Crime, accidents and (dis)organization: Rhizomic communications on/of a foodscare

``Organization', as in organized crime, or organizationalor corporate crime, has, in criminological discourse, often something fixed about it. ``Crime' then is often being read as the more or less logical outcome of intentional organization.And the same would go for the ``control', or regulation of organized/organizational crime. An undercurrent of fixedassumptions like these about the fixity of organized/organizationalcrime and its regulation often structures criminological theoryand research. In an age of events (cf. Deleuze), and of eventsas accidents (cf. Massumi), this criminological discursiveundercurrent is in need of some supplements. If, as one mightbe able to assume, ``organizations' (of ``crime', and of ``control') can now be read appropriately as clusters of events/accidents, then it pays to look towards and focus onall and everything Outside the lines which we once consideredto be ``organizational' boundaries. This Outside – a spaceof multiplicity, and thus of ambivalence, undecidability, and(im)possibility – can be read as the cradle of contemporary``organizations' (of ``crime' and ``control'). In this paper,we illustrate this with the example of a recent case, in Belgium,of food contamination, and a foodscare which emerged in its wake.Inspired by recent discussions in organization theory (see partI of this essay), we develop the case study in part II of thispaper. With this paper, we hope to rethink ``organization', and thus ``organizational crime' and ``organized crime' aswell. But we also hope to contribute, through our reading ofcontemporary rhizomics, to the study of foodscares, and perhapsto the study of ``panics' more generally. Reading ``crimes',``controls' and ``criminologies', in a Deleuzean way, aslabyrinthine hybridities will, we think, also help to rethinkcriminology in an era of meshy, (dis)organized capitalism (cf.Lash and Urry).