The struggles of our contemporary moment, the deepening of social inequalities around the world, the rise of authoritarian governments, the routine violence of corporations, state institutions and state agents, as well as the contestation of these circumstances by grassroots groups and social movements – all inspired our initial symposium at the University of Brighton in 2019. Since then, the world entered the global COVID-19 pandemic, and international struggles against racism, police violence, and structural political and economic exclusions have gathered momentum, trying to disrupt the continuum of interlocking forms of oppression. More recently, new wars have started, reminding us as we move from one conjuncture to another, that this dialogue around repression and resistance is unfinished, it is a beginning, rather than an endpoint, to moments of change.

The 25 authors – thinkers, scholars and activists – who have contributed to this volume bring their situated work to name and challenge the conditions of the current moment, in attempts to collectively unsettle and address the legacies and conditions of interconnected forms of social, racial, gendered, political and economic injustices. This is an effort to transform existing social orders. We offer an admittedly value-laden contribution to current debates in the social sciences and humanities through cross-fertilization of ideas and experiences, while challenging oppression and eurocentrism. Relatedly, we demonstrate that there is much to be learned when Southern, postcolonial and decolonizing lenses are applied to criminology and criminal justice research. Their contributions must be considered, including the perspectives of Marxist, feminist, Africana and queer scholars working in Southern contexts or Southern issues. Our contributors have engaged with many of these perspectives in their respective chapters. We hope future criminological debates will continue to challenge the epistemological inequalities and hierarchies still evident as the potent legacies of colonialism, patriarchy and capitalism.

The chapters here, at their core, ask and address critical questions about ‘who has the power to label another as deviant’, ‘who makes the rules’, ‘who causes the harm’ and ‘who collects the profits’ (Agozino, 2003: 46). The aim of this task is to liberate knowledge from ‘the shackles of imperialist reason’ (Agozino, 2003: 245). This work urges us to address the conditions, crises and processes that are tied to specific developments in capitalism.