Ignasi Bernat
University of Barcelona, Departament of Sociology, Faculty Member
- Universitat de Girona, Departament de Dret Públic, Faculty MemberUniversitat de Girona, Dret public (Public law), Faculty MemberUniversity Of Winchester, Applied Social Sciences Forensic and Politics, Faculty Memberadd
- Interested in crimes of the powerful and social theory as a critical scholar.edit
Research Interests:
The thousands of Spanish National Police and Guardia Civil sent to Barcelona in order to prevent the referendum legislated by the Catalan Parliament on 6 and 7 September 2017 raised major questions about the fragility of Spanish... more
The thousands of Spanish National Police and Guardia Civil sent to Barcelona in order to prevent the referendum legislated by the Catalan Parliament on 6 and 7 September 2017 raised major questions about the fragility of Spanish democracy. The subsequent display of police violence on 1 October and the imprisonment and criminalisation of political opponents for the archaic offences of ‘rebellion’ and ‘sedition’ looked even less ‘democratic’. Indeed, those events in Catalonia constitute a remarkable moment in recent European history. This article uses the literature on ‘postfascism’ (developed in this journal and elsewhere) to analyse this remarkable moment and develop its social connections to the parallel re-emergence of fascist violence on the streets and the appearance of fascist symbolism in mainstream politics in Spain. The literature on postfascism identifies contemporary fascism as a specifically cultural phenomenon, but generally fails to identify how the conditions that sust...
Research Interests:
The thousands of Spanish National Police and Guardia Civil sent to Barcelona in order to prevent the referendum legislated by the Catalan Parliament on 6 and 7 September 2017 raised major questions about the fragility of Spanish... more
The thousands of Spanish National Police and Guardia Civil sent to Barcelona in order to prevent the referendum legislated by the Catalan Parliament on 6 and 7 September 2017 raised major questions about the fragility of Spanish democracy. The subsequent display of police violence on 1 October and the imprisonment and criminalisation of political opponents for the archaic offences of ‘rebellion’ and ‘sedition’ looked even less ‘democratic’. Indeed, those events in Catalonia constitute a remarkable moment in recent European history. This article uses the literature on ‘postfascism’ (developed in this journal and elsewhere) to analyse this remarkable moment and develop its social connections to the parallel re-emergence of fascist violence on the streets and the appearance of fascist symbolism in mainstream politics in Spain. The literature on postfascism identifies contemporary fascism as a specifically cultural phenomenon, but generally fails to identify how the conditions that sust...
Research Interests:
This paper asks how we can explain the remarkable punitive turn against the political opponents of a liberal democratic state in twenty-first-century Europe. It uses Michel Foucault's analysis as a point of departure for understanding how... more
This paper asks how we can explain the remarkable punitive turn against the political opponents of a liberal democratic state in twenty-first-century Europe. It uses Michel Foucault's analysis as a point of departure for understanding how the form of state power witnessed in Catalonia is entirely consistent with a Westphalian fixation with the indissoluble unity of statehood. Moreover, we identify a classic dual strategy of criminal-ization and depoliticization that will be familiar to critical students of the criminal justice system. The form of justice resorted to by the postfascist Spanish state is one that seeks to replace politics with law; to impose a kind of legalized violence that is at the same time a proxy for war and a proxy for politics. Yet, in the process of presenting state repression as having only legal-rather than social or political content-all the Spanish state can do is repack age this political struggle in a form that reflects the war-making origins of the state. We argue, therefore, that in the Catalan case, as in countless other political conflicts, the autonomy of the political realm is a fallacy: the political realm cannot hide its violent origins.
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This chapter provides an overview and analysis of the perspective developed in a growing body of literature on state‐corporate crimes. The chapter takes as its starting point the mutually reinforcing relationship between state... more
This chapter provides an overview and analysis of the perspective developed in a growing body of literature on state‐corporate crimes. The chapter takes as its starting point the mutually reinforcing relationship between state institutions and corporations. It begins by revisiting debates on state‐organized crime and state‐organized violence as a way of framing the debates that followed. The chapter then sets out the key tenets of the state‐corporate crime approach, before developing a critical reflection on the literature. Finally, the chapter will conclude by arguing that we need to see state‐corporate crime as a natural outcome of the process by which capital accumulation is more generally reproduced through government/regulatory structures.
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Resumen. Este artículo aborda la continuada crisis en la periferia sur de la Unión Europea desde la perspectiva del Estado de excepción como dispositivo del poder soberano (Agamben, 2004). Este dispositivo de gobierno ha ido adquiriendo... more
Resumen. Este artículo aborda la continuada crisis en la periferia sur de la Unión Europea desde la perspectiva del Estado de excepción como dispositivo del poder soberano (Agamben, 2004). Este dispositivo de gobierno ha ido adquiriendo centralidad en el momento presente para manejar situaciones complejas cuando el poder y la soberanía están en disputa en medio de una crisis sobrevenida e impuesta al mismo tiempo; crisis sobrevenida que interrumpe los ritmos de acumulación de capital y crisis impuesta sobre las clases populares de los países del sur de la UE. Desde esta aproximación analizaremos tres dimensiones de esta crisis permanente (Agamben, 2019) que ha derribado antiguas certezas y consensos para establecer un nuevo tiempo político que consolida el régimen de poder económico y político dentro de la UE. 1 ignasi.
Research Interests:
The thousands of Spanish National Police and Guardia Civil sent to Barcelona in order to prevent the referendum legislated by the Catalan Parliament on 6 and 7 September 2017 raised major questions about the fragility of Spanish... more
The thousands of Spanish National Police and Guardia Civil sent to Barcelona in order to prevent the referendum legislated by the Catalan Parliament on 6 and 7 September 2017 raised major questions about the fragility of Spanish democracy. The subsequent display of police violence on 1 October and the imprisonment and criminalisation of political opponents for the archaic offences of ‘rebellion’ and ‘sedition’ looked even less ‘democratic’. Indeed, those events in Catalonia constitute a remarkable moment in recent European history. This article uses the literature on ‘postfascism’ (developed in this journal and elsewhere) to analyse this remarkable moment and develop its social connections to the parallel re-emergence of fascist violence on the streets and the appearance of fascist symbolism in mainstream politics in Spain. The literature on postfascism identifies contemporary fascism as a specifically cultural phenomenon, but generally fails to identify how the conditions that sustain the far right originate inside the state. In order to capture this historical turn more concretely as a process in which state institutions and processes of statecraft are intimately involved, we argue that the Spanish state is postfascist. The article offers a brief critique of the way the concept of postfascism has been deployed, and, through an empirical reading of the historical development of Spanish state institutions, it proposes a modified frame that can be used to understand the situation in Catalonia.
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The financial and economic crisis has hit Spain unexpectedly hard since 2007, and also brought to light a continuum of bad practices and wrongdoing by politicians and business leaders. In this chapter I address the most widespread form of... more
The financial and economic crisis has hit Spain unexpectedly hard since 2007, and also brought to light a continuum of bad practices and wrongdoing by politicians and business leaders. In this chapter I address the most widespread form of corporate crime before and during the Spanish crisis as a case study-the mortgage lending concession to benefit banks and other corporations involved in this form of accumulation by financial dispossession. In so doing, I draw some lessons from Frank Pearce's Crimes of the Powerful as I focus attention on the specific regime of power that arises from the financialization of the economy as a political process. Thus I reveal how corporate crime is not a pathology of the system, but just another mechanism to accumulate capital. In short, this chapter examines the social agreement that conceals corporate power and the structure of impunity that fosters the crimes of the powerful as an outcome and a means to further concentrate class power.
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The permanent crisis in the southern periphery of Europe has been deep socially, politically and economically. In order to contain it the sovereign power has shown all its majesty. The state of exception has been the mechanism deployed to... more
The permanent crisis in the southern periphery of Europe has been deep socially, politically and economically. In order to contain it the sovereign power has shown all its majesty. The state of exception has been the mechanism deployed to introduce the political decision within the legal framework. Departing from Agamben’s understanding of this mechanism of power, the paper directs its attention to several dimensions in Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. That is, the financial crisis, the corporate impunity and the migrants death have been handled to silence the potentia to disrupt the ongoing capitalist and colonial regime of power. Actually, the state of
exception has secured the current status quo, but also has intensified the ongoing regime of power. This dispositive is always accompanied by a legitimising discourse which essentialises and otherises these countries. After observing how this mechanism has operated in Southern Europe, the paper turns on discussing how to abandon this regime of power.
exception has secured the current status quo, but also has intensified the ongoing regime of power. This dispositive is always accompanied by a legitimising discourse which essentialises and otherises these countries. After observing how this mechanism has operated in Southern Europe, the paper turns on discussing how to abandon this regime of power.
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RESUMEN El vertido de petróleo del Prestige y sus trágicas consecuencias son analizadas en este artículo en el contexto de una estructura general de producción de petróleo, transporte y patrón de impunidad que protege a los actores... more
RESUMEN El vertido de petróleo del Prestige y sus trágicas consecuencias son analizadas en este artículo en el contexto de una estructura general de producción de petróleo, transporte y patrón de impunidad que protege a los actores estatal y corporativo clave. El artículo desafía la asunción general de que el Estado y la corporación existen como instituciones independientes y autónomas, y por tanto, el error que supone entender los Estados y las corporaciones como representantes de los intereses opuestos entre lo público y lo privado. De este modo, ofrece una corrección a la asunción preponderante de que los crimens corporativos emergen de los 'momentos de ruptura' o de la ruptura de las capacidades de los Estados para regular el poder corporativo. De hecho, argumenta que la formación de las condiciones del desastre son el resultado de un amplio régimen de permisividad para
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RESUMEN El derrumbe financiero y económico que se inició en 2007 en Estados Unidos después de la conocida como crisis de las hipotecas subprime se tornó global un año después. En España, uno de los países más afectados por la larga... more
RESUMEN El derrumbe financiero y económico que se inició en 2007 en Estados Unidos después de la conocida como crisis de las hipotecas subprime se tornó global un año después. En España, uno de los países más afectados por la larga crisis, la prosperidad anterior enseguida pareció ser un espejismo. Pero la crisis no ha afectado a todo el mundo en la misma medida. De hecho, hay gente que se ha enriquecido durante el período 2008-2012; en cambio, la crisis está teniendo un impacto mayor sobre los que ya se encontraban en una situación más precaria. En este artículo discutiré una de las múltiples caras de la crisis española que está afectando a los más desaventajados: los desahucios y su resistencia por parte de la población inmigrante. Para ello, primero examinaré un municipio que ha sido paradigmático de enclave migrante en España: Salt. Salt es un municipio conocido en Girona, Cataluña, por haber sido descrito en los medios de comunicación como un gueto como resultado de los problemas surgidos por el exceso de inmigración. Una etnografía desde una perspectiva criminológica muestra que el problema que aparece en los medios de comunicación (el delito callejero) es solo uno entre los varios que afectan a la población. Toda la atención puesta sobre el municipio por medios, políticos y policías no ha servido para la detección de un problema que está
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RESUMEN El vertido de petróleo del Prestige y sus trágicas consecuencias son analizadas en este artículo en el contexto de una estructura general de producción de petróleo, transporte y patrón de impunidad que protege a los actores... more
RESUMEN El vertido de petróleo del Prestige y sus trágicas consecuencias son analizadas en este artículo en el contexto de una estructura general de producción de petróleo, transporte y patrón de impunidad que protege a los actores estatal y corporativo clave. El artículo desafía la asunción general de que el Estado y la corporación existen como instituciones independientes y autónomas, y por tanto, el error que supone entender los Estados y las corporaciones como representantes de los intereses opuestos entre lo público y lo privado. De este modo, ofrece una corrección a la asunción preponderante de que los crimens corporativos emergen de los 'momentos de ruptura' o de la ruptura de las capacidades de los Estados para regular el poder corporativo. De hecho, argumenta que la formación de las condiciones del desastre son el resultado de un amplio régimen de permisividad para
Research Interests:
Este artículo es el prólogo a la edición en castellano de The Corporate Criminal. Why corporations must be abolished (La Empresa Criminal) de Steve Tombs y David Whyte. El libro original explica minuciosamente cómo las corporaciones, la... more
Este artículo es el prólogo a la edición en castellano de The Corporate Criminal. Why corporations must be abolished (La Empresa Criminal) de Steve Tombs y David Whyte. El libro original explica minuciosamente cómo las corporaciones, la forma jurídica para valorizar el capital, han devenido unos actores con tal volúmen de poder e impunidad que cometen crímenes de forma sistemática y rutinaria con la connivencia del estado. En este prólogo, se plantea la necesidad de emplear esta misma mirada radical para analizar el funcionamiento del poder corporativo en otros países menos centrales del capitalismo global y entender la relación simbiótica entre estados periféricos y corporaciones que facultan las prácticas y políticas predatorias y de saqueo. En concreto, el prólogo se detiene en la pertinencia de dicho análisis para comprender la situación socioeconómica en el Reino de España.