{"id":12078,"date":"2021-07-08T06:00:18","date_gmt":"2021-07-08T04:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencespo.fr\/research\/cogito\/home\/?p=12078"},"modified":"2021-07-08T08:26:09","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T06:26:09","slug":"proud-to-punish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sciencespo.fr\/research\/cogito\/home\/proud-to-punish\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Proud to Punish. The World of Outlaw Vigilantes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fiers\u2018There is no greater law firm than Smith & Wesson, especially if it\u2019s backed up by a 12-gauge injunction.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

A member of the American vigilante group \u2018Posse Comitatus\u2019 thus graphically captured the essence of his activism in 1978. To take justice into one\u2019s own hands, in a group or alone, is the credo of \u2018vigilantism\u2019, which is increasingly taking hold across the world. What does this term refer to, exactly? What are the origins and forms of this movement? CERI researchers Gilles Favarel-Garrigues<\/a> and Laurent Gayer<\/a> tackled these questions in their recently published study Fiers de punir.<\/i> Le<\/i><\/i> monde des justiciers hors-la-loi<\/i><\/a> (Proud to punish. The world of outlaw vigilantes\u2009\u2013\u2009<\/i>Seuil, 2021). Interview.<\/p>\n

Your book explores the global landscapes of \u2018rough justice\u2019 and discusses the concept of vigilantism in a comparative perspective. Would you mind defining this concept?<\/h5>\n

The concept of \u2018vigilantism\u2019 finds its origins in the forms of rough justice that developed in the United States during the nineteenth century. In the South and later in the West, self-styled punishers organised under the banner of \u2018Vigilance Committees\u2019, while the Spanish term for watchman, vigilante<\/i>, started being used to refer to those fighting against horse thieves and other outlaws, in the face of a formal justice system deemed either absent or ineffective. Later, the term vigilantism<\/i> came to designate a social phenomenon with a more global outreach. It now encompasses initiatives by ordinary citizens determined to deliver their own brand of justice, in the name of a community of reference, who is also to be their witness. Claiming to be invested by a popular mandate, these vigilantes do not hesitate to break the law to defend legal and moral norms. The term \u2018vigilantisme\u2019<\/i> is a recent addition in French but we are not the first scholars to use it: our colleague at CERI, Laurent Fourchard, has helped to popularise it through his research on South Africa and Nigeria(1)<\/sup><\/a>Fourchard, Laurent, Trier, exclure et policer. Vies urbaines en Afrique du Sud et au Nigeria<\/i><\/a>. Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2018.<\/span><\/span>