Crime, accidents and (dis)organization: Rhizomic communications on/of a foodscare

Authors: Lippens, R. and Van Calster, P.

Journal: Crime, Law and Social Change

Volume: 33

Issue: 4

Pages: 281-311

eISSN: 1573-0751

ISSN: 0925-4994

DOI: 10.1023/A:1008372708260

Abstract:

"Organization", as in organized crime, or organizational or corporate crime, has, in criminological discourse, often something fixed about it. "Crime" then is often being read as the more or less logical outcome of intentional organization. And the same would go for the "control", or regulation of organized/organizational crime. An undercurrent of fixed assumptions like these about the fixity of organized/organizational crime and its regulation often structures criminological theory and research. In an age of events (cf. Deleuze), and of events as accidents (cf. Massumi), this criminological discursive undercurrent is in need of some supplements. If, as one might be able to assume, "organizations" (of "crime", and of "control") can now be read appropriately as clusters of events/accidents, then it pays to look towards and focus on all and everything Outside the lines which we once considered to be "organizational" boundaries. This Outside - a space of multiplicity, and thus of ambivalence, undecidability, and (im)possibility - can be read as the cradle of contemporary "organizations" (of "crime" and "control"). In this paper, we illustrate this with the example of a recent case, in Belgium, of food contamination, and a foodscare which emerged in its wake. Inspired by recent discussions in organization theory (see part I of this essay), we develop the case study in part II of this paper. With this paper, we hope to rethink "organization", and thus "organizational crime" and "organized crime" as well. But we also hope to contribute, through our reading of contemporary rhizomics, to the study of foodscares, and perhaps to the study of "panics" more generally. Reading "crimes", "controls" and "criminologies", in a Deleuzean way, as labyrinthine hybridities will, we think, also help to rethink criminology in an era of meshy, (dis)organized capitalism (cf. Lash and Urry).

Source: Scopus