Neoliberal penality at work: a response to my Spanish critics

摘要: RES no 15 (2011) pp. 115-123. ISSN: 1578-2824 I want to start by thanking my Spanish interlocutors for engaging book Castigar a los pobres (Wacquant 2010a, hereafter CLP) and the Revista Espanola de Sociologia hosting this exchange. Even as it centers on United States —in due deference its status inventor of disciplinary government poverty combining restrictive «workfare» expansive «prisonfare»— sketches model penalization technique managing urban dispossession dishonor that purports throw light punitive turn resurgence prison observed in most countries First Second worlds over past three decades. Against ideology «American exceptionalism», CLP treats an extreme case which reveals policy trends, dilemmas, options cutting across social penal realms all postindustrial societies subjected neoliberal tropism1. Indeed, recent developments both labor, welfare, criminal justice front suggest Spain presents very interesting study think through, so further specify mechanisms, dimensions, pathways ongoing drift toward regulation marginality dualizing city well choice materials probing broader reengineering state contributes. Since mid-1980s, Iberian peninsula has undergone rapid transformation at multiple levels: economy employment, family structure, spatial organization population circulation, political rule strands. The labor market been aggressively «deregulated», is, reregulated favor firms; union welfare protections have curtailed; disparities deepened destitution resurged public space amidst general prosperity increased immigration (Toharia Malo 2000, Navarro 2002). question