ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses Asian dam projects as a crime of globalization – for example, the crimes of international financial institutions – and as a historically neglected type of crime perpetrated by powerful institutions, causing “slow violence” in contrast to the “fast violence” that has been a principal focus of criminological inquiry. It situates this analysis in the context of a rapidly expanding strain of criminological inquiry addressing crimes of the powerful, with Frank Pearce’s seminal contribution in his 1976 book providing a basic point of departure for such inquiry. Pearce’s Marxist analysis and core concepts, such as an “imaginary social order,” are identified as being especially timely in the present global political environment. This chapter addresses the role of a long-established international financial institution – the World Bank, and the International Finance Corporation branch of this bank – but also some more recently established such institutions specifically in Asia: the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB), officially launched in July 2015. A core claim is advanced that a criminology that is to remain relevant in the 21st century will increasingly have to attend to the harms perpetrated by such powerful institutions.
