Résumé
"The complex assumptions used to define organized crime need to be examined rather than presumed, reproduced and/or simply reinterpreted. In this thesis, the aim is to describe the ways in which the phenomenon organized crime is made into an object of governance. To do so, I inquire into the rhetorical mechanisms used in three Canadian regulatory discourses to maintain and perpetuate certain predominant assumptions about organized crime. I also examine how these rhetorical strategies produce larger rationalities to justify and legitimize the practices deemed by regulators to be solutions to the organized crime problem. This analytic process reveals how assumptions produce limiting effects to regulatory thought about organized crime by dismissing and disregarding alternative thought. With these three considerations in mind, my thesis asks, what are the discursive processes that constitute the rationalities producing organized crime as an object of government? To answer this question, I focus on identifying the assumptive frames of reference used by regulators to produce definitions of organized crime. This involves examining the types of knowledge, expertise and means of calculation (rationalities) used by each agency to discern and represent organized crime. I seek to identify and isolate the rhetorical strategies constituting definitions of organized crime to understand how such discursive processes guide and inform regulatory perceptions. I then consider how each definition justifies the applications and techniques proposed to govern organized crime."--Abstract.