Resist The Punitive State: Grassroots Struggles Across Welfare, Housing, Education And Prisons

289 Pages·2020·2.017 MB·English

by  Emily Luise Hart, Joe Greener, Rich Moth

Resist the Punitive State

Resist the
Punitive State
Grassroots Struggles Across Welfare,
Housing, Education and Prisons
Edited by Emily Luise Hart,
Joe Greener and Rich Moth
First published 2020 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Emily Luise Hart, Joe Greener and Rich Moth 2020
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work
has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3952 8 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3951 1 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0529 4 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0531 7 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0530 0 EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed
and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are
expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
For
Lucas, Eleanor, Iris and Finlay

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction xi
Rich Moth, Emily Luise Hart and Joe Greener
PART I: CHALLENGING STATE–CORPORATE POWER:
THEORIES AND STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE
1. Resisting the Punitive State–Corporate Nexus: Activist Strategy
and the Integrative Transitional Approach 3
Joe Greener, Emily Luise Hart and Rich Moth
2. Prefigurative Politics as Resistance to State–Corporate Harm:
Fighting Gentrification in Post-Occupy New York City 28
Laura Naegler
3. Struggles Inside and Outside the University 46
Steve Tombs and David Whyte
PART II: RESISTING THE PUNITIVE WELFARE STATE:
HOUSING, MENTAL HEALTH, DISABILITY AND IMMIGRATION
4. Class, Politics and Locality in the London Housing Movement 69
Lisa Mckenzie
5. Mad Studies: Campaigning Against the Psychiatric System
and Welfare ‘Reform’ and for Something Better 88
Peter Beresford
6. Challenging Neoliberal Housing in the Shadow of Grenfell 108
Glyn Robbins
7. The Disabled People’s Movement in the Age of Austerity:
Rights, Resistance and Reclamation 128
Bob Williams-Findlay
8. The ‘Hostile Environment’ for Immigrants: The Windrush
Scandal and Resistance 149
Ken Olende
resist the punitive state
PART III: SUBVERSIVE KNOWLEDGE AND RESISTANCE:
RECONCEPTUALISING CRIMINALISATION,
PENALITY AND VIOLENCE
9. Resisting the Surveillance State: Deviant Knowledge and
Undercover Policing 171
Raphael Schlembach
10. Ordinary Rebels, Everyone: Abolitionist Activist Scholars
and the Mega Prisons 187
David Scott
11. Re-Imagining an End to Gendered Violence: Prefiguring
the Worlds We Want 208
Julia Downes
12. Challenging Prevent: Building Resistance to Institutional
Islamophobia and the Attack on Civil Liberties 232
Robert Ferguson
Notes on Contributors 255
Index 258
viii
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank colleagues in the School of Social Sciences at
Liverpool Hope University, University of Liverpool in Singapore and
the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the Uni-
versity of Liverpool for their support and collegiality. Thanks also to
The School of Law and Social Justice Research Development Fund for
providing the finances to host the conference that laid the foundations
for this collection. Thanks to Joe Sim, Steve Corbett and Chris Grover
for reading drafts of the proposal and offering advice. Thanks also to
the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control for
providing the platform and critical space that led to the development
of the ideas behind this book. Thanks to the team at Pluto Press and in
particular David Castle for all the help and enthusiasm for the project.
Finally, enormous gratitude for the hard work of all the contributors
to this collection, for their diligence, patience and enthusiasm for the
project and for responding to what were at times pretty tight deadlines.
Massive thanks and we hope you are happy with the final book.
Emily would like to thank fellow UCU activists on the University of
Liverpool UCU committee and all those who joined us on the picket
lines. Many thanks also to Dave Whyte for his support as her research
mentor and friend. I have been lucky enough to spend time with some
pretty amazing critical women in Liverpool over the last few years and
they have provided support, friendship, wine and inspiration, special
mention to Ala Sirriyeh, Kay Inckle, Kirsteen Paton, Zoe Alker, Daniela
Tepe-Belfrage, Samantha Fletcher, Kellie Rudge-Thompson, Tracy
Ramsey, Laura Penketh, Rose Devereux, Nicki Blundell, Philomena
Harrison, Jo McNeil and Lucy Hanson. Thanks to fellow Community
Action on Prison Expansion activists, in particular those involved in our
fight in Wigan: Nicole, Heledd, Marion, Solvi, Tony, David, Paul, Jan
and others. To my students past and present, who got behind the USS
strikes and who have embraced the abolitionist arguments. Thanks also
to Anna Marshall, Liz Stack, Fiona Pender and David Evans, you have
listened gracefully to all my moans. To Mum, Dad and Lucy for always
ix