Infrastructure Critical: Sacrifice at Toronto’s G8/G20 Summit

Much public debate ensued after the violence and police brutality that gripped Toronto in June 2010 during the G8/G20 Summit. It is now being revealed how the Conservative government’s stimulus package was funnelled into infrastructure projects aimed at policing Canadians who wished to protest the summit. Renzi and Elmer argue that the Canadian state cultivated an image of the city’s financial district as a zone at risk from domestic–or embedded –threats. The rationale for policing protestors, both peaceful ones and the so-called black bloc, relied on new forms of state infrastructure redefined through financial, legal, and bio-political frameworks.

Infrastructure Critical reveals more than the thin line between security and massive infringement on civil rights; it argues that progressive responses need to understand the logic of state governance in a global economic context.