How Well Does Theory Travel? David Garland in the Global South

How well does theory travel? The article examines this question by exploring how David Garland's work on crime control in Britain and the United States might be used to shed light on crime control in South Africa. I argue that theory travels badly when what is transferred is not the hard work of genealogical method but the shiny concepts that are the product of somebody else's labour. Entire countries and regions appear to have come off an assembly line, each made from the same parts, each more or less resembling the next. Theory travels well when it transmits imaginative resources that inspire one's own genealogical explorations, thus giving due weight to the historical antecedents of contemporary practices.