Book Review: The Truth About Crime: Sovereignty, Knowledge, Social Order

• DOI: 10.1177/1057567717736566
• Date: 01 March 2018
• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Author: Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

offenders to add to the ever-growing list of banned shoppers, and still other owners complain that

they lack the time to properly enforce the ban. The ban’s effectiveness rests on the government’s

tacit support, however. As seen from this case study, the molecular works intricately with the molar

to enforce the CSB.

While the book enhances knowledge in the field of security and securitization of society, the

author intentionally refrains from discussing why security arrangements have changed over time,

limiting his arguments to how public–private security arrangements actually work. In avoiding the

why of securitization, however, Schuilenburg leaves out an important consideration: Collaborations

may be more of self-interested pursuits, especially for the profit-seeking private sector, than any

yearning to secure the environment. Thus, while the effects of these security partnerships are

unambiguously important, understanding that the why may actually be the precipitator of such

arrangements should be of equal importan ce in any discussion of the securitizati on of society.

Indeed, the why of securitization of society may transcend “the rise of new information and com-

munication technologies that have changed the economic, political, and cultural context” of societies

and/or the “populist discussions on the severity of punishments meted out” to law violators.

This well-written and thought-provoking book certainly knits the philosophical with the crimin-

ological, to help the reader to understand the essence of security in contemporary society.

Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. L. (2016).

The Truth AboutCrime: Sovereignty, Knowledge,Social Order. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Xix þ223 pp.

$27.50, (Cloth) $85.00, (E-book) $27.50, Notes. Bibliography. Index. ISBN 978-0-226-42491-0.

Reviewed by: Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich, Michigan State University, MI, USA

DOI: 10.1177/1057567717736566

In the book The Truth About Crime, Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, professors of African

American Studies and of Anthropology from Harvard University, engage in a rich and complex

exploration of the relation between crime and government in South Africa and beyond. They build

upon Durkheim’s argument that criminality is a critical prism used by the societies to assess

themselves and argue that their study is “a criminal anthropology of late modernity” (p. xiv).

Intertwining the theoretical arguments and a detailed contextual study of South Africa, the

authors seek to address the relation among crime, government, and citizens in modern societies.

In the process, the authors cater to a wide variety of audiences, from anthropologists, political

scientists, and criminologists to policy makers and laypersons. Having such a heterogeneous audi-

ence in mind, the book systematically addresses the topic by providing a historical overview and in-

depth analysis. Quite a number of these issues, such as the measurement of crime, outsourcing

criminal justice functions, or the lack of proportionality between fear of crime and victimization,

though already generally familiar to criminologists, are put in a comparative perspective, typically

including South Africa and the United States.

The book focuses on the paradox of desire and distrust centered in contemporary citizenship. The

authors argue that this paradox is born out of phenomenology of fear. On the one hand, because of

the fear of crime, be it real or imagined, the citizens seek the police to provide them with protection

for themselves and their property. On the other hand, the citizens develop doubts about the police

interest in and ability to protect them from crime. This paradox is a consequence of outsourcing the

governmental functions, thus decentralizing government sovereignty, and the growing difficulty of

drawing the lines between legal and illegal in the modern world. At the time when modern societies

Book Reviews 87