On April 24, the Clarkson University Center for Canadian Studies will be hosting Ted Rutland (Concordia University, Montreal) for a Fulbright Canada Seminar. Ted is currently a Fulbright Visiting Chair at SUNY-Plattsburgh, and will be coming to Potsdam to deliver a talk entitled “Disappearing Difference: Montréal’s War on Street Gangs and the Urban Carceral State” from 4-5 in the Petersen Board Room on the 3rd Floor of BH Snell Hall. All faculty and students are invited to attend! Light refreshments will be available. An abstract of the talk and short bio of the speaker are below.
Disappearing Difference: Montréal’s War on Street Gangs and the Urban Carceral StateIn 1989, the Montréal police began a war on street gangs. Though Montréal, like most large North American cities, has a history of street gangs that stretches back to the dawn of industrial capitalism in the mid-1800s, this was the first time that the police identified street gangs as a specific target and developed a series of strategies to target them. These strategies were wide ranging, from the establishment of a special street gang unit to the strategic use of crown prosecutors, and resulted in a massive increase in the surveillance and incarceration of people involved in, or suspected to be involved in, street gang activities. This talk examines the emergence, operation, and consequences of Montréal’s war on street gangs. Developing the concept of the urban carceral state, it argues that the war on street gangs and its consequences were linked to social conflicts in particular urban spaces and institutions – conflicts in which white citizens sought to reestablish their dominance over Black citizens.
Ted Rutland is an urban, social, and cultural geographer. Most of his work examines how people and spaces are understood and managed in modern cities. Empirically, this research has involved a sustained examination of modern urban planning, urban development, urban policing/security, and social movements in North American (and particularly Canadian) cities. His 2018 book, Displacing Blackness: Planning, Power, and Race in Twentieth Century Halifax, carries these concerns through more than a century of history in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His more recent research has focused on Montréal, and a series of issues related to housing, urban security, and policing. https://www.concordia.ca/faculty/ted-rutland.html