Introducing crime, harm and the state

This chapter introduces and provides an overview of the edited volume, Crime, Harm and the State. Exploring the concepts invoked by the title (‘crime’, ‘harm’ and ‘the state’), it introduces the key themes around which it is organized: power, discourse and resistance. In doing so, it draws on a variety of different perspectives, including zemiology, decolonial perspectives, Gramsci’s notion of hegemony and Foucault’s concept of biopower. The chapter introduces the idea that distinctions between crime and harm – and responses to them – reflect and reinforce power, particularly state power, while also providing spaces for resistance. Particular attention is given to the roles of colonialism and ongoing coloniality in shaping inequalities between the so-called Global North and the Global South, while also problematizing such conceptual binaries for reinscribing coloniality. Consequently, the chapter advances epistemic responsibility as an essential feature of contemporary scholarship to recognize and critically reflect upon the positionality of authors and their texts.