British Journal of Criminology Advance Access originally published online on August 16, 2007
British Journal of Criminology 2007 47(6):955-968; doi:10.1093/bjc/azm038
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The British Journal of Criminology 47:955-968 (2007)
© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
THE ARCHITECTURE OF RISK AND POWER
A Review Article of Magnus Hornqvist, The Organised Nature of Power: On Productive and Repressive Interventions Based on Consideration of Risk, Stockholm University, 2007, ISSN 1404–1820, ISBN 978–91–7155–442–0
* Richard V. Ericson, Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, Canadiana Building, 14 Queen's Park Crescent West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3K9; richard.ericson{at}utoronto.ca.
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Abstract |
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In The Organised Nature of Power, Magnus Hornqvist initially synthesizes Foucauldian and Marxian conceptions of power in order to highlight the connection between everyday exercises of power and power relations embedded in social structure and the state. He then proceeds to demonstrate how risk has become the coordinating mechanism in the organization of power. Risk is a common language and technology across institutions, linking exercises and structures of state power in ways that have both productive and repressive consequences. The architecture of risk and power is empirically investigated in the context of public employment, prison and customs bureaucracies in Sweden. The investigation is based on readings of policy documents, official forms, risk assessment technologies, surveillance infrastructures and case reports used in these bureaucracies. Hornqvist demonstrates how power is embedded in norms of risk management beyond the law; the multifaceted and variable uses of risk in processes of empowerment and subjection across different state bureaucracies; and the fact that we are still in disciplinary societies more than societies of control. Hornqvist's work is interrogated to indicate some limitations and directions for future research.