Incorporating Globalization and Neoliberalism into A Theory of Urban Decay And Crime

• In Event: Roundtable: Theory

Abstract

It is the position of this paper that the most salient cause of crime within cities is not the presence of criminal opportunities – what Rossenfeld and Messner term the proximate causes of crime – but the presence of structural conditions which work to stimulate criminal motivations, realized in a society’s institutional patterns (Rossenfeld and Messner 2014). The goal of this essay is to demonstrate how the emergence of new forms of governance within cities over the past four decades have worked to exacerbate issues of disadvantage and crime for inner-city minority populations.
Over the course of this paper I will highlight important literature and empirical studies which will help build the foundations for my eventual theoretical synthesis. I will be drawing on literature from the Marxist tradition, globalization, urban neoliberalism and institutional anomie theory. The overarching argument is that the combined pressures of globalization and the return of classical liberal policies and orientations during the 1980s, have worked to perpetuate legacies of inner-city disadvantage and crime, systematically undermining Civil Rights era advancements.

Author

• Kyle Maksuta, University at Albany, SUNY