Description
From the Courtroom to the Boardroom is an interdisciplinary cultural studies project that examines the role of the criminal justice system in implementing neoliberal restructuring in the United States, including the partial transfer of quasi-judicial authority to employers, landlords, lenders, social media companies, and other businesses. In this important study, Deena Varner examines the way the consumer background report industry has privatized the surveillance and punishment of individuals, conflating crime with bad credit and eviction history. She positions Airbnb’s 2018 policy of banning people convicted of crimes as an example of the way corporate entities are increasingly vested with the authority to determine things like the seriousness or severity of crimes. Varner also tackles the phenomenon of “cancel culture,” arguing that this is best understood not as a feature of the culture wars but rather as a partial return to what Foucault described as the punitive model of infamy, in which the responsibility for punishing has been transferred from the state to individuals.
Book Information
ISBN 9780700637119
Author Deena Varner
Format Hardback
Page Count 256
Imprint University Press of Kansas
Publisher University Press of Kansas