å Friday, March 24th, 2017

I was thinking about our discussion on my commute home this evening, and about Ellie’s comment / question about whether it is profitable to invest in protections and entitlements for labor. What Gilmore brings to this discussion is how the expansion of prisons is becoming a solution to a problem that was at one time viewed as the state’s socio-economic problems. She argues (1999:174) that this expansion of prisons is part of the state’s reorganization and restructuring of itself so that capitalist production in the U.S. is becoming more aligned with “supra-national trade” in a global political economy.

It is interesting to read what Gilmore writes about Angela Davis’ work. She notes how Davis (and others) argue that the (capitalist political-economic) system pose a limit to reform. Attempts to reform the system end up strengthening institutions rather than transforming them. As Gilmore (1999:183) explains, “At first, California planned simply to replace decrepit facilities with small (500 person) new ones. However, that plan never materialized. Instead, new power blocs (which took office in 1982 using a strategy similar to Nixon’s 1968 ‘law and order’ campaign) used the improvement plans as a template for the ‘megaprisons’ that have since been built.”

Here’s more you can read, if you are interested:

As I mentioned, Aihwa Ong’s work, Neoliberalism as Exception, lends support to the climate that Gilmore describes. Ong addresses how the terms of citizenship are altered by global capitalism. Mark Duffield’s work, Global Governance and the New Wars, traces a shift in discourses on “development” that is also connected to the global economy Gilmore describes.