State Crime and Civil Activism

Penny Green is Professor of Law and Globalisation and Head of Department at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). She has published extensively on state crime theory (including her monograph with Tony Ward, State Crime: Governments, Violence and Corruption), state violence, ‘natural’ disasters, genocide, mass forced evictions and resistance to state violence. She has a long track record of researching in hostile environments and has conducted fieldwork in the UK, Turkey, Egypt, Kurdistan, Palestine/Israel, Tunisia and Myanmar. She is Founder and Co-Director of the award winning International State Crime Initiative (ISCI). Her seminal works, with ISCI colleagues Thomas MacManus and Alicia de la Cour Venning, on the Rohingya genocide, Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar (2015) and Genocide Achieved, Genocide Continues: Myanmar’s Annihilation Of The Rohingya (2018), have drawn widespread global attention.Tony Ward is Professor of Law at Northumbria University. He became interested in state crime and civil activism through working for INQUEST, a British NGO concerned with deaths in custody. In addition to state crime he writes and teaches on the law of evidence, legal history, jurisprudence and law and literature.

"At the core of Green and Ward’s contribution is a detailed empirical account of the dialectical imperative created by state repression, the reproduction of its greatest adversary, a resilient civil society. This compendium is informed by the practice of people who live the dialectical imperative of state repression, often risking their safety, liberty and life. In the true Marxist spirit, the volume documents a living and breathing praxis as it unfolds through resistance to state crime and violence."Dr. Dawid Stańczak, University of Ulster, UK, State Crime"Over the last two decades, Penny Green and Tony Ward have led state crime analyses with insightful pieces that explore state crime connections to human rights, deviance, legitimacy, and structural relations of power, as well as to how a vibrant civil society is vital to resistance... In this book, they compel us to think further about how state crimes can be prevented and challenged by civil society organisations (CSOs)."Dr. Elizabeth Stanley, Univerity of Victoria, NZ, Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime

• AcknowledgementsINTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY1. CIVIL SOCIETY IN UNCIVIL STATES2. MOTIVATING RESISTANCE3. CONCRETE WALLS AND SNOWDROPS: STATE CRIME AND THE DIALECTICS OF RESISTANCe4. ‘THE TRUTH IS TENACIOUS’: GATHERING AND COMMUNICATING INFORMATION5. LEGALITY, LEGITIMACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS6. ‘A WAY OF DIGNIFYING LIFE’: RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY7.‘LAND IS LIFE’: DISPOSSESSION, DISPLACEMENT AND RESISTANCE8. POLITICS, CHARITY, AND CIVIL SOCIETY9. VIOLENCE: CIVIL SOCIETY’S FINAL FRONTIERCONCLUSIONBibliographyAppendix I: CSO PROFILESIndex