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Victimhood, Memory, and Consumerism documents the story of the drug violence in Medellín in the 1980s and 1990s and critically examines the position of its victims. Drawing on unique empirical material, the book addresses the consequences of commercial exploitation of Medellín's violent past for its victims and for the nature of the city today.
List of contents
- Preface
- 1: Introduction
- 2: A city at war
- 3: Invisible victims in a commodified world
- 4: Building a global brand
- 5: 'There are many uncomfortable dynamics in a production'
- 6: Dark consumerism and the trauma(tic) economy
- 7: The quest for recognition
- 8: Global hierarchies of victimhood
- 9: Conclusion
- References
About the author
Katja Franko is Professor of Criminology at the University of Oslo, Norway. She has published extensively on globalisation, migration and border control, international police co-operation and the use of advanced information and communication technologies in crime control strategies. Her recent publications include Globalization and Crime (3rd edition, 2020, Sage) and The Crimmigrant Other: Migration and Penal Power (2020, Routledge). Her book Sentencing in the Age of Information: From Faust to Macintosh was a 2006 joint winner of the Socio-Legal Studies Association Hart Book Prize.
David R. Goyes is a researcher at the University of Oslo. Goyes holds a PhD in criminology from the same university. He has contributed extensively to the study of North-South global relations, environmental conflicts, and Indigenous issues. Goyes is editor-in-chief of the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, and member of several editorial boards. Goyes has a long publication record, with titles in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. His first sole-authored book, Southern Green Criminology (Emerald), was published in 2019. He has also published numerous edited books, scientific journal special editions, academic articles and book chapters.
Summary
Victimhood, Memory, and Consumerism documents the story of the drug violence in Medellín in the 1980s and 1990s and critically examines the position of its victims. Drawing on unique empirical material, the book addresses the consequences of commercial exploitation of Medellín's violent past for its victims and for the nature of the city today.
Additional text
How to make sense of a Pablo Escobar t-shirt? Victimhood, Memory, and Consumerism is a fascinating and incisive analysis of the paradoxes of how mass drug violence in Medellín, Colombia has been commodified by the global culture industry of Netflix's Narcos and the mass-produced kitsch of dark tourism. The authors effectively show how this framing of violence as entertainment affects the lives and haunts the memories of the actual victims of violence in Medellín.
