Abstract
Does society exist or should we rather think in terms of social order? What is crime, and more specifically organized economic crime? These and other questions are addressed by Juan Pegoraro in a recently published book titled Los lazos sociales del delito económico y el orden social. In this work we find a synthesis of multiple approaches analyzed by the author through the lens of his extensive experience as a Latin American scholar in the field of the sociology of punishment. It is relevant to mention here Pegoraro's broader teaching and research trajectory because this book attempts to address some of the questions that arose through the author's career as director of the Social Control Studies Program at the Gino Germani Research Institute (University of Buenos Aires), his commitment to academic training, teaching, and research in several universities, his experience as chief editor of the journal Delito y Sociedad, and his coordination of a broad range of research projects in the socio-legal field.
In the book's first two chapters, the author provides some theoretical framework for the construction of his object of study—the links between what he defines respectively as “organized economic crime” and “social order”. In the next five chapters, Pegoraro examines the contribution of different authors to the study of crime, following a chronological order that begins with the 18th century and ends with the 20th century, and highlighting a broad range of intellectual perspectives. The book's eighth and ninth chapters deal specifically with the neoliberal social order—or what the author describes as a new world social order characterized by the hegemony of financial capital and the political economy of debt—which developed in the western world since the 1980s. In the 10th chapter, Pegoraro emphasizes what he calls the “functional paradoxes” of punitive social control, summarizing his point of view about the the different perspectives presented in the book and preparing the stage for his conclusions.
After illustrating the general structure of the book, we may ask ourselves what the author means when he refers to organized economic crime, and how this notion relates to the issue of social order. From the start, Pegoraro shows how economic illegalities that are a constitutive part of the current social order are overlooked in social theory, despite their frequent and widespread occurrence. Even though Pegoraro acknowledges the variety and diversity of “crimes” and “illegal conducts” detailed by criminal law, he is specifically interested in focusing on a particular type of crime, organized economic crime, because of its significant social consequences. The sociological relevance of this type of crime lies in its role as a crucial element in the way the structure of the social order is constructed. This type of crime does not necessarily imply the use of physical violence, which allows the author to differentiate it from “organized crime”, given that the latter refers to an organization in which violence is a common tool and often a decisive factor for the economic success or failure of the criminal enterprise. As economic illegalities become related to different types of organization and administration, multiple social ties are created, mixing legal and illegal elements, state and non-state actors, and diverse social subjects. However, because of the peculiar types of relationships they create, participants in organized economic crime remain socially and legally unsanctioned.
Developing a conceptual framework broadly inspired by Émile Durkheim, Pegoraro presents his main hypothesis: these economic illegalities play a “positive” role for the reproduction of a given social order; they produce direct and profound effects, first and foremost an increase in social inequality. To prove this hypothesis, at the end of each chapter the author provides several examples of how organized economic crime works in practice, and contextualizes them against the background of the development of neoliberalism in the western world from the 1980s to this day. In the case of Argentina, such examples are drawn from the administration of Carlos Menem, which lasted between the beginning of the 1990s and the 2001 crisis.
In his work Pegoraro identifies two main epistemological obstacles (along the lines of Gaston Bachelard's definition) which would hinder our understanding of the dynamics outlined so far—these are, respectively, the notion of “society” and the concept of “common crimes”, and they arguably complement each other. Regarding the former, according to Pegoraro to think simply in terms of “society” means to subscribe to the idea of an organic “whole” based on compliance, by “free and equal humans” (p. 17), with rules aimed at building consensus among them. By only acknowledging positive values, this kind of approach tends to situate crime at the margins of society—as a social pathology, as something irrational and evil. In other words, by focusing on the generic notion of “society”, social theorists risk ignoring the important role crime plays in the construction, preservation, and development of social order. Therefore, in this book as in several of his previous works the author prefers to speak of social order rather than of society: indeed, what we are immersed in is an imposed social order with its relations of inequality, hierarchy, domination, and subjugation, but also resistance.
Regarding the second of these epistemological obstacles, Pegoraro refers to the functioning of the mass media, which provide high visibility to interpersonal crime while rendering organized economic crime virtually invisible. In this way, the mass media promote the public (mis)perception that common street crimes are a great threat to social order, while concealing the circumstance that the preservation of such social order ultimately rests on the “perpetual primitive accumulation” (p. 53) enabled by economic inequalities and the power relationships these cement, to the advantage of the establishment and the dominant power elites.
The widespread focus on common crimes prevents a critical understanding of social order and of the mechanisms (particularly illegal ones) which support it, thus generating a growing sense of public insecurity. This circumstance is also a reflection of the selectivity of the criminal system, which punishes certain crimes—common crimes, which are socially constructed as a threat to the social order—while it leaves other criminal behaviors unpunished. In the words of the author, the selective application of criminal policy excludes powerful individuals and civil servants involved in illegal activities, and it only punishes socially vulnerable people. These theoretical reflections on the construction of social order through crime, supported by a wealth of empirical sources, constitute the main contribution of the book: to raise awareness about a type of “positive” crime that builds and strengthens social ties which in turn contribute to (re)produce an increasingly unequal social order. Juan Pegoraro's book offers an original contribution to the literature on punishment and society, and will become an important reference for those interested in exploring the complex relationships between crime and social order.