In
a thought-provoking piece on the support her discipline gave to colonialism, Wendy James refers to anthropologists as ‘reluctant imperialists’,
meaning that their support for the colonising enterprise was unplanned or
unintentional. James contends that any support was the result of anthropologists wanting to ‘do good’ by
the colonised, and by doing so they inadvertently provided empirical
support and intellectual sustenance for the colonial enterprise. Personally, I
think that is a load of self-serving rubbish. However, I am even more reluctant to accept similar arguments on behalf
of criminologists, especially those who choose
to support with the neo-colonial state, who avoid direct engagement with
Indigenous peoples, and yet deem to speak with authority on ‘the
Aboriginal/Indigenous problem’.
Some Australasian criminologists might consider this position a little harsh. They might even attempt to argue
that we should consider the contemporary situation facing the academy, the
pressure of increasing class sizes, the continued retrenchment of teaching resources,
and the impact of the managerialist movement and the commercialisation the
academy over the past twenty years. All of which has resulted in
significant expectation that academics will chase grant and contract funding. Undoubtedly,
the recent hegemony of academic managerialism has had a demonstrable impact on
the academy in New Zealand and Australia, especially as the primary source of
external research grants for the social sciences is central government (Tauri,
2009). And so perhaps we shouldn't be too harsh on our hard-done-by criminologists if all they are doing is chasing the easy money, which is in the Australasian context, research that criminalises Indigenous peoples.
However, what are we to make of the continued
control-freak tendencies of Australasian criminology, especially its more
authoritarian adaptations? It is far too easy to simply dismiss the recurrent
focus on the individual native, someone divorced from their social, historical and structural
context, as is often the case in the work of
adherents like Marie (2010) and Weatherburn (2010; 2014), who then compound Indigenous subjugation by dismissing outright the validity of
Indigenous forms of knowledge; and do so without demonstrating any meaningful engagement
with it. These actions, so common in Australasian criminology, cannot be easily dismissed as 'accidental', unintentional incidents of cultural imperialism. These actions should be considered neo-colonial formulations of cultural
imperialism, actions that have their antecedents in the technologies of
social control utilised by colonial powers to subjugate
Indigenous peoples (Tauri, 2014).
The
tendency of some Australasian criminologists to ignore or misrepresent the
Indigenous experience of crime control, or ignore the validity of Indigenous
knowledge, whilst being blind to the racism and imperialistic tendencies
of their own endeavours, has a long history in the discipline. It is a
discipline that spends so much time with its nose stuck up the backside of the policy sector, and gazing with erotic fascination at the ‘Indigenous Other’ that
it appears to have little time for self-contemplation; or as Biko Agozino (2010: i) puts it:
"...
criminologists have routinely buried their heads in the snow of Europe and
North America with hardly any serious attempt to understand the hieroglyphics
of African (or any First Nation) reality except when they perceive threats to
European comforts in the form of human trafficking, terrorism, piracy,
dictatorships or the drugs trade".
The
key to understanding Australasian criminology’s tendency towards extractive
scholarship - let's call them the 'FIFO's of the academic world', as
in 'fly in to Indigenous communities, extract data, then fly
out and further their careers' - is that it is still very much an
imperialist enterprise. Agozino (2003) describes imperialism as the
exemplar form of all criminality since “every criminal act implies the
violation of the spaces of others and attempts to colonise the spaces of the
other and yet imperialism has the tendency to pose as the moral policeman of
the world” (Agozino, 2010: ii-iii). In similar vein we might present much
of the Australasian criminological musings on Indigenous peoples as
imperialistic, due to the continued violation of the geographical and intellectual
space of Indigenes, often without our permission, guidance or willing
participation (Tauri, 2012).
Perhaps
Edward Said’s (2000: xxi-ii) critique of postmodern theory and
“anti-foundationalist” positions can also be ascribed to Australasian criminology
,in as much the lack of attention to institutional classism, racism,
structural, socio-economic impediments to a ‘a better life’ and individualistic
focus of crime causation could only come from “minds so untroubled by and free
of the immediate experience of the turbulence of war, ethnic cleansing, forced
migration, and unhappy dislocation”. In the Australasian context we might
add to the mix the lack of attention from so-called 'liberal'
criminologists of the intergenerational impacts of colonial and neo-colonial
policies such as the forced removal of children, stolen wages and the
ghettoising of Indigenous peoples on reserves and in residential schools, the
purposeful destruction of cultural practises and institutions and so forth.
With all this in mind, perhaps it is time to divorce ourselves from the abusive relationship wrought upon us by the discipline of criminology.
References
Agozino, B (2003) Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason. London: Pluto Press.
Agozino, B (2010) What is Criminology? A Control Freak Discipline? African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies, 4(1): i-xx.
Marie, D (2010) Maori and Criminal Offending: A Critical Appraisal, Australian New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 43(2): 283-300.
Said, E (2000) Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge (MASS): Harvard University Press.
Tauri, J (2009) The Maori Social Science Academy and Evidence-Based Policy, MAI Review, online.
Tauri, J (2012)
Tauri, J (2014) Settler Colonialism, Criminal Justice and Indigenous Peoples, African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies, 8(1): 20-37.
Weatherburn, D (2010) Guest Editorial: Indigenous Violence, Australian New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 43(2): 197-198.
Weatherburn, D (2014) Arresting Incarceration: Pathways Out of Indigenous Imprisonment. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
