Post(colonial) penalities
Project start and end dates
2014 --
Research team members
Background and aims of the project
This wide ranging programme of research aims to understand punishment practices and the wider penal domain of postcolonial societies. It grows out of my work on colonial law and justice in South Asia (Penal Power and Colonial Rule, Routledge, 2014).
The project examines the challenges faced by societies that achieved independence from colonisers but have struggled to escape their colonial heritage. This is particularly acute in the domain of punishment and control, as reflected in the continuing prominence of colonial laws, institutions and infrastructure (eg, prison facilities) in many parts of the global south. My work on the persistence, or stickiness, of colonial logics in postcolonial India was awarded Theoretical Criminology's best article prize in 2017 (Postcolonial penality: Liberty and repression in the shadow of independence, India c. 1947).
I am currently working with colleagues from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi) on colonial-postcolonial continuities of control experienced by nomadic hunting communities at the periphery of contemporary Indian society. The research has also included work in Ghana funded by the World Universities Network.
Project publications to date
- Brown, M., Jadhav, V., Raghavan, V. and Sinha, M. (forthcoming 2021) ‘Southern Penal Spaces: A Study of Hunting Nomads in Postcolonial India’. Punishment and Society: Special Issue: Legacies of Empire.
- Brown, M. (2021) ‘Truth and method in Southern Criminology’, Critical Criminology: Special Issue: Thinking and Doing Southern Criminology.
- Brown, M. (2018) ‘Southern criminology in the postcolony: More than a “derivative discourse”?’. In K. Carrington, R. Hogg, J. Scott and M. Sozzo (Eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology in the Global South. New York: Palgrave
- Brown, M. (2017) ‘The birth of criminology in South Asia: c1765—1947’. In S.M. Shahidullah (Ed.) Crime, Criminal Justice, and the Evolving Science of Criminology in South Asia: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. New York: Palgrave.
- Brown, M. (2017) ‘Postcolonial penality: Liberty and repression in the shadow of independence, India c. 1947’, Theoretical Criminology, 21: 186-208.
- Brown, M. (2014) Penal Power and Colonial Rule. London & NY: Routledge.