Cultural criminology

Cultural criminology is a subfield in the study of crime that focuses on the ways in which the "dynamics of meaning underpin every process in criminal justice, including the definition of crime itself."[1]:6 In other words, cultural criminology seeks to understand crime through the context of culture and cultural processes.[2] Rather than representing a conclusive paradigm per se, this particular form of criminological analysis interweaves a broad range of perspectives that share a sensitivity to “image, meaning, and representation” to evaluate the convergence of cultural and criminal processes.[3]:395

Cultural Sociology (journal), published by the British Sociological Association and SAGE.

As opposed to other theories, cultural criminology views crime in the context of an offenders culture as a motive to commit crime. The theory gives motives to a crime, whereas other theories, such as rational choice theory, explain what was gained.

Background

Sociologist Jack Katz is recognized by many as being the foundational figure to this approach[4] through his seminal work, Seductions of Crime, written in 1988.[5] Cultural criminology as a substantive approach, however, did not begin to form until the mid-1990s,[6] where increasing interest arose from the desire to incorporate cultural studies into contemporary criminology. Developed in both the United States and the United Kingdom, the approach has had transnational impacts.

Recent theories within cultural criminology take into account the role of space (such as urban space) in the construction of crime, positing, for example, that where an action takes place is as important as the effect of the action in determining criminality. The roles of excitement and control in cultural criminology has laid the foundation for the sociological concept of "edgework".[7] Edgework's focus on prototypically masculine, high-risk pursuits has been criticised by a number of feminist criminologists. More recent works, however, suggest that edgework can be applied to either gender.[8]

Purpose

In Katz (1988) and other works, the goal is to find the overlap between the emotions associated with everyday life and those associated with crime.[4][9] As such, one of the main tenets of cultural criminology is the role of affect in crime.[10]

Jeff Ferrell, cited by many scholars as a forerunner of the subfield as it is known today, describes the purpose of cultural criminology as being to investigate “the stylized frameworks and experiential dynamics of illicit subcultures; the symbolic criminalization of popular culture forms; and the mediated construction of crime and crime control issues.”[3]:395 Moreover, the approach has often been used to demonstrate the ways in which power affects the construction of crime, such as the creation and breaking of law, as well as the interplay of moral entrepreneurship, moral innovation, and transgression.[11]

Criminology
and penology

Influences

Since the approach itself consists of a mélange of various perspectives linked together by dynamics of meaning, deliberations in this domain often invoke an assortment of theoretical elements. Cultural criminological analysis unambiguously roots itself in interactionist and constructionist tradition. More specifically, such approach concedes Howard Becker’s (1963) labelling theory, while augmenting it with a phenomenological dimension that considers the “webs of meaning and perception in which all parties are entangled.”[3]:398

Along with interactionist and constructionist theories, as well as ideas posed by Katz and Becker, cultural criminological work tends to explicitly cite, or be reminiscent of, the following theories and/or theorists among others:

Methods

Originally, cultural criminologists utilized one of two main research methods: either ethnographic and fieldwork techniques,[14] or the main qualitative research techniques associated with the scholarly readings.[3] Cultural criminologists today also employ research methods such as participatory action research or "narrative criminology". They remain constant, however, in their rejection of abstract empiricism.[2][15]

Criticism

Some critics have argued that cultural criminology has foregone hard-nosed economic analysis in the interest of a subjective or narrow cultural focus. Cultural criminologists counter that they are striving to create a sociologically inspired criminology attuned to the distinctive dynamics of the contemporary economy. They contend that the expansion of the global market has brought new forms of crime, crime control, and political resistance.

Notes
  1. Ilan, Jonathan. 2019. “Cultural Criminology: The Time Is Now.” Critical Criminology 27(1):5–20.
  2. Ferrell, Jeff, Keith Hayward, and Jock Young. 2008. Cultural Criminology: An Investigation. Los Angeles: SAGE. ISBN 9781412931267.
  3. Ferrell, Jeff. 1999. “Cultural Criminology.” Annual Review of Sociology 25(1):395–418.
  4. Ferrell, Jeff. 1992. "Making sense of crime: A review essay on Jack Katz's 'Seductions of Crime'". Social Justice 19(23): 110–23. Retrieved from JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29766697
  5. Katz, Jack. 1988. Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 9780465076154.
  6. Ferrell, Jeff, and Clinton Sanders, eds. 1995. Cultural Criminology. Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 9781555532352.
  7. Lyng, Stephen. 1990. "Edgework: A social psychological analysis of voluntary risk taking." American Journal of Sociology 95(4):851–86. DOI: 10.1086/229379. Retrieved from JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2780644.
  8. Rajah, Valli. 2007. "Resistance as edgework in violent intimate relationships of drug-involved women." British Journal of Criminology 47(2):196–213. DOI: 10.1093/bjc/azl064
  9. Young, Jock. 2003. "Merton with energy, Katz with structure: The sociology of vindictiveness and the criminology of transgression." Theoretical Criminology 7(3): 388–414. DOI: 10.1177/13624806030073007.
  10. Young, Alison (2009). The scene of violence: Crime, cinema, affect. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781134008728.
  11. Hayward, Keith, and Jock Young. 2012. "Cultural Criminology." In The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (5th ed.), edited by M. Maguire, R. Morgan, and R. Reiner. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199590278.
  12. Nelson, Kristopher A. 2007. "'Webs of Significance,' Clifford Geertz." In Propria Persona: https://inpropriapersona.com/articles/webs-of-significance-clifford-geertz/. Retrieved 26 March 2020.
  13. Presdee, Mike. 2000. Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime (reprint ed.). New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415239097.
  14. Ferrell, Jeff, and Mark Hamm, eds. 1998. Ethnography at the Edge: Crime, Deviance, and Field Research. Boston, US: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 9781555533410.
  15. Young, Jock. 2010. Criminological Imagination. Oxford, UK: University Of Kent. ISBN 978-0745641072.

Further reading
  • Ferrell, Jeff. 1997. "Criminological verstehen: Inside the immediacy of crime." Justice Quarterly 14(1):3–23. DOI: 10.1080/07418829700093201.
  • Ferrell, Jeff, and Keith Hayward (eds.). Cultural Criminology: Theories of Crime, Theoretical Criminology 6. Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 9780754629436.
  • Ferrell, Jeff, Keith Hayward, Wayne Morrison, and Mike Presdee (eds.). 2004. Cultural Criminology Unleashed. London: GlassHouse. ISBN 9781904385370.
  • Geertz, Clifford. 1977. The Interpretation Of Cultures. Basic Books Classics. ISBN 978-0465097197.
  • Hayward, Keith. 2004. City Limits: Crime, Consumer Culture and the Urban Experience. London: Glasshouse Press. ISBN 9781904385035.
  • Hayward, Keith J. 2012. “Five Spaces of Cultural Criminology.” British Journal of Criminology 52(1):441–62.
  • Hayward, Keith, and Mike Presdee (eds.). 2010. Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415459037.
  • Hayward, Keith, and Jock Young (eds.). "Special issue: Edition on cultural criminology." Theoretical Criminology 8(3).
  • Jewkes, Yvonne. 2010. Crime and the Media and Crime: New Approaches to Criminology (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE. ISBN 9781848607033.
  • Katz, Jack. 2016. “A theory of intimate massacres: Steps toward a causal explanation.” Theoretical Criminology 20(3):277–96.
  • O’Neill, Maggie, and Lizzie Seal. 2012. Transgressive Imaginations: Crime, Deviance and Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Young, Jock. 2007. The Vertigo of Late Modernity (1st ed.). London: SAGE. ISBN 9781412935746.
  • Mindhunter (TV series). A Netflix series that centers on concepts similar to that of cultural criminology.
gollark: Also an asymmetric mode where arbitrary devices can listen and send responses to stuff but only authorised ones can send.
gollark: SPUDNET uses purely string channels and has per-channel keybased authentication.
gollark: As a mostly internal service for PotatOS and such it is also not open sourced.
gollark: I'm osmarks, the web UI is mine, and the new URL is skynet.osmarks.net. I don't think it allows tables as channels now. SPUDNET is more complex and somewhat poorly documented.
gollark: There are other projects in this space like soqet with authentication, but the design called for making it as trustless and simple as possible so skynet requires you to do encryption and stuff yourself (SPUDNET, another project of mine, does *not* do this and does have a fairly complex authorization system, but is used in different areas).
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