Greece as a Cryptocolony: The Limits of Southern Criminology in Unveiling Hidden Power Structures

• In Event: Crime, Science and Politics WG Panel 1: Global Disciplines and Southern Perspectives in Criminology

Abstract

A growing body of critical criminological literature has begun illuminating and challenging the colonial foundations of criminology as a discipline and its continuous complicity to colonial power structures. For example, the production of knowledge is still central in imposing colonial frameworks of knowledge and policy interventions globally and locally. Southern criminology has gained the most traction in generating the most discussion and is primarily subscribed to by a significant number of criminologists. While invaluable in illuminating that the Global North/South economic inequalities perpetuated from colonialism have also shaped hierarchies in knowledge production, arguably, its binary underpinnings of North/South obfuscate other experiences of colonialism and Empire within Europe. For example, by grouping countries such as Greece in the Global North, Southern criminology negates and silences experiences of colonialism from the Ottoman Empire as well as imperial interventions of Britain, France and the US that have rendered Greece a crypto-colony, way before the term was used during the 2011 economic crisis. While showing the merits of the approach, the paper will examine some limitations by exploring questions such as: What is the difference between colonialism and coloniality? what does the South mean? Should we continue to use binaries such as the North/South? Through the case study of Greece, the paper aims to take a critical reflexive stance on the continuous modes of inclusion and exclusion that persist within criminology (even in its most critical manifestations), which arguably run the risk of decolonisation becoming simply an empty, fashionable discourse. By drawing on the local history of Greece, the paper aims to show the necessity of breaking away from North/South binary modes of thinking if we are serious about undoing processes of coloniality that structure exploitation, ecocide, genocide, discrimination and exclusion in our contemporary societies.

Author

• Eleni Dimou, Open University UK