Papers by George S. Rigakos
Re-imagining Policing in Canada, 2005
Policing Society, Oct 27, 2010
This article interrogates historical developments, modern structures and future trends in Greek p... more This article interrogates historical developments, modern structures and future trends in Greek policing from the viewpoint of contemporary neo-liberal policing and social theory. We argue throughout this article that although neo-liberal thinking has indeed recently crept into the ...
Critical Criminology, 1996
... George S. Rigakos, York University This essay examines the rise of neoconservative thought wi... more ... George S. Rigakos, York University This essay examines the rise of neoconservative thought within criminological discourse from the enlightenment "quarrel' with ancient philosophy and church supported scholasticism in the 1700s to the present day. ... George S. Rigakos 77 ...
The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, 2012
The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, 2012
Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 2000
As one enters terminal three at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, one notices the newn... more As one enters terminal three at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, one notices the newness of the structures, the cleanliness of the walls and ceilings, and the brightness and bustle of the building. Passengers move about various cues for airline tickets, baggage ...
All rights reserved. This work may nut be I-qxoduced in wwe or in part, by photocopy or Qthef mea... more All rights reserved. This work may nut be I-qxoduced in wwe or in part, by photocopy or Qthef means, witbut permission of the author. . .. and D i r e c t i des acquisitions et e m Services Branch des services bibliographiqves THE AUTHOR HAS GRANTED AN IRREVOCABLE NUN-EXCLUSIVE LICENCE ALLOWING THE NATIONAL ~~Y OF CANAgA TO REPRODUCE, LOAN, DISTRZBUTE OR SELL COPIES OF HIS= THESIS BY ANY MEANS AND IN ANY FORM OR FORMAT, hSAKMG THfS THES'fS AVAILABLE TO INTERESTED PERSONS. I hereby grant to S i n m graser i h i v e r s i t y the r i g h t to IecC my t h e s i s , project o r extendea X s a y !the title of & i c h i s shzwn below) t o users of the Simon F r a i x U n i v e r s i t y Library, and ta make partial cr single copies only for such Gsers o r in response to a reqbest f r 3 m the library of any other university, o r o t k i educational institution, on i t s o w n betlaif or for one of i t s users. I further a y e s that perm;ssion tor muiOiple copying of t h i s wcr4 for scholarly purposes nay be granted by me o r the Cean o f Graduate Stgdies. It i s understood that copying o r publication of t h i s work fcr iinancizl gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. ABSTRACT Employing a feminif? aig,rczch, this *&is investigates official attitudes toward civil restraining orders (s-36. I , Family Relations Act, R.S.B.C. 1982) and Criminal Code (s.8 10) peace bonds among police officers and justice officials in the Municipality of Delta, B.C.. Chapter One introduces the reader to the myriad approaches used by academics in addressing the phenomenon of violence against women in the home. It is
Canadian Journal of Sociology, Sep 28, 2008
Zur Neoliberalisierung städtischer Sicherheitspolitik, 2000
Canadian Journal of Sociology, Jun 22, 1999
... In this sense, the panoptic architecture is virtual. ... In the first instance, the Taylorize... more ... In this sense, the panoptic architecture is virtual. ... In the first instance, the Taylorized and panoptic workplace of Intelligarde International is obvious to most who enter it. The architecture of the compound makes the visual monitoring of security personnel effortless. ...
The Canadian Review of Policing Research, 2004
Purpose The research reported here sought to uncover the processes and politics by which nightclu... more Purpose The research reported here sought to uncover the processes and politics by which nightclub security and surveillance both succeeds and fails. Police researchers have long described the wide-ranging agencies and practices that can be considered part of the ...
Presented at the Socialist Studies Conference, University of Ottawa, 2 June 2015, Jun 3, 2015
In the last three decades we have witnessed the significant international proliferation of Busine... more In the last three decades we have witnessed the significant international proliferation of Business Improvement Zones, Districts or Areas (BIDs). The legislative rise of BIDs has taken place alongside an increasing rationalization, centralization and amalgamation of political authority in cities across the globe. As community governance deficits develop, BIDs have taken on the role of local authorities, defining elements of improvement, threats to security, and leading the charge for urban renewal and revitalization. In this paper I examine the role of BIDs with specific reference to Toronto - the widely acknowledged birthplace of the modern BID movement. I argue that BIDs are a form of urban pacification, acting as a proxy for the commercial colonization of the city. BIDs pacify urban space through the valorization of capital, by acting a gatekeepers of the acceptable, and by mobilizing civic concerns about security. As independent commercial authorities, BIDs have geographically and materially conquered urban space by subsuming non-merchant property and interests, by fabricating an urban social order that ideologically transforms citizens into denizens, and by reconstructing neighbourhoods into branded zones of consumption.
Papanicolaou, G., & Rigakos, G. S. (2014). Democratising the police in Europe with a particular e... more Papanicolaou, G., & Rigakos, G. S. (2014). Democratising the police in Europe with a particular emphasis on Greece. Vienna: Transform! European Network, Nicos Poulantzas Institute and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Socialist Studies, Dec 9, 2013
In this paper we operationalize and empirically test six core tenets of pacification theory deriv... more In this paper we operationalize and empirically test six core tenets of pacification theory derived from Marxian political economy using time series data for the USA from 1972-2009. Our analysis confirms that rising inequality is statistically significantly correlated to increased public and private policing over time and that increased public and private policing is also statistically significantly correlated to increased industrial exploitation as measured through “surplus-value”. While unionization correlates to strikes and lock-outs which suggests that unions have an important mobilizing role for the industrial reserve army, unionization also inversely correlates to total policing employment. As union membership decreases, policing employment increases, which gives credence to the notion that unions may also act as policing agents for capital. We conclude that when these findings are coupled with our previous international research of 45 countries for the snapshot year of 2004 (Rigakos and Ergul 2011) that produced almost identical results, there appears to be significant empirical support for pacification theory. The relationships we have discovered recur both across time and international contexts despite the fact that variations in legal norms and institutional histories of policing are varied and complex.
Crime, Law and Social Change
"Over the past three decades, the industrialized world has witnessed four resilient social trends... more "Over the past three decades, the industrialized world has witnessed four resilient social trends: (1) the consistent erosion of union-membership; (2) an increase in income polarization and inequality; (3) a dramatic resurgence in popular protest; and (4) a steady rise in public and private policing employment. In this paper, we examine the relationship between these trends by theorizing and operationalizing the notion of the “industrial reserve army” and a series of relate tenets in order to conduct an international (N=45), empirical test of a nascent Marxian model of policing. By treating total policing employment as an empirical barometer of bourgeois insecurity we find that this insecurity is conditioned by two elements of Marxian political economy: (1) relative deprivation (income inequality) and (2) the rise of an industrial reserve army (manufacturing employment and unemployment). Second, while surplus value and labour militancy (strikes and lockouts per 100,000 population) rise along with union membership, the presence of higher rates of unionization appears to ameliorate the need for more policing in all but post-USSR countries. While unions assist in checking the immiseration of workers through labour actions, union membership is nonetheless inversely correlated to policing employment, giving credence to the Marxian idea that while unions help mitigate against the exploitation workers, they also act as “lieutenants of capital,” performing an essential policing function under capitalism."
Anti-security, 2011
“Anti-security: A Declaration” was published as the prologue to the edited anthology Anti-securit... more “Anti-security: A Declaration” was published as the prologue to the edited anthology Anti-security (Ottawa: Red Quill Books, 2011). It is based on discussions with a broader group of scholars in attendance at a workshop at Carleton University in the Fall of 2009. The intent of the Declaration is to challenge dominant debates and accepted wisdoms about security and to act as a catalyst for a counter-hegemonic discourse and practice.
The Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research, Nov 2012
A Q & A interview about Anti-security and pacification research.
Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Oct 3, 2011
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Papers by George S. Rigakos
Policing in a capitalist economy is run on both state and private levels. Much existing literature on private policing assumes that the private sector is oriented almost exclusively towards loss prevention, and does not fulfil a crime-control function. In this carefully researched study, George Rigakos considers the increasingly important role of the 'parapolice' in the maintenance of social order. He argues that for-profit policing companies adopt many of the tactics and functions of the public police, and are less distinguishable from the latter than has been previously assumed in the criminological literature.
Rigakos conducted a detailed ethnographic and statistical case study of Intelligarde International - a well-known Canadian security firm - and uses his results to investigate the following: How are discipline and surveillance achieved organizationally and commodified as 'product'? How do security agents themselves, and those they police, resist social control?
This work offers wide-ranging theoretical implications, drawing on Foucauldian concepts such as risk, surveillance, and governmentality, and on Marxian formulations of commodity and aesthetic production. The first criminological ethnography of a contract security firm in Canada, this book will be of interest to criminologists, sociologists, lawyers, and policy-makers and to any non-academic reader with an interest in the experience of those employed in the parapolice.
Policing in a capitalist economy is run on both state and private levels. Much existing literature on private policing assumes that the private sector is oriented almost exclusively towards loss prevention, and does not fulfil a crime-control function. In this carefully researched study, George Rigakos considers the increasingly important role of the 'parapolice' in the maintenance of social order. He argues that for-profit policing companies adopt many of the tactics and functions of the public police, and are less distinguishable from the latter than has been previously assumed in the criminological literature.
Rigakos conducted a detailed ethnographic and statistical case study of Intelligarde International - a well-known Canadian security firm - and uses his results to investigate the following: How are discipline and surveillance achieved organizationally and commodified as 'product'? How do security agents themselves, and those they police, resist social control?
This work offers wide-ranging theoretical implications, drawing on Foucauldian concepts such as risk, surveillance, and governmentality, and on Marxian formulations of commodity and aesthetic production. The first criminological ethnography of a contract security firm in Canada, this book will be of interest to criminologists, sociologists, lawyers, and policy-makers and to any non-academic reader with an interest in the experience of those employed in the parapolice.
"In the last thirty years bouncers have emerged as gatekeepers of contemporary urban cool, exclusivity, and social capital. In this ground-breaking empirical study, George Rigakos looks at the relation between consumption, security, and risk and challenges the idea of nightclubs as places of liberation and personal expression.
People go to nightclubs to see and be seen - to view others as aesthetic objects and to present themselves as objects of desire. Rigakos argues that this activity fuses surveillance and aesthetic consumption - it fetishizes bodies and amplifies social capital, producing violence and crises fuelled by alcohol. At closing time, patrons flow out of the insular haze of the nightclub and onto city streets, moving from private spectacle to public nuisance. Bouncers are thus both policing agents in the nighttime economy and the gatekeepers of an urban risk market - a site of circumscribed transgression and consumption that begins at the nightclub door.
This book shows that nightclubs are arenas for risk, whose security agents oversee more violence and danger than the public police, despite being unregulated and unaccountable.""
It is based on a comprehensive desk study of the extant literature as well as site studies at three Ontario universities: Carleton University, Lakehead University and the University of Waterloo. The study was conducted over a four-month period (March-June 2016) and includes approximately 120 hours of interview data. We interviewed three respondent groups: (1) campus administrators and service providers (n=50), (2) campus and local police (n=29), and (3) sexual violence survivors (n=18) and students (n=29).
heavily rely on their assistance and guidance. The vast majority of respondents do not wish to see the Peacekeepers become a police service under the “self-administered” option of the FNPP. Without exception, however, Peacekeepers, administrators, and
RCMP officers believe the Peacekeepers need funding for standardized training, better equipment, and uniforms as well as more formalized information sharing with the RCMP.
Under the current parameters of the FNPP, however, no such remedy is available. Without a change in the FNPP, the Peacekeepers will continue to act as underpaid, overworked and minimally trained first responders and role models upon whom the RCMP is, by their own admission, heavily dependent but unable to support. Given this state of affairs, it is recommended that the FNPP be revisited to allow for the possibility of plural forms of policing outside the First Nations Self- Administered (FNSA) and RCMP Community Tripartite Agreements (RCMP CTA) .
Peacekeepers are inexpensive and very effective. It would take very little to expand and improve their service provision and thereby free up the RCMP to also engage in more proactive and culturally appropriate mentorship and community involvement.
This report and its contents will be of assistance to universities, colleges, the provincial government and police services which are involved in discussions regarding the future of law enforcement and community safety on our campuses. We welcome any comments or feedback you have after reading the report.
study of owners and employees of storefront businesses in the
Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area (DYBIA) that line
Yonge Street between College and Queen Streets in downtown
Toronto. The results are based on snapshot surveys using a
Merchant Safety and Satisfaction Survey (MERS3) conducted
in 2005, 2007, and 2009. There have been tangible changes in perceptions of fear, disorder, crime, and attitudes towards the police. With a few exceptions merchants in the Downtown Yonge BIA feel safer, are far less likely to believe things are getting worse in terms of criminality and have generally high opinions of the police foot patrol program and the continued use of CCTV.
In this regard, the Greek government’s tackling of corruption, its closure of immigration detention centers, its moves to track down tax evaders, and removal of the barricades in Sytagma Square are all about opening up new possibilities. It will need to go further in subduing the police, just as it is subduing the oligarchy.