Crime and Justice Atlas

How Justice Is Served
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Criminologists and Reformers

Loic Wacquant

Criminological Theorists and Social Scientists

Loic J. D. Wacquant, born in 1960, is a French sociologist who serves as professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. His scholarship examines the relationship between urban poverty and mass incarceration in the United States, and he is best known for describing what he calls a deadly symbiosis between the ghetto and the prison, arguing that the two institutions function together to contain and manage populations that have become economically marginal within contemporary American cities.

Facts
Birthplace
Southern France 1
Nationality
French 1
Defining Contribution
Sociologist studying comparative urban poverty, ethnoracial domination and the penal state 2
Notable Work
Prisons of Poverty (Les Prisons de la misere, 1999) 2
Connections

Associated With

Loic Wacquant's Punishing the Poor connects mass incarceration to neoliberal economic policy and the punitive management of urban poverty.

Sources
1. Biography - Loïc Wacquant (official site)
background page
Quote, background page
Born and raised in Southern France, Wacquant was educated in Montpellier, Paris, Chapel Hill and Chicago
View the Source
2. Loïc Wacquant - MacArthur Foundation
  • fellow profile
    Loïc Wacquant is a sociologist exploring the changing forms and conditions of urban poverty in Europe and America.
  • list of publications
    Les Prisons de le Misère (1999) / Prisons of Poverty (2001)
View the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.