Crude power: a genealogy of criminogenic state-corporate-industry symbiosis

Abstract

The function of government is broadly seen as an agent to control crime (Garland 1996). However, critical scholars have identified that the government’s crime control role is ambiguous, suggesting that the state and large corporations are interpenetrated (Kramer 2020; Tombs 2012; White 2018b). This paper examines the emergence of the United States Federal government and private oil industry relationship using a re-rendered two-stage genealogical inquiry method. The analysis shows the development of a complex yet largely symbiotic association of continuities, recurrences, and changes over the past century. The relationship makes clear that the largely unfettered dominance of power elites has functioned through the bulwark of the public and private sectors, continuing a colonial ontological praxis which devalues nature, human, and non-human life. The result of this particular state-corporate-industry symbiosis has been to normalize criminogenic dynamics, embed a petroleum fuelled global economy, and precipitate the climate crisis and related Earth system damage.