First published in 1999, this volume brings together for the first time the work of leading researchers in the new field of governmentality studies and crime control. Specific chapters of the volume are written by leading internationally-recognized criminologists and socio-legal scholars from Canada, the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Individual chapters deal with key theoretical and methodological issues now being addressed by researchers in the field, while also reporting the results of innovative theoretically-informed research on a range of substantive topics including: crime prevention: dangerousness: criminalisation and gender: risk management and government of drug users: along with the government of youth, property relations, urban space and indigenous peoples. Collectively, chapters reflect the range of new theoretical approaches and substantive research topics that are being developed by socio-legal scholars and criminologists who are working in the wake of the critical postmodern tide that is entering law and criminology partly through the influence of Foucault.

Fragile Settlements compares the processes by which British colonial authority was asserted over Indigenous peoples in south-west Australia and Prairie Canada from the 1830s to the early twentieth century. At the start of this period, in a humanitarian response to settlers’ increased demand for land, Britain’s Colonial Office moved to protect Indigenous peoples by making them subjects under British law. This book highlights the parallels and divergences between these connected British frontiers by examining how colonial actors and institutions interpreted and applied the principle of law in their interaction with Indigenous peoples “on the ground.”

Fragile Settlements compares the processes by which British colonial authority was asserted over Indigenous peoples in south-west Australia and Prairie Canada from the 1830s to the early twentieth century. At the start of this period, in a humanitarian response to settlers' increased demand for land, Britain's Colonial Office moved to protect Indigenous peoples by making them subjects under British law. This book highlights the parallels and divergences between these connected British frontiers by examining how colonial actors and institutions interpreted and applied the principle of law in their interaction with Indigenous peoples "on the ground."