than straightforward. It remains the case that most migrants move to richer countries than the ones where they were born, choose to reunite with partners and family members who had already left, study in countries with better education systems and invest where there is a safer business environment and a higher spending power. Thus, while decisions to migrate reflect aspirations to improve one’s life, they are very much tied up in international inequalities that could arguably constitute ‘alterable social relationships’ at a global scale (Pemberton 2015). Often, the reasons for such global inequalities are intertwined with historical patterns of colonial exploitation, political corruption or economic mismanagement. Only careful causal analysis of the complex web of structural mechanisms balanced by an in-depth understanding of the life experiences and aspirations of migrants could estimate the degree to which migration itself should be considered a harmful consequence of structural harms, or rather a privileged opportunity to escape their grip (Schewel 2019).

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One can think of the migration-inducing power of symbolic geographies as a case when global inequalities create voluntary migrations with ambiguous effects. In his analysis of mental cartographies of world order, Attila Melegh (2006) has shown that in popular and scholarly imaginaries countries are assigned different positions on an East-West civilisational slope. In this dominant discourse, ‘almost all political and social actors ‘East’ and ‘West’ identify themselves on a descending scale from ‘civilization to barbarism’, from ‘developed to non-developed’ status’ (Melegh 2006: 9). This ‘civilisational slope’ ideology is particularly strong in post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, where an idealised vision of the capitalist West underpinned popular support for the transition to a market economy in the 1990s, but can equally represent geopolitical imaginations across the global North-South divide (Slater 1997). It is often this prestige hierarchy that drives migratory phenomena. As a Romanian migrant reflecting on migration from his village to Italy expressed it: ‘for some it is not important whether they earned money or not, or that they slept on the streets; what’s important is that they have been to Italy’ (cited in Anghel 2009: 261). He also observed how ‘some of those who had left returned more cultivated, more civilised, they are learning a new language’ (2009: 261). These words capture the essence of the civilisational slope mentality, which sees migration as a spatial ‘civilising process’ (cf. Elias 2000). Erind Pajo (2008: 201) has documented similar trends in his ethnographic study of the ‘socioglobal articulations and imaginaries’ driving migration from Albania, a country with one of the highest emigration rates in the world. In 2019, just under 30% of Albanian nationals were estimated to be living in another country, the second-highest rate in Europe—only surpassed by Bosnia and Herzegovina—and twelfth highest in the world (IOM 2019: 27). Examining the emigration wave of the 1990s, Pajo was puzzled by the fact that over half of university graduates had left the country, often undertaking dangerous journeys as undocumented migrants, to take up unskilled low-paid jobs in Greece, Italy and other European countries. The attraction of comparatively higher wages could only partially explain what he saw as ‘the paradox of willed pursuit of social decline through international migration’ (2008: 11). Instead, Pajo (2008: 10) argues, international migration is best

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understood as ‘driven by the social desire to advance from a location envisioned as low in the international hierarchy towards one envisioned as higher’. However, these aspirations of ‘socioglobal mobility’, as Pajo called it, often have tragic consequences, leading many to irregular border-crossings that result in death, or being undermined by the late realisation that social status is localised and true ‘socioglobal mobility’ ultimately a chimera. The internalised apprehension of a civilisational slope at the heart of the world system and the mirage of socioglobal mobility are manifestations of that dominant ideology which Samir Amin (2009) calls ‘Eurocentrism’. For Amin, the Eurocentric vision emerged directly from the Western European colonial experience as a mentality acting to camouflage the colonial centre’s material dependency on the periphery with the veil of the periphery’s dependency on the centre for its progress towards a specific model of development. Eurocentrism has thus placed the ‘civilizing role of colonization’ in the foreground, ascribing economic disparities and political deficiencies in the peripheral regions of the global capitalist economy to background ‘factors internal to these non-European societies’ (Amin 2009: 184–185). As other post-colonial thinkers have also emphasised, the formalisation of the nation-state system of international relations during the first half of the twentieth century was in no way a break with the colonial world order. In the words of Bhambra (2016: 344), ‘the nation-state in the comparative historical sociology of nation-state-building is always already a colonial and imperial state’. Contemporary international migrations take place within this formalised nation-state system which has reconfigured colonial imaginaries of civilisation and barbarism as development and underdevelopment at a truly global scale. The case of post-communist Eastern Europe most poignantly highlights the central role played by mobility rights and opportunities in the post-colonial system of international relations. It also serves as a reminder that it is usually not the poorest people who migrate, but those who can afford the non-negligible costs affiliated with investing in a migration project. Likewise, it is usually not the least economically developed countries that produce the highest emigration rates. This is

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explained by the ‘migration transition theory’, which posits that development initially leads to an increase in emigration—both internal (rural to urban mobility) and international migration—and only after a certain threshold of development would emigration reduce and immigration into the country increase (De Haas 2010b; Skeldon 1997, 2012). Development had been a driving force behind large-scale European migration to North America at the turn of the twentieth century (Hatton and Williamson 1998), and it is what drives the increase of emigration from African countries towards Europe today (Clemens and Postel 2018; Schewel 2020). For this reason, many argue that conceiving of development aid as a global migration-reducing mechanism is ill-advised, and it would be more accurate to interpret increases in emigration as a positive side-effect of economic development and reduction in social harm (Clemens and Postel 2018). The ambiguous relationship between migration, development and global inequalities is also reflected in another increasingly prevalent migration type: environmental migration. The current speed of climate change is commonly considered an example of environmental harm by green criminologists, given that so much of its causing factors can be attributed to potentially alterable human behaviour (Westerhuis et al. 2013; White and Heckenberg 2014). While climate change has been a major cause of human migrations for millennia (Timmermann and Friedrich 2016), some expect human-induced climate change to lead to unprecedented levels of displacement and migration in the coming decades (IOM 2008). Under certain scenarios, climate scientists envisage that up to 200 million people might become displaced by mid-twentyfirst century due to rising sea levels, water shortages and declining agricultural yields, many of whom would relocate internationally (IOM 2008). Other research challenges the simplistic assumptions underlying these projections, pointing out at the same time that the harms of climate change could be much worse than displacement and migration (Foresight 2011; Riosmena et al. 2018). Despite increasingly visible environmental shocks—such as hurricanes, floods or wildfires—climate change is a stepwise process, first affecting the livelihoods of rural populations who are pushed towards coastal megacities that carry a much higher level of longterm environmental risk. It is estimated that the number of people living

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in floodplains in urban areas around the world could reach between 136 and 211 million by 2060, four to seven times more than in 2000 (Foresight 2011). With further environmental degradation and rising sea levels, migration to geographically safer destinations in richer countries is again more likely to become a real option only for the well-off, with poorer populations becoming ‘trapped’ in risk areas (Foresight 2011). Migration itself emerges as a harm more clearly when it is experienced as involuntary or deemed to be the only viable option for achieving a humane standard of living. Conditions of direct violence—such as armed conflicts and life-threatening living conditions—often compel people to seek refuge in a foreign country. At the end of 2018, the number of refugees globally was 25.9 million, and a further 3.5 million asylum seekers were awaiting the outcome of their application for refugee status (IOM 2019: 39). More than two-thirds of all refugees originated from only five countries—Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia, countries where the most serious conflicts had taken place in the previous year (Iván et al. 2019)—and over half were aged under 18. For this large population of youngsters, migration is a survival opportunity, but not in fact a real choice between equally viable options. Their experience is in many ways more akin to that of mass displacements following inter-ethnic conflicts or forceful deportations by authoritarian regimes, population movements which could hardly be classified as migration in any useful sense due precisely to the complete absence of decision-making power on the part of the displaced. Yet, even under extreme circumstances such as the protracted civil war in Syria—which erupted in 2011—there is a rather complex relationship between violence and migration. Empirical data from Syrian refugees in Turkey shows that those who had not experienced violence chose to migrate earlier than those with violent experiences, particularly when they also possessed higher socio-economic capital (Schon 2019). While possessing the means to escape violent conditions is an essential requirement, Schon further explains this phenomenon by arguing that experiences of violence can result not only in negative psychological effects—such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—but can also trigger more positive outcomes such as post-traumatic growth (PTG), involving an increase in resilience, imagination, spirituality and a

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better appreciation of life and social relationships (Schon 2019; Tedeschi and Calhoun 1996). Experiences of violence can thus delay migration decisions, especially when community support mechanisms help fit explanations for the violent events into a coherent narrative, thus normalising violence as something that could be countered through alternative methods to migration. This mechanism parallels in some respects the classical distinction made by Albert Hirschman (1970) between exit and voice as possible responses to decline in organisations and states. While formal wars cause significant refugee movements, generalised violence can sometimes reach warlike proportions and serve as a cause of forced migration. Population movements in Latin America are often discussed as examples. In 2019, Mexico was the second largest country of origin in the world—after India—with almost 12 million of its nationals living abroad, and the Mexico–US migration corridor has been the world’s largest for several decades, providing a classic example of economic migration (De Haas et al. 2020; IOM 2019: 26). However, economic reasons are not the only factor, and there is evidence that a spike in homicide rates in Mexico has been driving an increase in displacement and asylum seeking in the United States (Lopez 2019; Rubio Díaz-Leal and Albuja 2014). Although violence has for a long time been a part of everyday life in many Mexican towns, it skyrocketed following then incoming President Felipe Calderón’s declaration of war on drugs in 2006 (Lee et al. 2019; Lopez 2019). It is estimated that over the next six years the average homicide rate reached a staggering 1673 killings per month (Lopez 2019: 225). Refocusing the law-enforcement activities of the police force and the army on combating the crossborder drug trade left many civilians unprotected from local drug gangs, inducing many to leave and seek asylum in the United States. However, applications made on the basis of ‘general country conditions’ or ‘indiscriminate violence’ are not considered as legitimate grounds for asylum, and the success rate of applications remained as low as 10% (Lopez 2019: 227). Many of those fleeing situations of generalised violence become internally displaced (Rubio Díaz-Leal and Albuja 2014). Even in 2019, Mexico experienced 11,000 new displacements, the third highest number in Latin America, after El Salvador and Colombia (IOM 2019:

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100). At the same time, Mexico itself is becoming a transit and destination country for migrants fleeing violent climates elsewhere, not only in Central and South America, but as far off as Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Solomon 2019). These new trans-Atlantic migratory movements are driven mainly by the difficulty of accessing Europe following the growing securitisation of the Mediterranean border (Neal 2009), but they also speak of changing socio-economic relationships in the regions of origin. Compared to previous decades, more and more women from countries with strong patriarchal social institutions, such as the DRC, engage in ‘autonomous’ forms of migration independently from male family members (Schoumaker et al. 2018). This new trend can be attributed both to an increase in gender-based violence and a growing experience of autonomy after a harsh economic crisis in Congo had led more women into the labour market (Schoumaker et al. 2018; Vause and Toma 2015). The expanding labour market has also provided broader access to the minimum financial capabilities required for a migration project, allowing poorer and lower educated people to also migrate in higher numbers than before, and to explore new migration routes towards other African and North American destinations (Schoumaker et al. 2018). These migratory movements raise new questions regarding the linkages between economic crisis, development, violence and migration, which are yet to be empirically explored and conceptualised in respect to migration transitions and social harm.

Harms of the Migration Process While we tend to see migration as only one of many social processes taking place within the broader context of contemporary societies, migration itself can come to constitute a separate sociocultural domain, a complex web of unintentionally harmful ‘relations, processes, flows, practices, discourse, actions and inactions’ (Pemberton 2015: 24). This can be the case with what is often referred to as a ‘culture of migration’ (Massey et al. 1993). It has been shown that as ‘migration grows in prevalence within a community, it changes values and cultural perceptions in ways that increase the probability of future migration’ (Massey

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et al. 1993: 452). Regardless of the initial causes of migration, subsequent movements can thus be animated by the unquestioned expectation that migration is the only available and desirable option. Such expectations can help explain the extremely high migration aspiration rates in certain countries of origin. According to Gallup World Poll data, over or almost half of the entire adult population would like to move abroad permanently in countries such as Sierra Leone (71%), Liberia (66%), Haiti (63%), Albania (60%), El Salvador (52%), Congo (50%), Ghana (49%), the Dominican Republic (49%) and Nigeria (48%) (Esipova et al. 2018). As any other ‘culture’, the culture of migration establishes its own norms, worldviews, status systems and institutions. A fully developed culture of migration reorients its members’ aspirations towards potentially unrealistic ideals and is supported by an extensive ‘migration industry’ consisting of ‘employers, travel agents, recruiters, brokers, smugglers, humanitarian organisations, housing agents, immigration lawyers and other intermediaries who have a strong interest in the continuation of migration’ (De Haas et al. 2020: 66). While many intermediaries provide services that empower migrants and help ameliorate the difficulties involved in the migration process—from raising funds for a migration project through navigating restrictive immigration regimes to settling in a new country and finding a livelihood with limited language skills and cultural awareness—these services often come at extremely high financial and human costs. One of the most harmful effects of the culture of migration has to do with the normalisation of extreme risk, which disproportionately affects vulnerable groups such as women and children (Grabska et al. 2019; Pickering and Cochrane 2013; Zanfrini 2019). Pressures to emigrate can set many on risky journeys that often result in death. According to the International Organization of Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, which attempts to monitor the number and circumstances of migrant deaths and disappearances worldwide, a total of 19,325 migrants had died and at least 16,235 had gone missing between 2014 and the time of writing (IOM 2020). The overwhelming majority of fatalities and disappearances occurred in the Mediterranean region, with many of the victims being undocumented children (Laczko et al. 2019). Pickering and Cochrane (2013: 28) have also shown that women are more likely

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to lose their lives while crossing national borders, and that the reasons for this have to do with ‘gendered social practices within families, and within countries of origin and transit, as well as the practices of smuggling markets’, just as much as with ‘state sponsored border control’. Early pioneer migrants—those who explore a new migration route or destination for the first time—generally lack information about what to expect from a migration journey, and those who return from abroad often mask the harsh realities they had faced in order to appear successful in their home communities. The opportunity and requirement for such transnational negotiation of social status is an essential element of a culture of migration, providing meaning to the so-called ‘3D’— dirty, difficult and dangerous—jobs that many first-generation migrants undertake (Anghel 2013; Goldring 1998; Nieswand 2011). With the development of stable migration networks, however, information about the risks of migration becomes more broadly available, while at the same time, these known risks become increasingly subordinated to the social prestige of a successful migration project. It is often the case that lucrative jobs promised by transnational migration intermediaries are known to involve prostitution under conditions of modern slavery, sex work abroad being facilitated by ‘a trafficking system based on a strong pact’ (Carling 2006: 26). Vulnerable would-be migrants can even be fully aware of the high risk of kidnapping or rape, that a pregnancy can improve one’s treatment in a detention centre, or that a child conceived under such circumstances can have monetary value (Zanfrini 2019: 127). A strongly established culture of migration relativises such risks to the social desirability of emigration, often syncretising the various harmful elements of the migration process with local cultural traditions. The case of young women trafficked from Nigeria to Europe described by Carling (2006) is a revealing example. Especially in rural areas with limited paid work opportunities, young women face considerable pressures to emigrate even when they have few resources to move. One resource they can draw on, however, is family members and friends who can establish an initial contact with someone involved in the human trafficking business. In the Nigerian context, this first contact is a local ‘madam’ who has a connection with another ‘madam’ in the country of destination. The migration project is sponsored by these intermediaries,

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leaving the migrant woman with a debt that takes between one and three years to pay off as a prostitute in Europe. The pact between the migrant and the ‘madam’ is sealed by a local religious leader as part of an official ceremony highly charged in traditional religious symbolism. The ritual turns the pact into a strong bond not only between the trafficked women and their sponsors, but also between the women and their local communities, to the effect that breaking it would bring shame on the entire community (2006: 26–29). In case of a failed journey, trafficked women are often directly blamed by their parents and families, while successful ones where debts are fully paid off often lead to the trafficked women taking on the role of ‘madam’ for other women in their extended family networks. Through this cycle, the trafficking system becomes a self-reinforcing social mechanism, only weakened by the ‘migrationundermining feedback mechanism’ (De Haas 2010a) of the increasing number of returnee women who choose to speak out and warn other women about the conditions they experienced (Carling 2006). Cultures of migration are thus paradoxical social mechanisms. They reduce the risks of migration by providing a complex infrastructure of networks, institutions and cultural meanings in both the localities of origin and destination, which help navigate transnational travel, work and social life. At the same time, they also enshrine social expectations and practices that can have harmful consequences for the migrants, the communities of origin and the localities of destination. Large-scale emigration can leave whole towns and villages without a workingage population, making these communities entirely reliant on financial remittances, the money sent back by migrant workers. It can also result in severe skills shortages due to brain drain, the emigration of highly skilled people. One of the most widely researched harmful effects of large-scale migration on the communities of origin is the condition of ‘leftbehind’ vulnerable family members (Kilkey and Palenga-Möllenbeck 2016; Parreñas 2005). It is estimated that the share of children with at least one parent living away from home is as high as 27% in the Philippines, 36% in Ecuador and more than 40% in rural South Africa (Fellmeth et al. 2018). While remittances can make an invaluable contribution to the schooling, nourishment and life prospects of children

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in poor communities, the long-term absence of parents has simultaneously been linked to psychological and behavioural disorders (Castañeda and Buck 2011; Fellmeth et al. 2018; Ivlevs et al. 2019; Kufakurinani et al. 2014). Castañeda and Buck (2011: 105) capture this doubleedged nature of the migration-development nexus very accurately when asserting that ‘the suffering that the children left behind feel is an intrinsic part of the logic of remittance-economies’. Using Gallup World Poll data for 114 countries, Ivlevs et al. (2019) have found that in general having family members abroad and benefitting from the material advantages brought by remittances increases levels of evaluative wellbeing, while also increasing the likelihood to experience stress and depression. As they conclude, ‘remittances buy “happiness” but do not relieve the pain of separation’ (Ivlevs et al. 2019: 136). The latter, however, can have serious implications for young children. A metaanalysis of 111 studies—the majority focusing on internal migration in China—exploring more closely the health impacts of parental migration on left-behind children and adolescents has found that left-behind children scored higher on depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation than children from non-migrant families, and they were also more likely to show signs of conduct disorder and substance abuse (Fellmeth et al. 2018). The increasing availability of new communication technologies and the emergence of ‘mobile phone parenting’ (Madianou and Miller 2011) have not resolved the emotional issues of family separation (Madianou 2016). Studies have also highlighted, however, that many of these negative effects are tied together with wider social issues in the localities of origin. Left-behind youngsters can become stigmatised as ‘diaspora orphans’, whose behaviour is characterised by ‘not taking education seriously, getting drunk, wanton expenditure on fashion clothing, lack of discipline, arrogance and promiscuous behaviour’ (Kufakurinani et al. 2014: 125). Such stereotypical representations are often key elements in broader societal debates about emigration, the decline of parental authority and changing gender norms of parenting in traditional societies (Kufakurinani et al. 2014). As Parreñas (2005) has argued, many of the emotional injuries experienced by left-behind children could be partly mitigated by an increased openness to non-traditional gender

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roles, which would allow single mothers and fathers with migrant spouses to partake in a wider array of parenting activities. The case of left-behind children thus carries the same paradoxes as other migration-related phenomena. It both highlights the detrimental effect of migration on family life and the inefficiency of traditional patriarchal family structures in the context of an increasingly mobile world. The paradoxes of migration processes extend also to their effect on the countries of destination. Although migration brings substantial economic benefits to developed economies by filling labour shortages, it also raises concerns about the effect it has on the employment, working conditions and wages of native populations (Borjas 2003; Card 2001; Dustmann et al. 2012; Manacorda et al. 2012; Ottaviano and Peri 2012). A large body of research using complex econometric modelling has highlighted that while these concerns are not substantiated by the empirical data, there are no easy answers to public fears and perceptions. In the case of the UK, it has been shown that migration has both slightly increased the average wage of the UK-born population and decreased wages at the bottom of the income distribution where many migrant workers are concentrated (Dustmann et al. 2012). Wadsworth et al. (2016) have argued that the strain on wages and employment opportunities experienced by UK workers following the opening of the British labour-market to Central and Eastern European nationals after the 2004 enlargement of the European Union is to be attributed to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 rather than migration itself, although these negative effects were unequally distributed geographically and thus were experienced differently across local communities. Beyond strictly economic effects, there is also evidence that such sudden large-scale migration, especially when freedom of movement is not met with equal opportunities on the labour market, can have a temporary negative impact on housing (Sá 2015) and on property crime rates (Bell et al. 2013). At the same time, even under these conditions, migration has no effect on violent crime (Bell et al. 2013), while longer term migration inflows, such as those experienced by the United States during the 1990s, are actually more likely to reduce crime rates (Sampson 2008; Wadsworth 2010).

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Western liberal democracies have long struggled to manage the discrepancy between negative public opinion reactive to local inequalities and the general economic benefits that migration brings to national economies. On the one hand, popular pressures to limit immigration usually clash with states’ obligation to uphold the core liberal values of citizenship and universal human rights (Hollifield 1992). On the other hand, states may be limited in their ability to react to popular anti-immigration pressures by vested interests. As Freeman (1995: 885) has argued, ‘the concentrated benefits and diffuse costs of immigration mean that the interest group system around immigration issues is dominated by those groups supportive of larger intakes’. The strengthening of national-populist politics in the decade following the 2008 economic crisis can be read as a backlash against these constraints and interests, but the restrictionist measures they propose as the solution to popular grievances are likely to result in harmful outcomes for migrants and citizens alike (Eatwell and Goodwin 2018; Norris and Inglehart 2019).

Migration Management as Social Harm Attempts by states to ‘manage migration’—which is generally a euphemism for migration control and restrictions on entry—can vary in the degree of harm they cause to migrant populations. The harshest ‘management techniques’ have been widely researched in the zemiological literature and have emphasised the often deadly consequences of border controls and the criminalisation of migrants (Canning 2018; Soliman 2019; Webber 2004). These studies have argued that liberal nation-states have increasingly engaged in forms of ‘hybrid governance’ that blur the boundaries between criminal law and migration law in order to legitimise the removal and deportation of undesired vulnerable populations (Soliman 2019; van der Woude and van der Leun 2017). In this way, even within a liberal democratic legal framework the emergent ‘crimmigration control system can subject non-citizens to ad hoc legal processes that are more likely to result in less favourable outcomes’ (Soliman 2019: 3).

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Within this ‘crimmigration control system’ migrant and refugee movements are increasingly treated as ‘security threats’ to the integrity of nation-states, and the policing of national borders is often represented as humanitarian work (Andersson 2017; Williams 2016). In Europe, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) oversees the securitisation of the EU’s external borders by conducting search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean and further afield from the European mainland, with the joint aim of preventing the death of irregular migrants and their early interception and institutionalisation (Andersson 2017). At the same time, security narratives are driving an increase in the policing of internal EU borders, slowly eroding the free movement ideals of the European Union (van der Woude and van der Leun 2017). In the United States, the securitisation of migration entails that around 400,000 non-citizens are forcibly removed from the country annually, while ‘humanitarian’ border control cannot prevent around 400 irregular migrants losing their lives each year while attempting to cross the southern border (Buckinx and Filindra 2015; Williams 2016). While the humanitarian-security nexus provides a legal veil to questionable practices of deportation, Buckinx and Filindra (2015: 397) have argued that in democratic states removals should be assessed instead through the normative principle of ‘just noci’, which takes a social harm perspective as its starting point and derives the legitimacy of the removal procedure from an assessment of ‘how removal would affect the deportee’s ability to be free from physical and psychological harm, integrate socially and pursue a livelihood’. Besides the legal legitimacy provided by ‘hybrid governance’, migration regimes manage to circumvent liberal democratic principles of operation through the elaborate web of actors and institutions at various levels which constitute them. Eule et al. (2019: 188) have emphasised this important aspect of contemporary migration management, arguing that the plethora of actors holding various interests and responsibilities leads to ‘situations where nobody feels either legally or personally responsible for legal outcomes’. Together with the vagueness of many laws and regulations, which leaves migrants in uncertainty regarding their rights and makes decisions arbitrary and incalculable, this general ‘illegibility’

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of migration regimes is a feature of the structural violence they perpetrate on vulnerable populations. Going beyond refined critiques of migration management regimes, proponents of ‘open borders’ and ‘free movement’ have challenged the very idea that international migration should be controlled (Barry and Goodin 1992; Carens 2013; Kukathas 2005). Joseph Carens (2013) has put forward probably the most famous case for free movement across international borders from a liberal egalitarian normative standpoint. He builds his radical argument upon ethical and legal standards that a majority of people in liberal democratic regimes take for granted, such as the principle espoused in Article 13 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights that ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state’. Few would challenge such a right, and state practices that curtail it—like China’s hukou system of household registration, which acts as an internal passport and sets limits to relocations from urban to rural areas—are generally condemned as abuses of human rights. The principle of free movement within states, Carens argues, reflects a more basic intuition about human liberty and is thus directly extendable to mobility across national borders. Within this ethical framework, restrictions on freedom of movement are warranted ‘only if and to the extent that these restrictions are necessary to prevent harmful consequences that outweigh the moral claims to freedom of movement’ (2013: 276), such as serious and well-founded threats to national security and public order. Ethical arguments for open borders are admittedly utopian. As Carens (2013: 276) reminds us, ‘critiques of deeply entrenched injustices’ always are; ‘That is what it means to say the injustices are deeply entrenched’. The purpose of his argument, Carens (2013: 278) emphasises, ‘is not to put forward a policy proposal but to make visible the deep injustice of existing global arrangements and to say what justice would require in principle’. By contrast, libertarian economist Bryan Caplan (2019) argues that the harms caused by migration restrictions are not of an ethical nature, but emerge from the missed opportunities to capitalise on the potential of free migration to achieve universal economic emancipation. He admits that ‘immigration has downsides’, yet, ‘when we patiently quantify the downsides, the trillions of dollars of gains of

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open borders dwarf any credible estimate of the harms’ (2019: n.p.). To the contrary, ‘[d]enying human beings the right to rent an apartment from a willing landlord or accept a job offer from a willing employer is a serious harm’ (Caplan 2019: n.p.). Based on calculations made by Michael Clemens (2011), who has attempted to estimate the financial gains achievable from reducing barriers to migration, Caplan (2019: n.p.) argues that ‘open borders would ultimately double humanity’s wealth production’. Both the liberal egalitarian arguments of Carens and the libertarian economic proposals of Caplan, however, rely on certain assumptions that pose empirical challenges. For instance, they work under the assumption that open borders would not lead in practice to mass migration either because global inequalities are assumed to be ‘as limited as justice requires’ (Carens 2013: 287) or because migrants are expected to make rational choices based on calculations about supply and demand mechanisms in distant labour markets. Also, as Kukathas (2005) has highlighted, ‘[o]ne of the reasons why open immigration is not possible is that it is not compatible with the modern welfare state’. One possible answer to this challenge is, of course, that ‘the welfare state is what needs rethinking’ (Kukathas 2005: 219). Such an enterprise, however, would require a very careful approach from a zemiological point of view, as it carries serious risks of unintended harmful consequences for the lives of many citizens. Analyses of empirical cases of ‘free movement’ have also challenged the emancipatory potential of open borders. As Brad Blitz (2014) has argued, a distinction should be made between merely ‘open borders’ and ‘free movement’ regimes that require state or supra-state actors to actively promote access to more substantial rights and freedoms. Free movement rights within the European Union are the closest empirical approximation of the latter, yet intra-EU movers often face severe difficulties in the enjoyment of their rights to equal treatment and protection from discrimination. Often, it is precisely the ease of moving across open borders without contact with state authorities that leads to difficulties in establishing oneself more permanently at a later stage. The so-called Windrush scandal provides a good example of the dangers involved. In the wake of the ‘hostile environment’ policy introduced by the UK

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government in 2012, thousands of UK residents who had arrived decades before from the Colonies as British subjects with full citizenship rights saw their legal status questioned and many were forcibly removed from the country for failing to hold documentation attesting to their British citizenship (Gentleman 2019). With the UK’s exit from the European Union in 2020, many citizenship rights activists fear that resident EU nationals may one day end up in a similar situation, particularly given the deficiencies contained from the very beginning in the ‘Settled status’ scheme designed by the UK government (Read 2019). If, as Pemberton (2015: 26) acknowledged, the social harm perspective is constrained by the fact that estimating ‘foreseeable consequences’ of actions and policies and assessing the degree to which their harmful effects could have been avoided is ultimately a function of empirical investigation, then the outcomes of post-Brexit immigration and settlement policy in the UK will provide a uniquely suitable empirical anchor for a social harm analysis.

Conclusion This chapter provided a broad overview of migratory processes, demonstrating that migration is a phenomenon rife with paradoxes and this often allows it to become a vehicle for wider social harms that can affect migrants and their families, the communities of origin and the countries of destination. The topic was approached from a social harm perspective whose primary aim is to shift the focus away from the analysis of ‘intentional’ harms and towards those that, while may be unintentional, are nonetheless ‘foreseeable’ and therefore ‘preventable’ (Pemberton 2015: 25). The chapter addressed three different dimensions of harm: those that cause migration, those that are associated with migration itself, and those that emerge from state actions to restrict the movement of people. It was argued that the question of agency is an important one to address in respect to all types of migration, but that decisions and consequences are always mediated by broader structural opportunities and constraints. The chapter also showed how migration itself can evolve into a total social and cultural ‘fact’ that engenders social harms. At the

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same time, attempts to manage migration by Western liberal democracies have developed into sophisticated ‘control systems’ with very visible harmful consequences, while proposals to abolish all control mechanisms and allow the free movement of people across the world are both more viable than we might think and potentially more harmful than we could imagine.

Further Reading • De Haas, H., Castles, S., & Miller, M. J. (2020). The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (6th Ed., 464 p.). The latest edition of one of the most popular textbooks on migration. Written in a simple and engaging language by an international team of co-authors, it charts the contemporary politics of migration, including the latest statistical data, summary of policy developments and shifts towards anti-immigrant politics and Islamophobia. The 6th edition has an expanded focus on the topic of international development, a better global coverage of themes and case studies, and a very useful ‘Migration Policy Toolbox’ for those interested in gaining a comprehensive overview of different types of migration policies. The detailed glossary also highly benefits readers new to ‘migration studies’. • IOM. (2019). World Migration Report 2020 (496 p.). Geneva: International Organization for Migration. The latest annual report on global migration trends produced by the International Office for Migration provides very useful data on the most recent migratory phenomena and developments. The first part of the report provides key information on migration and migrants, while the second part provides evidence-based analyses of complex and emerging migration issues. IOM reports are freely available to download at: https://publications.iom.int/about-iom-publications. • Caplan, B., & Weinersmith, Z. (2019). Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration (256 p.). New York: First Second. This is a highly unusual book, approaching the topic of migration and making a strong argument for ‘open borders’ and free movement

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in the genre of graphic nonfiction. A collaborative work between an economist and a cartoonist, it is specifically targeted at those who prefer information in a graphic format, but even readers who are not accustomed to reading graphic novels will be surprised at how memorable it makes the immense amount of information contained in it. Plus, it turns migrants into superheroes who could save the world, if only allowed.

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18 Why Social Harm Matters: Five Reasons from a Feminist Influenced Victim Perspective Pamela Davies

Introduction This chapter rehearses the arguments as to why social harm matters from a victim perspective. These arguments have previously lain dormant though they are heavily implied and are implicit in the work of other scholars. Here, they are foregrounded and made explicit. First, I briefly explain what a victim perspective is and how harm and victimisation are compatible concepts. The chapter chooses in the main to exemplify and illustrate the reasons why social harm matters from a victim perspective, via a focus on gendered violence and abuse. This allows us to problematise the dominant criminological discourse on human violence at the same time as it facilitates an alternative conceptualisation of violence and abuse that is inclusive of environmental harm and P. Davies (B) Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5_18

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non-human animals suffering. This is a prelude to five reasons why harm matters from a victim perspective. Having drawn on feminist-inspired scholarship to articulate these arguments, the explanatory value of a harms-based framework for a criminology that is inclusive and future proofed is laid bare. The chapter concludes that social harm matters from a victimological perspective now and should continue to do so in the wider—and reformed—criminological project. If we are to establish an inclusive, sustainable, powerful and enduring criminology that adapts to and shapes planetary systems and life in the Anthropocene (Holley and Shearing 2018), then there is a strong case to be made both for going beyond criminology and for progressing criminology.

A Victim Perspective A victim perspective means foregrounding victims and victimisation. An increased focus on victims’ rights, protections and support has been part of a victims’ movement (Hall 2020). Bringing victims ‘centre-stage’ and making criminal justice systems more ‘victim-friendly’ are common features. In the context of the criminal justice system, this has seen increased consideration, participation and involvement of victims in the criminal justice process (Tapley 2020). Efforts to improve communication with victims as witnesses and special measures to protect and support victims to provide their best evidence in court are tangible examples of incremental and piecemeal improvements to parts of our justice system that itself incurs secondary victimisation. Empirical work points to the value of understanding that being a victim or a survivor is part of a process (McGarry and Walklate 2015) and this chapter suggests that a harms-based approach is the most promising point of departure for ensuring this feature is recognised.

Marrying Harm and Victimisation As the second chapter (Hillyard and Tombs 2004)—a reproduced chapter—in this volume reminds us, it is over fifteen years ago, that

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Hillyard and colleagues (2004) challenged criminologists to take harm seriously. That book remains the cornerstone of the harm rather than crime discourse. It introduced a variety of case studies and renewed critical criminological theorising emerged in this new tradition of scholarly thought. Each of the authors remains committed to a research agenda that is rooted in the harm-based approach. All the chapters in the current volume take this starting point as a given. The concept of harm captures a range of experiences that we, as living human beings, endure from the cradle to the grave. At the same time, the concept is able to embrace the harm endured by all living beings, human and non-human as well as the harms inflicted upon the environment. For readers of this volume, it should not be necessary to reproduce or precis the arguments of Hillyard et al. (2004), who argue that harm provides a more comprehensive starting point for understanding criminological inquiry than crime does. The starting point for this chapter is no different to that of Hillyard and his co-authors, or to that of other contributors to this volume. The contribution made here is that harm provides a more comprehensive starting point for understanding victimisation than crime does. Some readers may feel this point is already established. But it is implied and implicit—and the extension of Hillyard and colleague’s argument warrants being made explicit because setting out the union between harm and victimisation and outlining five reasons why social harm matters from this perspective lends further weight to the arguments for taking harm seriously. Articulating these arguments makes the extended arguments implied by these authors more fully transparent, thereby exploiting the fullness and continued applicability a harms-based approach to criminological inquiry offers us. From amongst the many points made by Hillyard and colleagues, three key elements of their thesis guide the synergies between harm and victimisation. Consider the following points these authors made about the drawbacks of starting with a focus on crime: • Criminal law fails to capture the more damaging and pervasive forms of harm, • Crime excludes many harms that impact enormously on everyday life,

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• A focus on ‘crime’ directs attention away from more serious and disabling harms. Flipping these points such that they commence from a harms-based perspective, they encourage an illustration of the nature, extent, impact and seriousness of the myriad of harms in societies. A harms-based approach recognises individual, group, corporate and collective harms and actions and non-actions as well as negligence and denial (Cohen 2001). Thus, for Hillyard and colleagues, a social harm perspective acknowledges the multitude of harms that affect people from birth to death. Harms include physical, financial/economic, emotional and psychological, sexual, and cultural. This starting point is thus heralded as a more inclusive and forward-looking starting point for those who experience suffering.

Violent Harm One of the early adopters of the harms-based approach homed in on the context of violence in democratic societies (Salmi 2004) in order to show how harm is capable of embracing four classifications of violence: direct, indirect, repressive and alienating. Direct violence includes physical acts resulting in deliberate injury (homicide, murder). Indirect violence includes harmful and deadly situations resultant from human intervention yet involve no direct relationship between the victim and institution/person responsible for their plight. This includes violence by omission and mediated violence such as deliberate intervention in the social/natural environment. Repressive violence captures human rights violations. Alienating violence includes denying the person the right to psychological, emotional, cultural or intellectual integrity. This analytical framework for violent harm proves useful from a victimological perspective. Importantly, it has the capacity to embrace an understanding of gendered violence in both its individualised and institutional forms. The fourfold classification can be interpreted such that combinations of harm are foregrounded allowing criminological inquiry to be detached from its narrow focus on individualised patterns and

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relations between individual offenders and individual victims. The four classifications of violence—direct, indirect, repressive and alienating— collectively capture the seriousness and importance of gendered harms in the domestic setting where victims suffer directly and, with the ripple effect of domestic abuse, children and other family members suffer indirectly. Violence against women and girls (VAWG), recognised as a global issue, has been on the agenda of the United Nations for over twenty years, and in 2016, member states of the World Health Organisation adopted a plan of action to tackle it. Broader international obligations derive from human rights protections enforceable through the European Court of Human Rights. Other international provisions include the 2011 Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the ‘Istanbul Convention’). Article 16 relates to treatment programmes for perpetrators and the Convention requires signatories to provide legislative or other measures to support prevention together with specialist support for victims. Legislative changes to the definition of domestic abuse in England and Wales, followed two decades of policy reform directed towards an integrated strategy to tackle VAWG (HMIC 2014, 2015). Despite such commitments, too many women are victims: an estimated 1.2 million in England and Wales experiencing such abuse in the year ending March 2017 (ONS 2018a) and, on average, two women are killed each week by a current or former partner (ONS 2018b). The approach to tackling VAWG has failed to date despite a welter of civil and legal provisions having been in place for several years and despite continued proliferation of legislative and innovative practices. Gender dynamics in families and communities reproduce gendered violence. Women suffer disproportionately from domestic abuse relative to men. In conceptualising violence in an individualised, human-centric manner, violence has been restricted to physical violence obscuring the ways in which violence can take several forms. In March 2013, an extended definition of domestic violence was introduced in England and Wales, with young people aged 16 and 17 included for the first time

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and coercive control was a new component. This most comprehensive definition to date defined such violent abuse1 as: any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality.

Forms of family violence and definitions of such forms of abuse in many jurisdictions around the world now include coercive and controlling behaviour in their legislative provisions. Such violence now includes physical, emotional, financial and sexual violence and abuse amongst intimate partners and family members. This wider understanding embraces repressive and alienating features that evidence this type of violence. These features simultaneously allow for violence that is inflicted upon groups of people by other groups or institutions such as states and workplaces. However, though the analytical framework offered by Salmi (2004) proves useful from a gendered victim perspective and potentially for a criminology of the domestic more broadly conceived (see Davies and Rowe 2020), the framework is nevertheless developed within a discourse of violence where the domain assumption is that violence is perpetrated by, and inflicted upon and amongst, human populations. The notion of violence as direct, indirect, repressive and alienating in character is bound to human species. It is human-centric and fails to extend the applicability of the framework to understanding violence as experienced by non-human species. The human-centric assumptions limit our understanding of violence and do not establish the point that violence can be inflicted on other species including flora and fauna, ecosystems and environments—a point that is made by multiple chapters in this present volume. Salmi’s (2004) conceptualisation of violence continues to individualise and person focus violence rendering violence exclusive amongst human social relations.

1 See https://www.gov.uk/guidance/domestic-violence-and-abuse#domestic-violence-and-abusenew-definition.

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Green criminology foregrounds environmental crime and extends its gaze to non-human animals—on companion animals, the livestock industry and wildlife—species which green criminology recognises as legitimate victims of pain and suffering. Often, though not always, a green perspective adopts a harms-based discourse. In arguing for the latter in green criminology, Wyatt (2014: 197) has noted how there are environmentally destructive activities such as logging a protected forest, that are completely illegal, yet there are other types of institutionalised harm that continue because of socially and legally accepted levels of violence against the environment and non-human animals, which, she argues, ‘is unacceptable in other contexts such as inter-human violence’. She concludes that ‘An animal rights and species justice approach to these green crimes gives nonhuman animals the status of victims of individual and institutionalized harms that they have previously been denied’ (Wyatt 2014: 208). This scholarship reveals how violence extends beyond human suffering to non-human species. Moreover, it illustrates not only the individual suffering of animals but also the institutionalised violence that affects non-human species. The chapter now moves to articulate five reasons why harm matters from a victim perspective.

Five Reasons Why Social Harm Matters to Criminologists (i) Ideologically (ethically and theoretically) Ideologies capture our beliefs about how social change might be brought about. Our worldview is formed according to how our social, economic and political beliefs come together. In criminology, there are a handful of dominant ideologies several of which, as illustrated in this volume, are problematic in justice terms. When foregrounding a victim perspective they are problematic too. The chapter by Winlow and colleagues in this volume discusses ideology and harm. They argue for an adapted understanding of ideology in criminology suggesting we draw upon intellectual traditions currently

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marginalised in academic criminology. Lamenting the apparent demise of macro-ideologies and their replacement by ‘thin ideologies’ such as populism and technocracy, the critique suggests these thin ideologies do as much to hide and cause harm as provide a vantage point from which to understand harm and critique the processes creating it. They commence their argument in support of a new ideology by asking two questions: Why—rather than joining with others to pursue our mutual betterment—do we routinely visit harm on one another and the natural environments upon which we depend? Why, when it is possible to live in relative harmony, do we continue to pursue selfish and short-sighted ends? Ethical concerns connect to our value systems and, as argued above, principles that underline a sound ideological approach to victimisation similarly underscore a criminology that is ethically sound. In Chapter 4, where he discusses the ‘Assumption of Harmlessness’, Raymen confronts the knotty problem of ethics noting that discussions of ethics and moral and political philosophy are virtually absent in the social harm literature, before forcefully arguing why, from a social harm perspective, ethics matters. He commences by taking issue with Lasslett (2010) who suggests that the concept of social harm should be detached from the question of ethics entirely; Raymen points to many examples where the assumption of harmlessness ignores the condition and lived detrimental experience of individuals, which culminate in suicide or self-harm. Raymen acknowledges that other approaches such as Yar’s (2012) and Pemberton’s (2016) are fundamentally bound up with ethics. These approaches are more expansive, conceptualising social harm as the compromising of ‘human flourishing’ or some future ideal ‘good’ through the systemic or interpersonal denial of access to basic prerequisites for such flourishing. Raymen argues more forcefully still, that ethics is an unavoidable and indispensable facet of the concept of harm and that ethics has arguably been given insufficient attention in particular, there has been a failure to elaborate on the content of what constitutes human flourishing. A key feature of this failure is the lack of emphasis on the necessity of a collective and positive notion of liberty and human flourishing. This he argues is precisely the vision that we lack: a common conception of

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the human and social good, a clear and rational basis for determining what that common good might be. A vision that is born of a grounded understanding of ethics is what will make harm matter. An ideology that is ethically wedded to human-and non-human species and environmental betterment will produce a robust theoretical framework that will have real-world applicability. The policy pathways illuminated by such theory lead to sustainable and harmonious planetary living. Such theory can satisfy the demands of academia for sound scholarship based on good theorising. The ‘good theory’ test demands that for maximum effectiveness, theories must make sense (logical consistency), explain as much crime as possible (scope) and be as concise as possible (parsimony). Most importantly, the theory must be true or correct (validity) (Akers 2012). In addition to encouraging theorising on new and previously ignored topics, theorising based on harm mattering can stimulate new theorising about traditional violent offending. Consider for a moment Braithwaite’s (1989) famous checklist of thirteen facts about crime. He states the first fact is as follows: crime is committed disproportionately by males. This he claims is an undisputed and enduring feature about crime. That males are disproportionately the offenders surely implies that any theory of crime should address this. Not only do men commit crime at much higher rates than women, but also, a second undisputed fact is that men are involved in more serious and violent offending. Both of these stubborn facts need to be accounted for in our theorising. (ii) Historically and Contemporarily Relatively recently, Pemberton (2015) has explored why social harm matters with reference to a plethora of physical harms before moving towards an examination of harm reduction regimes, autonomy and relational harms where poverty, insecurity, long working hours and unemployment as well as social isolation feature. Pemberton’s thesis focuses on a wide range of contemporary social problems—homicide, suicide, infant mortality, obesity, road traffic injuries—but the overall message is clear: these harms are preventable. A collision course of social

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deprivation and inequality will often manifest in harms that are ostensibly health related, the most extreme of which is ‘social death’ a term increasingly used to capture how deaths are brought forward, some by way of fatal injuries (Tombs 2015; Pemberton 2015). Tombs has long argued this is not a new phenomenon and the unequal distribution and fatal effects of the present COVID-19 pandemic provide a saddening reminder that many of those who suffer are those who are always already most vulnerable. In March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 (SARS-Cov-2) a pandemic following the outbreak of the Coronavirus disease late in 2019. Scientists and in particular epidemiological experts have made comparisons to previous epidemics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries including SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and pandemic influenza viruses. WHO’s director-general has made reference to the smallpox virus in his comments about the fight against COVID-19. The search for a vaccine for smallpox was first developed in 1796 and that disease is now totally eradicated. Though the coronavirus appears less deadly than the pathogens behind other large-scale outbreaks, the infection seems to spread more easily than other diseases. Nations have become familiar with new vocabularies as the pandemic unfolds. There is now a general appreciation of the so-called R (reproduction) number representing the number of people on average one infected person will pass the virus to. We also recognise the measure of ‘excess winter deaths’, a further sad and frustrating reminder that many are dying too early. ‘Deaths brought forward’ Tombs (2015: 36) has argued are ‘mostly the effects of failures of employers to meet obligations in criminal law to protect the health, safety and welfare of workers and members of the public’. The inequalities in health-related suffering have been thrown into sharp relief as seen in the excessive deaths brought forward. The evidence points towards the disproportionate number of deaths of those who were always already vulnerable. COVID-19 has shone a harsh light on the very real entrenchment social inequalities in the twenty-first century. The uneven distribution of the fatal effects of COVID-19 is brutal evidence of entrenched inequality felt by families around the world.

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As noted above, VAWG has long been recognised as a global issue albeit suffered in very local and often hidden places. Recently, scholars have begun to argue there is cause to be concerned about increased violence in response to the strains of living through climate change, global warming and environmental degradation. This manifests increased strain and social conflict, irritability, anger, and aggression and violent crime including homicide and gendered violence such as rape and domestic abuse (Agnew 2011; Heckenberg and Johnston 2012). The big question is how humanity might respond to some of the most significant anthropogenic (human caused), natural and existential challenges of the twenty-first century like climate change and public health crises. The anticipated Anthropogenic damage, victimisation, crime and broader social harms may be mitigated, reduced and even deflected. A victimologically informed approach to harms that can be controlled is an agenda for all professions and institutions not least for policing. Social justice and environmental justice are inextricably linked, meaning that policing the Anthropocene (the current human-dominated epoch) must ensure fairness and equity for all people. (iii) Methodologically Though most of the chapters in this volume articulate the research methodologies employed by the authors, Sect. 2 of this volume specifically identifies the ways in which social harm is being researched and emphasises some of the methodological tools being used. Criminological inquiry, as part of the broader social science family, has been dominated by research that adheres to the hallmarks of a positivist tradition. Ideologies, discourse and methodologies have tended to mirror those of the natural sciences. However, alternative and mixed methods approaches are increasingly used to reveal the lived experiences of human and nonhuman species and to illustrate the destruction to the environment. Context-dependent knowledge is being generated such that contrary to general theoretical knowledge (context-independent theory) being valued more than concrete practical knowledge (context-dependent) as has been the traditional position (Flyvbjerg 2006, 2011), such knowledge is gathering increased prominence. From a victimological perspective, a

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fairer and more comprehensive representation of harms is being made transparent through these imaginative methodological approaches to knowledge production. As an example, consider the case study approach to doing research. The use of case studies in social sciences has a long and varied history, with a growing reputation as an effective methodology to investigate and understand complex issues in real-world settings. When exploring social harm and victimisation, case studies might be very personal and sobering especially when based on oneself or the community we live in. For example, Davies’s (2011) case study of the impact of a child protection investigation and her more recent case study examination (2014) of the closure of an aluminium plant in the north-east of England serve to illustrate the contemporary tensions around social and environmental justices and victimisations. Case studies may focus on life-changing experiences of individuals. For example, Alice Sebold (1999), a victim of rape, laid out the core of her experience in Lucky. Susan Brison’s (2002) Aftermath: violence and the remaking of the self draws on her experience of living through the consequences of surviving rape and attempted murder. Some versions of case studies adopt the hallmarks of the positivist research tradition (see Yin 2018) and test a theory or hypothesis through a deductive approach. Others (see Merriam 1998; Stake 1995) however view knowledge as constructed or interpreted rather than discovered and case studies can be used for a comprehensive, holistic and in-depth investigation of a complex issue (a phenomena, event, situation, organisation, programme, individual or group) in context. Case studies are therefore a versatile form of qualitative inquiry. The point about context is especially pertinent when studying invisible, hidden, obscured, ignored and denied harms and victimisations. Individual, group or community level contextual variables including political, economic, social, cultural, historical and/or organisational factors can be captured enabling criminological researchers to get closer to lived experiences. As criminological researchers we can develop concrete, context-dependent knowledge. Local and subcultural patterns and nuances to the experience of suffering rather than generic risk-based predictions and patterns to crime, harm and victimisation (Davies and Wyatt 2020).

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A criminology that is wedded to harm mattering develops methodological resources that are designed to allow fuller knowledge about suffering and victimisation. (iv) Power Structures Social harm approaches problematise dominant and enduring power structures. A victimology that is social harm driven captures the myriad ways in which the abuse of power is injurious and impacts at various levels. Power is relational, it is about agency, decision-making, it can be economic and about resources, it can take the form of structural power (Davies and Wyatt 2020) and whilst power can be wielded to promote positive experiences and flourishing it can wreak havoc and cause a ripple effect of suffering. A social harm approach captures a dual expression of power at individual and group levels. The characteristics of a person—their class, gender, race, religion and/or age (in addition to others)—and the complex interplay of these and our diverse identities result in each of us potentially having power or being powerless and equally important result in the potential for us to be the focus of power from another individual or from a group. In addition, power exists and manifests at group level. For instance, corporations and states are both powerful, but in different ways. A social harm perspective embeds and anticipates power as potentially both problematic and progressive and this is important form a victim perspective and with regard to our interpersonal relationships at the same time as we contemplate the abuse of power by groups and/or institutional structures and institutions, states and corporations resulting in death, injury, suffering and injustice. Micro-, meso- and macro-levels of analysis of power can simultaneously be problematised. Systemically reproduced harms, embedding patriarchal characteristics are exposed at the same time as we recognise the ‘mutually constitutive ways’ in which vectors of power intersect. Moving from the abstract to the particular this capability can be illustrated with reference to violence. As illustrated earlier in this chapter, a criminology that is wedded to harm mattering does not select a distinct or singular type of violence such that some are disqualified from securing

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justice, reparations and support. Social harm recognises that violence manifests in various ways. It acknowledges that the threat of physical violence may always underpin subtler coercive and controlling behaviour and provides the space and mechanisms for those suffering to speak out and be heard. It has belief in victim’s narrative and takes the voicing of experiences seriously. Finally, a harms-based approach to violence (and other types of harm) places the responsibility on the individual perpetrator whilst pursuing the part played by the institution, profession and/or system that individual is a part of. Furthermore, part of this project demands an ‘anti-essentialist’ approach to identifying or categorising spaces—especially what we have traditionally understood as the domestic space—and, instead, recognise that spaces are constructed in ways that reflect wider social relations and contexts of power, culture, economics and demography (Davies and Rowe 2020). Becoming spatially curious requires us to attend to the knowledges emergent from the discipline of human geography. To paraphrase Kim et al. (2013), place is more than a space with physical boundaries and physical characteristics; it is a dynamic locale where all things social occur and can influence the nature and extent of these relationships. (v) Educationally As Higher Education Institution educators, academics are in a strong position to engage in research, disseminate our findings and share our evidence-based knowledge with our stakeholders, peers, our students and the wider public. A criminology that is wedded to harm mattering can impact the service and pedagogy of academics. The institutions who employ us also bear responsibilities to our local and global communities. Recent events have seen academic institutions re-affirming their commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion by making statements about zero tolerance of any form of harassment or discrimination. Amongst students, ethnic minority groups are disproportionately affected by COVID and more likely to require on campus facilities, all of which

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further underscores the social responsibilities of educators and educational institutions and their progressive potential in bringing about social change. Where harm matters in the academy of social sciences, there is enormous potential to change the issues we raise within our universities, communities and the profession. Our teaching can become aligned with research where harm matters, so students learning criminology are wedded to ideologies of learning that promote future living in societies that are characterised by harmlessness. Our teaching can become aligned with research where harm matters, so students learning criminology are ideologically and ethically wedded to theories, methods, policies and practices that are more inclusive and future proofed. Education of this nature is underpinned by the prospect of achieving a collective and positive notion of liberty and human flourishing.

A Harms-Based Approach from a Victim Perspective The chapter has collapsed a host of reasons why harm matters from a victim perspective into just five headlines: Ideologically (ethically and theoretically), Historically and Contemporarily, Methodologically, Power Structures, Educationally. These five headlines might be added to and/or they may be dissected to unpick an agenda for further research in the making of a new tradition which might seek to do two things. First, whilst zemiology has come a long way since Hillyard and colleagues (2004) call to go ‘beyond criminology’, the scaffolding still remains for building zemiology using a victim perspective. Second, criminology is still where most of the study of harm happens though it addresses only a part of the harms we would like it to deal with. Thus, expanding the mission of criminology is also a crucial project and there is a strong case for progressing the discipline through a reformation project. The reader is invited to use these five points to consider how their own field of interest would change and be transformed. This lens gives us cause to be optimistic about harm reduction and harm prevention.

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Let us return for a moment to the question of violence reduction and a harms-based approach to domestic abuse.

Domestic Abuse The forward-looking element of a harms-based approach has multipurpose promise. First, for those who are suffering harm that is currently invisible (Davies et al. 2014) or well-hidden the approach breaks from the shackles of criminal victimisation and loosens up the criteria to allow such harms to reveal themselves and be made more visible. A significant part of the promise concerns the problem of ‘knowing’. Flowing on from knowing about the threat of, the risk to, the possibility of harm and what could happen, allows for harm to be pre-empted and ultimately prevented. Being sensitised to the nature of suffering that may materialise is a precursor for it being prevented. Another reason to be optimistic concerns those who are known to be suffering and those who are likely to continue to suffer in the transition phase from crime to harm. For them there is the real prospect of relief from suffering. This part of the promise concerns knowing what to do in policy terms, practically and in terms of professional practice. For those suffering harm, there is a set of tangible responses that flow from a harms-based starting point and these responses include a focus on truth telling, social policy, informal, reconciliatory, restorative and re-integrative approaches and remedies located in the community. A further forward-looking element to the policy approach is the harm reduction focus. Preventing future harm can thus be achieved through the promotion and enhancement of targeted primary prevention and this is done at the same time as improving for example, the criminal justice response or the health and welfare response. Where harm occurs, more structurally sensitive (class-gender-race-age-…) and individually tailored provision suiting the needs of those who require support as they engage with appropriate service providers is a real prospect.

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All Harm Matters The above briefly articulates how a harms-based approach to domestic abuse can be operationalised. In moving further towards the lived reality of victimisation and away from the abstract, flowing from the above, all harm matters. Non-human sensitive approaches including the development of analytical tools that are tailored to assessing and pre-empting specific harms to non-human species are a parallel real prospect. A twin track approach thus ensures a comprehensive strategy that limits or prevents future harm at the same time as it facilitates a sensitive response to those who are harmed whether they be human or non-human. Where criminology starts with a harms-based approach, an expansive and inclusive understanding of suffering or victimisation is facilitated. The approach is forward looking in that it anticipates harm and foresees victimisation. It does not accept that harm, suffering and victimisation is inevitable but that it is preventable. As noted in several chapters within this volume harms go beyond those that are criminalised. Even those that are outlawed tend to capture the most visible and direct harms. Indirect harms and the diffuse nature of harms to humans and non-human species are marginalised at best, ignored completely at worst. This chapter rehearses the arguments as to why social harm matters from a victim perspective. As noted in the introduction, these arguments have previously lain dormant though they are heavily implied and are implicit in the work of other scholars. This chapter has foregrounded and progressed such arguments, making them explicit in the abstract with examples drawn using the illustration of violence, particularly domestic abuse. The dominant criminological discourse on human violence is problematised as an alternative conceptualisation of violence and abuse that is inclusive of environmental harm and non-human animals suffering is proffered. The chapter then provides five reasons why harm matters from a victim perspective. Having drawn on feministinspired scholarship to articulate these arguments, the explanatory value of a harms-based framework for a criminology that is inclusive and future proofed is laid bare. This set of reasons has been limited to just five. There are no doubt many more all of which, as with these five, are more broadly applicable as to why it matters victimologically to start from

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harm not crime if there is any ambition to establish an inclusive, sustainable and enduring criminology of the Anthropocene. This concluding chapter stresses why social harm matters from a victimological perspective now and why our criminological ambitions for the future will be realised where these traditions are embedded and become the norm.

References Agnew, R. (2011). Crime and Time: The Temporal Patterns of Causal Variables. Theoretical Criminology, 15 (2), 115–140. Akers, R. L. (2012). Criminological Theories (2nd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. Braithwaite, J. (1989). Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brison, S, J. (2002). Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self . Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cohen, S. (2001). States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering. London: Polity. Davies, P. (2011). The Impact of a Child Protection Investigation: A Personal Reflective Account. Child and Family Social Work, 16, 201–209. Davies, P. (2014). Green Crime and Victimisation: Tensions Between Social and Environmental Justice. Theoretical Criminology, 18(3), 300–316. Davies, P., Francis, P., & Wyatt, T. (Eds.). (2014). Invisible Crimes and Social Harms. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Press. ‘Critical Criminological Perspectives Series’ edited by R Walters & D. Drake. Davies, P., & Rowe, M. (2020). A Criminology of the Domestic. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 59 (2), 143–157. Davies, P., & Wyatt, T. (2020). Crime and Power. London: Palgrave. Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). Five Misunderstandings About Case Study Research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(2), 219–245. Flyvbjerg, B. (2011). Case study. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (4th ed., pp. 301–316, 341–358). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Hall, M. (2020). Police and Crime Commissioners and Victim Service Commissioning: From Activism to Marketisation? In J. Tapley & P. Davies

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(Eds.), Victimologgy Research, Policy and Activism (pp. 247–275). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Heckenberg, D., & Johnston, I. (2012). Climate Change, Gender and Natural Disasters: Social Differences and Environment-Related Victimisation. In R. White (Ed.), Climate Change from a Criminological Perspective (pp. 149– 171). New York: Springer. Hillyard, P., Pantazis, C., Tombs, S., & Gordon, D. (Eds.). (2004). Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously. London: Pluto Press. Hillyard, P., & Tombs, S. (2004). Beyond Criminology? In P. Hillyard, C. Pantazis, S. Tombs, & D. Gordon (Eds.), Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously (pp. 10–29). London: Pluto Press. HMIC (2014). Everyone’s Business: Improving the Police Response to Domstic Abuse. London: HMIC. HMIC (2015). Increasingly Everyone’s Business: Improving the Police Response to Domestic Abuse. London: HMIC. Holley, C., & Shearing, C. (Eds.). (2018). Criminology and the Anthropocene. London: Routledge. Kim, S., LaGrange, R. L., & Willis, C. L. (2013). Place and Crime: Integrating Sociology of Place and Environmental Criminology. Urban Affairs Review, 49 (1), 141–155. Lasslett, K. (2010). Crime or Social Harm: A Dialectical Perspective. Crime, Law and Social Change, 54,1–19. Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. McGarry, R., & Walklate, S. (2015). Trauma, Testimony and Justice. London: Routledge. ONS (2018a). Domestic Abuse: findings from the Crime Survey for England and Wales: Year Ending March 2017. Published online: ONS. ONS (2018b). Homicide in England and Wales: Year Ending March 2017. Published online: ONS. Pemberton, S. (2015). Harmful Societies. Bristol: Policy Press. Pemberton, S. (2016). Harmful Societies: Understanding Social Harm. Bristol: Policy Press. Salmi, J. (2004). Violence in Democratic Societies: Towards an Analytical Framework in P. Hillyard, C. Pantazis, S. Tombs & D. Gordon (Eds.), Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously. London: Pluto Press. Sebold, A. (1999). Lucky. London: Picador. Stake, R. E. (1995). The Art of Case Study Research. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.

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Tapley, J. (2020). Politics, Policies and Professional Cultures: Creating Space for a Victim Perspective in the Crown Prosecution Service. In J. Tapley & P. Davies (Eds.), Victimology Research, Policy and Activism (pp. 213–245). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Tombs, S. (2015). Harmful Societies. Steve Tombs Reviews Simon Pemberton’s new book Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. 36. https://www.crimeandj ustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org.uk/files/09627251.2015.1080945_0. pdf. Accessed 2 November 2020. Wyatt, T. (2014). Non-Human Animal Abuse and Wildlife Trade: Harm in the Fur and Falcon Trades. Society & Animals, 22(2), 194–210. Yar, M. (2012). Critical Criminology, Critical Theory and Social Harm. In S. Hall & S. Winlow (Eds.), New Directions in Criminological Theory (pp. 52– 65). London: Abingdon. Yin, R. K. (1984 [2018]). Case Study Research and Applications (1st, 6th Ed.). London: Sage.

Index

A

Abolitionism 314–316, 327, 329 Abuse animal 5, 167–169, 171–179, 181–187, 285, 296 domestic 326, 457, 463, 468, 469 non-human animal 167–169, 173, 176, 177, 181, 184, 186, 296 Agriculture 5, 93, 102, 104, 105, 108, 172, 202–204, 206, 216–219, 291 Animal abuse 5, 167–169, 171–179, 181–187, 285, 296 Animal abuse studies 168, 173–176, 178, 179, 181, 184–187 Animal liberation 183, 206, 284, 285, 297

Anthropocentrism 142, 174, 177, 182–185, 187, 282, 283, 285, 289, 355 Asylum 7, 157, 380, 386, 393, 422, 432

B

Biodiversity 89, 91, 93, 101–104, 108, 176, 202, 203, 206, 357 Black Lives Matter 332, 334–336 Border governance 393 Borders 125, 207, 422, 425, 427, 435, 440–442

C

Capitalism 6, 38, 41–43, 45, 46, 48–51, 53–55, 61, 74–77, 79–81, 83, 117, 119, 123,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Davies et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Harm, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72408-5

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474

Index

124, 128, 132, 134, 172, 218, 228, 231, 235, 238–242, 244, 252–258, 260–262, 264–268, 271, 274, 282, 287, 294, 295, 300, 302, 321, 354 Capitalist realism 55, 75, 77, 80, 238, 267 Carnism 287, 288 Class 38–43, 46, 49, 50, 129, 217, 235, 255, 265, 271, 296, 385, 423, 425, 426, 465 Climate change 3, 59, 61, 66, 77, 78, 80, 83, 91, 93, 96–98, 100–102, 106, 108, 141, 216, 263, 264, 298, 299, 357, 365, 430, 463 Colonialism 297 Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) 202, 205–210, 216, 217, 219 Consequentialism 359, 364, 368 Constitutive criminology 329 Construction of crime 12, 13, 32, 70 Consumerism 44, 50, 59, 63, 172, 257–259, 264, 266, 295 Consumption 6, 53, 54, 63, 69, 76, 89, 100, 104, 107, 175, 201, 204, 207, 209, 211, 213, 214, 216, 219, 253, 256, 260, 264, 271, 273, 288, 293, 295, 299, 352, 354 Coronavirus 2, 100, 208, 462 Corporate crime 15, 18, 25, 28, 107 Corporations 4, 15, 16, 19, 22, 23, 78, 90, 92, 100, 104, 105, 107, 148, 171, 214, 215, 229, 289, 313, 321, 323, 465 Counter-terrorism 7, 380, 381, 393

COVID-19 1, 78, 217, 334, 336–338, 462 Crime construction of 12, 13, 32, 70, 402 corporate 4, 15, 18, 25, 28, 107 definitions of 14, 19, 90–93, 120, 289, 404 environmental 90–94, 96, 139, 145, 157, 283, 459 food 200 health and safety 16, 229 state 15, 25, 28, 107, 404 white-collar 15, 25, 27, 319 Crime control 19–21, 239, 402–404, 414 Crimes of the powerful 4, 90, 96, 97 Criminalisation 2, 12, 13, 18, 27, 33, 336, 358, 379, 389, 390, 393, 408, 411, 439 Criminal justice system 7, 12, 16, 18–21, 27, 28, 32, 33, 46, 59, 60, 139, 167, 185, 313–315, 317–325, 327, 328, 330–333, 337–340, 380, 381, 393, 404, 410, 411, 414, 454 Crimmigration 439, 440 Critical animal studies (CAS) 5, 6, 175, 187, 282, 286, 287, 297, 299, 301 Critical criminology 4, 11, 12, 140, 175, 239, 317, 331 Cultural safety harm 232, 289 Cybercrimes 7, 402–404, 406, 410, 412–414 Cyberspace 7, 401–407, 410, 412–414

Index

D

Definitions of crime 14, 19, 90, 92, 93, 120, 289, 404 Definitions of harm 24, 354 Deforestation 6, 94, 96, 102, 103, 108, 200–203, 206, 299 Denial 63, 64, 125, 127, 288, 298, 456, 460 Deontology 359, 364, 368 Detention 379, 380, 383, 386–391, 393, 435 Deviancy 7, 29, 407, 413 Deviant leisure 6, 121, 239, 251–255, 268, 274 Discrimination 320, 336, 442, 466 Domestic abuse 326, 457, 463, 468, 469 Domestic violence 15, 457 Dorling, Danny 26, 333, 334, 339, 422

475

Environmental justice 142, 156, 283, 324, 356, 463, 464 Environmental victimisation 94 Ethics 62, 64, 65, 68, 70, 72, 73, 79, 127, 181, 182, 185, 213, 218, 244, 253, 257, 269, 288, 350, 358, 364, 368, 370, 460, 461 evolutionary 367, 368, 370 virtue 359, 367–369 Evolutionary ethics 359, 367, 368, 370 Exploitation 5, 41, 66, 93, 96, 103, 107, 158, 167, 172, 178, 179, 200, 202, 214, 215, 218, 229–231, 243, 244, 260, 284, 288, 290, 294, 295, 297, 299–301, 379, 385, 389, 393, 402, 427

F E

Ecocide 4, 91, 96, 97, 104, 151, 298 Ecological justice 91, 107, 142, 283, 356 Economic harm 23, 232, 289, 387, 389, 393, 406 Efficiency 7, 219, 240, 241, 380, 382 Emotional harm 350, 406, 410 Environmental crime 90–94, 96, 139, 145, 157, 283, 459 Environmental harm 3–6, 66, 89–97, 107–109, 140–144, 146, 147, 149, 153, 157, 158, 176, 200, 266, 272, 299, 354, 356, 430, 453, 469

Factory farming 202, 205–210, 216, 217, 219, 220, 357 Family violence 458 Fetishism 51, 52, 54, 62, 82, 128, 130, 256, 264 Financial harm 14, 22, 23, 232, 289, 406, 410 Flourishing 63–66, 73, 74, 127, 235–238, 255, 269, 270, 371, 425, 460, 465, 467 Food alienation 6, 200, 213 Food crime 200 Fossil fuels 77, 100, 204, 299 Fraud 13, 23, 200, 228, 232, 239, 402, 405, 406, 410–412 Free movement 440–442, 444

476

Index

G

Gender 22, 76, 255, 295, 296, 433, 437, 438, 453, 456–458, 465, 468 Gig economy 66, 67, 240 Global harm 3, 4, 104, 107 Global North 201, 213, 314, 317, 320, 323, 324, 330, 332, 336, 339, 428 Global South 176, 184, 216, 228, 322 Green criminology 6, 90, 92, 93, 97, 107, 139–142, 146, 157, 176, 268, 282, 283, 285, 286, 299, 301, 354, 459 Growth 23, 42, 47, 60, 67, 69, 93, 174, 184, 199, 204, 208, 217, 232, 263, 273, 289, 293, 294, 368

H

Harm cultural safety 23, 232, 289 definitions of 5, 24, 70, 92, 93, 125, 142, 168, 177, 236, 350, 354, 369 economic 23, 31, 77, 158, 232, 289, 355, 387, 389, 393, 406 emotional 23, 232, 233, 289, 350, 406, 410 environmental 3–6, 66, 89–97, 107–109, 140–147, 149, 157, 158, 176, 200, 202, 213, 257, 266, 272, 283, 299, 354, 356, 359, 430, 453, 469 financial 14, 22, 23, 232, 289, 406, 410

global 3, 4, 59, 89, 97, 104, 107, 108 physical 14, 22, 23, 146, 204, 230, 232, 236, 237, 289, 387, 388, 393, 405, 406, 410, 440, 461 psychological 23, 232, 233, 289, 387, 388, 393, 406, 410, 440 reduction 31, 82, 237, 238, 334, 335, 393, 413, 430, 461, 467, 468 social 1–7, 11, 17, 18, 20, 22–28, 30–33, 38, 59–74, 82, 84, 93, 125–127, 139, 141, 142, 157, 158, 168, 172, 174, 177, 181, 186, 228, 229, 231–233, 236, 237, 243, 252, 255, 268–270, 274, 282, 288, 289, 293, 301, 313, 314, 316–318, 320, 329–334, 337–340, 356, 358, 378, 379, 383, 385, 389, 392, 402–405, 407, 409, 411–414, 421–423, 426, 430, 433, 440, 443, 453–456, 460, 461, 463–466, 469, 470 violent 456 work-based 3, 6, 228, 230–234, 236–238, 240, 242–244 Harmlessness 4, 61, 74–83, 460, 467 Harm principle 7, 349–355, 357, 364, 369, 411 Human animal studies 168, 175–178, 181 Human trafficking 238, 435

Index

477

I

L

Ideology 3, 4, 19, 37–40, 42–51, 54, 56, 81, 123, 235, 237–242, 244, 264, 316, 425, 428, 429, 459–461 Immigration detention 386, 388, 390, 391, 393 Industrial agriculture 204, 206, 217, 219 Inequality 28, 100, 127, 175, 185, 186, 240, 291, 315, 319, 322, 333, 334, 336, 356, 379, 385, 389, 462 Injury 2, 3, 16, 23, 94, 172, 213, 229, 241, 321, 456, 465 Injustice 7, 39, 41, 43, 44, 46, 50, 51, 55, 64, 69, 100, 139, 146, 151, 156–158, 185, 187, 314, 315, 320, 323–326, 328, 329, 332, 334, 336, 337, 339, 340, 356, 441, 465 Integrated approach 3, 5, 118–121, 124, 134 Intellectual property 406–408

Labour 38, 45, 46, 50, 78, 80, 126, 228–231, 234, 235, 240, 243, 244, 260, 261, 265, 423–425, 433, 438, 442 Labour exploitation 229, 230 Liberalism 65, 73, 80, 81, 127, 252, 254, 257, 265, 267, 269, 351, 353, 358 Liberty 65–67, 77, 123, 171, 242, 257, 265, 270, 352, 353, 355, 358, 441, 460, 467

J

Justice ecological 91, 107, 142, 283, 356 environmental 142, 156, 283, 324, 356, 463, 464 social 27, 31, 33, 142, 287, 314, 315, 327–329, 331, 356, 371, 463 species 142, 176, 182, 283–285, 299, 324, 356, 459

M

Mannheim, Karl 314, 316, 317 Marxism 45 Maslow, Abraham 360–363 Meat 3, 6, 176, 178, 206–209, 212, 215, 217, 219, 287, 288, 293–296, 299, 301, 302 Mens rea 16, 410, 411 Methodology 5, 144, 147, 175, 178, 180, 184, 382, 463, 464 sensory 3, 5, 140, 143, 146, 148 visual 3, 5, 140, 143, 144, 146, 148, 158 Microdeviations 404 Migration 7, 8, 100, 380, 392, 393, 421–444 Mining 91, 92, 101, 103–106, 108, 357 Morality 218, 253, 295, 349, 351–353 Moral philosophy 66, 257, 354 Multi-agency 186 Multidisciplinary 173, 174

478

Index

N

Neoliberalism 6, 61, 124, 201, 215, 217, 235–238, 240–242, 244, 378, 379, 392 Non-human animal 3–6, 89, 90, 95, 102, 108, 142, 185, 281–297, 299–302, 332, 351, 355–357, 454, 459, 469 Non-human animal abuse 167–169, 173, 176, 177, 181, 184, 186, 296

O

Ontology 64, 127, 264 Organised crime 7, 183, 380, 381, 393, 408

Power 6, 7, 15, 21, 29, 30, 40, 41, 43–45, 49, 55, 70, 74, 75, 77, 78, 92, 93, 97, 107, 123, 124, 140, 158, 168, 172, 181, 182, 186, 214–216, 230, 264, 315, 320, 321, 325, 331, 332, 351, 390, 405, 413, 423, 424, 427, 428, 431, 465–467 Prison 18, 19, 32, 40, 42, 157, 315, 319, 327, 386–388, 390, 391 Privatisation 3, 7, 377–379, 382, 383, 385–393 Psychoanalytic theory 45, 78, 82 Psychological harm 23, 232, 233, 289, 388, 406, 440 Public health 169, 201, 214, 218, 317, 334–338, 340, 410, 463 Punishment 13–15, 18, 19, 27, 229, 352

P

Pandemic 1, 78, 100, 208, 210, 217, 337, 462 Patriarchy 295, 296 Personhood 94, 171, 187 Physical harm 23, 204, 232, 289, 388, 461 Policing 7, 37, 70, 378, 380, 381, 393, 402, 440, 463 Political economy 45, 60, 104, 120, 123, 235, 236, 238, 268 Political philosophy 71, 72, 84, 460 Pollution 6, 90, 92, 94–96, 102, 104–108, 141, 144, 148, 149, 151–153, 177, 202, 264, 283, 357 Popular culture 49 Poverty 21, 23, 26, 49, 77, 232, 236, 240, 319, 385, 424, 461

R

Racism 168, 297, 298, 321, 336 Reduction of harm 82, 237, 238, 334, 335, 393, 413, 461, 467, 468 Refugees 380, 431, 432, 440 Replacement discourse 314, 331, 338, 340 Rights 64, 72, 73, 92, 94, 125–129, 150, 167, 170–172, 176, 182, 203, 234, 236, 269, 270, 283, 284, 300, 353, 370, 387, 390, 407, 408, 429, 440, 442, 443, 454 animal 90, 167, 171, 172, 182, 207, 283, 284, 297, 300, 459

Index

human 22, 73, 100, 171, 234, 270, 283, 387, 439, 441, 456, 457 Risk 30, 31, 33, 81, 82, 119, 121, 124, 141, 172, 179, 209–211, 267, 293, 294, 314, 315, 327, 338, 340, 356, 365, 379, 381, 382, 384–386, 388, 409, 413, 430, 431, 434, 435, 468 Risk society 31

S

Security 3, 7, 28, 67, 83, 100, 216, 234, 254, 265, 267, 362, 377, 378, 380–383, 386, 390–393, 408, 413, 414, 440, 441 private 3, 7, 273, 377–380, 382, 391, 392 Self-actualisation 235–238, 360, 362 Sensory methodology 5, 140, 143, 146, 148 Sexism 168, 295, 321 Social change 32, 144, 158, 267, 274, 286, 300, 315, 329, 459, 467 Social deprivation 21, 462 Social harm 1–7, 11, 17, 18, 20, 22–28, 30–33, 38, 59–74, 82, 84, 93, 125–127, 139–142, 157, 158, 168, 172, 174, 177, 181, 186, 228, 229, 231–233, 236, 237, 243, 252, 255, 268–270, 274, 282, 288, 289, 293, 301, 313, 314, 316–318, 320, 329–334, 337–340, 356, 358, 378, 379, 383, 385, 389, 392, 402–405, 407, 409, 411–414, 421–423, 426, 430,

479

433, 440, 443, 453–456, 460, 461, 463–466, 469, 470 Social justice 27, 31, 33, 142, 287, 314, 316, 327–329, 331, 356, 371, 463 Socio-environmental harm 140–144, 153, 157, 158 Special liberty 123, 242, 254 Speciesism 167, 176, 182, 183, 186, 187, 207, 284, 285, 287, 288, 294, 295, 297, 298 Species justice 142, 176, 182, 284, 285, 299, 324, 356, 459 Subjugated knowledges 30, 330, 332, 333, 339, 340 Suffering 2, 3, 18, 43, 54, 71, 80, 93, 140, 156, 159, 170, 172, 177, 178, 184, 202, 206, 207, 218, 229, 233, 288, 290, 294, 296, 297, 357, 403, 404, 437, 454, 456, 459, 462, 465, 466, 468, 469 Symbolic order 48, 242, 265, 267, 268

T

The ‘Link’ 171, 173, 175, 184, 187

U

Ultra-realism 3, 5, 6, 118–125, 127, 129–131, 133, 134, 239–242, 263, 264, 267 Utopia 7, 42, 73, 262, 314, 316, 317, 327, 331, 337, 338, 340, 441

480

Index

V

W

Veganism 294, 297, 300–302 Victimisation 3, 5, 22, 94, 158, 171, 178, 355, 402, 405, 412, 413, 453–455, 460, 463–465, 468, 469 Victimology 141, 176, 285, 465 Violence 6, 13, 23, 25, 46, 75, 100, 120, 123, 129, 130, 157, 171, 173, 183, 185, 227, 228, 231, 232, 234, 236, 238–241, 281, 282, 284, 285, 288, 291–293, 295–297, 299, 301, 302, 326, 335, 336, 387, 406, 431–433, 441, 453, 456–459, 463, 465, 466, 468, 469 domestic 15, 291, 457, 458 family 457, 458 Violent harm 456 Visual methodology 143

Waste 6, 94, 95, 104–106, 151, 209, 219, 283 Wellbeing 82, 91, 96, 105, 118, 263, 332, 338, 355, 362–364, 366, 367, 369, 437 Wildlife 3, 94, 95, 174–176, 182, 183, 185, 292, 381, 459 Work-based harm 3, 228, 230–232, 234, 236–238, 240, 242–244

Z

Zemiology 1, 3, 5, 69, 71, 118–121, 134, 168, 229, 232, 243, 244, 268, 269, 282, 301, 314, 316, 327, 329–333, 337, 338, 340, 358, 467 Zoonotic diseases 210