Overview

Place, Race and Politics presents an integrated analysis of the social and political processes that combined to construct a media-driven ‘crisis’ concerning African youth crime in the city of Melbourne, Australia. Combining original research and analysis alongside published sources, the authors carefully dissect the anatomy of a racialized and politicized public discourse and delve into the profound impact of this on African-Australian communities in Melbourne. Drawing on political and media analysis and community-based research, the authors investigate how South Sudanese Australians in Melbourne came to be identified, supposedly, as a unique threat to community safety, the role played by the media, state and federal politics, the policing and perceptions of race in this process, and the physical and emotional impacts on affected communities of the law and order crisis concerning ‘African crime’. While deeply rooted in local conditions, the book resonates with similar examples of the criminalization and othering of racialized communities, the surveillance and exclusion of ‘crimmigrants’, and with popular punitivism and the rise of far-right politics globally in response to deeply felt anxieties about rapid social, economic and cultural change.

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9781800430488

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Reviews

How is it that South Sudanese migrants, an overwhelming law-abiding group, have come to be criminalised in Australia? Using the 2016 Moomba ‘riot’, Place, Race and Politics charts the creation of a racialised law and order crisis in Melbourne. This terrific new book provides a detailed analysis of how social and political processes came to associate South Sudanese blackness with violent crime and what the consequences of this criminalisation were on the community. I strongly recommend it. -- Karen Farquharson, Professor of Sociology and Vice President of the Academic Board at the University of Melbourne Following in the tradition of Hall et al’s classic Policing the Crisis Place, Race and Politics: The Anatomy of a Law and Order Crisis analyses the racialisation and politicisation of crime during the 2018 Victorian election in Australia. Drawn from a number of discrete research projects undertaken by each of the authors, the book is broken down in chapters that largely reflect these different projects. As a result, the authors are able to focus on different elements of the ‘law and order crisis’ from the demonisation and dangerisation of asylum seekers and immigrant groups, to the media’s reportage and amplification of events, the populist political discourse, and indeed interviews with those at the coalface of events.  It makes for a sobering read as it teases out the long-standing Australian twin political strategies of vilification and law and order auctioneering.  As the book shows there are no real winners to come out of such strategies and, ultimately, they serve to undermine the legitimacy even of the political winners – in this case the Victorian Labor party beholden to a tough on crime approach for the foreseeable future. The authors wisely eschew a straight ‘moral panic’ approach to the topic (while not rejecting it all-together) and offer something more sophisticated. Race and Politics: The Anatomy of a Law and Order Crisis makes a significant contribution to critical scholarship on law and order in Australia, but in doing so also explores the tentacles of racism, xenophobia, and insecurity that constantly threaten to erode the successful foundations of multi-cultural Australia.  -- Murray Lee, Professor in Criminology and Associate Dean Research at the University of Sydney Law School

Author Information

Leanne Weber is Professor of Criminology at the University of Canberra and a Research Associate at the Centre for Criminology, Oxford University. Jarrett Blaustein is Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Kathryn Benier is Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Rebecca Wickes is Professor of Criminology at the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Diana Johns is Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.

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