ABSTRACT
This chapter documents and theorizes the connection between contemporary dynamics of neo-imperialism and social orders defined by crime, repression, and violence. In opposition to Southern criminology framings, we argue for a materialist understanding of neo-imperialism, placing processes of wealth transference and extraction from Global South to North as central to the global system of inequality. This set of economic relations of exploitation sits within complex political relations that regulate and legitimize business practices. Maintaining unequal wealth accumulation from the South in the face of crisis, critique, and resistance entails the constant deployment of strategies of consent and repression. After this, we develop two discussions that theoretically ground the intimate connection between neo-colonialism and crime, violence, and state repression in the Global South. Firstly, we argue that corporate accumulation strategies based on the redistribution of wealth from South to North frequently depend on the institutionalization of de-regulated corporate permission which is associated with a range of harms. Secondly, we argue that through trade dynamics and economic policy, often enforced by multilateral institutions, poverty in the South is a structural outcome leading to constant problems of social disorder as informal economies and reactionary state violence take hold in the face of insecurity.
