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AbstractWhile territorial destigmatization has long been central to urban policies, academic interest is only very recent. Using the figure of the triangle, we outline an analytical approach to studying territorial destigmatization, connecting territory, destigmatization and institutions. By building on open‐ended structured interviews with 47 project managers from 40 stigmatized housing estates in Denmark, we shed light on territorial destigmatization work in practice. The accounts of the project managers allow us to make explicit the implicit logics—doxas—that inform the fuzzy logic of practice in territorial destigmatization work. We identify four such generative institutional logics which, brought together, constitute a regime of territorial destigmatization. These logics underpin the contemporary policy schizophrenia that simultaneously promotes territorial destigmatization at the local level and the production of territorial stigmatization at the national level. This illuminates the efforts to deal with the persistence of territorial stigma, implying that the Sisyphean character of these efforts are not unforeseen policy consequences of dealing with a 'wicked problem', but integral to the political economy of the contemporary neoliberal governance of advanced urban marginality.

The critical and polemic receptions of the work of Loïc Wacquant has been extensive, but to a large extent focused on specific works and colored by professional specialty, that is, in a word: fragmented. In counteracting that fragmented response, the article sheds light on the undercurrents in Wacquant's works by stressing four prominent and consistent features: his heritage from (and updating of) Bourdieu; his emphasis on and constant practice of theory (implicit as well as explicit); the distinct ethos with which he addresses political sociology (in the dual form of a sociology analyzing the effects of the political productions of populations categories and a so-called 'civic sociology'); and finally, the persistent and ubiquitous critique of everything in existence – a thematic indicator permeating each and every one of his works. Thus the article proposes a unifying reading of Wacquant as an interpretation advocating revitalization of a critical social science.

Loïc Wacquants teori om udviklingen af en nyliberal straffestat udgør en invitation til empiriske undersøgelser. I denne artikel diskuteres Wacquants teori om, at vi i den vestlige verden har oplevet et gradvist skifte fra et keynesiansk velfærdsregime (welfare) over et schumpetersk arbejdsregime (workfare), til at vi nu ser et nyliberalt fængselsregime (prisonfare) udvikle sig. Wacquant påpeger, at det er usikkert, hvorvidt og på hvilken måde vi i fremtiden vil se en 'europæisk vej mod en straffestat'. Han fastholder, at de skandinaviske lande udgør en undtagelse til denne globale 'tough on crime' bølge og skriver sig implicit ind i den kriminologiske debat om den såkaldte 'skandinaviske undtagelse'. Målet med denne artikel er at udvide dette perspektiv og diskutere Wacquants teoriudvikling i en skandinavisk kontekst. Empirisk analyseres behandlingen af to danske lovforslag fra 2009 og 2011. Begge omhandler stramning af straffeloven inden for henholdsvis bandekriminalitet og hjemmerøverier, og begge blev stemt igennem med et overbevisende flertal i Folketinget. Fokuspunktet for analysen er, hvilke overordnede tematikker politikerne henviser til som argumentation for en øget strafferamme. Konklusionen er, at disse alle henviser til et nyliberalt følelsesbetonet argument om retsfølelsen. Artiklen inviterer, med baggrund i Wacquants teori, til kritiske refleksioner over den stramme danske retspolitik.


ENGELSK ABSTRACT:

Ida Norvin Nilsson and Kristian Nagel Delica: Critical Perspectives on Recent Danish Legal Policy – a Step on the Way Towards a "Penal State"?

This article discusses Loïc Wacquant's thesis of a gradual shift from a Keynesian welfare regime via a Schumpeterian workfare regime to the contemporary creation of a neoliberal penal state. This thesis raises the question as to whether we will see a "European road towards the penal state". Wacquant maintains that the Scandinavian countries are exceptions to the global "tough on crime" trend, thus implicitly touching upon debates in criminology about so-called "Scandinavian exceptionalism". This article is both a contribution to this debate as well as a critical view on Wacquant's theories seen from a Scandinavian perspective. The empirical case in the analysis is the debates about two bills in the Danish parliament in 2009 and 2011 aimed at increasing punishment for gang violence and home robberies. Both of these bills were passed by an overwhelming majority. The analysis dissects the kind of themes referred to by the politicians in their arguments for increasing the punishment in these specific cases. One clear theme is the ill-defined term "sense of justice". The article invites critical reflections on the increasingly tough Danish justice policy and Wacquant's theory of the neoliberal penal state.

Keywords: Loïc Wacquant, penalty, punitive state, legal policy, neoliberalism, Scandinavian exceptionalism.