The Crime of Maldevelopment: Economic Deregulation and Violence in the Global South

Summary

This book explores the causal relationship between the deregulation of international economic interests and the forms of violence that prevail in a large part of the Global South. More specifically, this book tells the story of how transnational corporations benefitting from increasing deregulation of their international economic interests, account for severe harm, the unrelenting violation of human rights, and maldevelopment in Latin America. Dependent on the structural deficiencies of the Latin American region, this book tests the examples of the extractive industries and multinational expansionism and the link between deregulated economies at the international level and the damaging local effects that increase what is here called maldevelopment.

Introducing the conceptual category of maldevelopment to criminology, the author makes recommendations for further research and outlines a network of possible mechanisms for its prevention and sanction - and for the work of reparation and construction towards the satisfaction of the needs of the victim or victimizable populations. This provocative and original text will be essential reading for those concerned with white collar crime and crimes of the powerful, and for researchers in criminology, sociology, law, political science, development studies and international political economy.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The Latin American Economy, and the Political and Criminal-Political Context

2. Visible and Invisible Violence According to Johan Galtung

3. Seeing Invisible Violence – Case Studies from Mexico, Ecuador, Chile  and Argentina

4. Linking Economy and Visible Violence – Case Studies from Guatemala, Brazil, Peru and Honduras

5. The Vicious Circle of Deregulated International Businesses and Violence 

7. The Crime of Maldevelopment as a Needed Conceptual Category of Criminology 

Approaching the Crime of Maldevelopment - Conclusion and Starting Point

Index

Author(s) Bio

María Laura Böhm is an Argentine-German lawyer at the University of Buenos Aires, and a criminologist at both the National University of Lomas de Zamora in Argentina and the University of Hamburg in Germany. She obtained her PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Hamburg (with the support of a scholarship from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation) and was Post-Doc Researcher (with a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Starting in 2015, she became a fulltime DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Long-Term Guest Professor at the Law School of the University of Buenos Aires. Her main research interests are the link between criminogenic conditions, economy, transnational corporations and human rights in Latin America, violence and maldevelopment, as well as criminal and security policies.