Drift

“Jeff Ferrell guides us through a way of thinking about drift that provides an impetus to an imaginative and emancipatory politics. This is a work that transforms despair into hope, dependency into autonomy, and separation into unity. As a catalyst for imagination, Drift is nothing short of brilliant.”—Simon Springer, author of The Anarchist Roots of Geography: Toward Spatial Emancipation 

“Beautifully written and sensitively researched, Ferrell’s Drift represents the first socio-criminological attempt to capture the growing sense of emotional and existential precarity now confronting many young people as they attempt to negotiate the complex life worlds of late modernity. Another tour de force by one of criminology’s most engaging and enlightening scholars.”—Keith Hayward, Professor of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

“Beautifully interweaving sociology, biography, and criminology, Drift is Ferrell’s most visionary work to date, tracing the entanglement of motion with every trajectory of post-Fordist life at the horizons of modernity. An inquiry, meditation, analysis, and performance, all through the register of poetics, Drift is a volume in the shape of our times.”—Michelle Brown, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Tennessee

“Making connections across decades, continents, and cultures, this compelling and evocative book attends to migration and movement, as social ‘problem’ and as revolutionary potential. Ferrell finds the commonalities between hobos, gutter punks, dumpster divers, and migrant workers, and argues for a way of thinking that embraces chance and expands the trajectories of criminological knowledge.”—Alison Young, Francine V. McNiff Professor of Criminology, University of Melbourne
“Theoretically rich and beautifully evocative, Drift is a masterful analysis of contemporary dislocations. Ferrell deftly weaves strands of history, political economy, geography, sociology, and cultural studies to offer a deeply contemplative assessment of late modernity through the lens of drift. It’s a rare scholarly work that reads like a novel but packs such a powerful theoretical punch!”—Jody Miller, Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University