• DOI:10.1177/1362480609352783
• Corpus ID: 145694058

Neoliberalism’s penal and debtor states

@article{Campbell2010NeoliberalismsPA,
  title={Neoliberalism’s penal and debtor states},
  author={John L. Campbell},
  journal={Theoretical Criminology},
  year={2010},
  volume={14},
  pages={59 - 73}
}

• John L. Campbell
• Published 1 February 2010
• Political Science
• Theoretical Criminology

Loïc Wacquant’s bold attempt to offer a new description of the neoliberal state is full of insights—many of which I can embrace. But the purpose of this essay is to raise questions about his arguments and in some cases to push them in new directions. I begin with a brief description of his sketch of the neoliberal state in order to be clear about what I see as the most important parts of his argument. Then I turn to a series of comments and questions about it. Insofar as his theory focuses on the neoliberal state’s relationship to the lower class, I begin by discussing that relationship and his analysis of the penal state, which he argues is an important appendage of the more general neoliberal state. This is followed by a discussion of the neoliberal state’s relationship to the middle and upper classes. Here I introduce the concept of the debtor state, another appendage of the neoliberal state but one that he overlooks even though it has had a dramatic impact on middle class behavior and may have helped sow the seeds for the ultimate demise of the neoliberal state itself. Much of this discussion focuses on the United States because he takes it to be the bastion of neoliberalism. I conclude with a comment on his tendency to over-generalize about the neoliberal state and side-step how neoliberalism has had rather different effects in different countries.