There is increasing pressure on the humanities to justify their value and on criminology to undertake interdisciplinary research. In this book, Rafe McGregor establishes a new interdisciplinary methodology, ‘criminological criticism’, harnessing the synergy between literary studies and critical criminology to produce genuine interventions in social reality. -/- McGregor practices criminological criticism on George Miller’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’, Prime Video’s ‘Carnival Row’ and J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’, demonstrating how these popular allegories provide insights into the harms (...) of sexism, racism and class prejudice. -/- This book proposes a model for collaboration between literary studies and critical criminology that is beneficial to the humanities, the social sciences and society. (shrink)

This short essay examines the relationship between academic research and policy with particular emphasis on the question of whether a critical criminology can engage in academic critique at the same time as engaging in policy oriented research. Recognising that critical criminology falls between theory and politics criminologists are urged to adopt pragmatic, strategic positions as they negotiate their role in contentious debates and practical minefields. It is concluded that a critical criminology must try not (...) only to think the unthinkable about crime, but also to speak the unspeakable about the conditions in which and by which it is known. (shrink)

Rafe McGregor’s Critical Criminology and Literary Criticism is a book as unusual as it is challenging for philosophers of literature and aestheticians. Unsurprisingly, the perspective adopted by a non-professional philosopher, in this case a criminologist, manages to raise fundamental philosophical questions. First and foremost, the ambition of McGregor’s inquiry is that of making some difference to society, a call that philosophers still tend to ignore. Readjusting Karl Marx’s famous epitaph...

Building on the insights of the late Roy Bhaskar and the late Roger Matthews, as well as some recent developments in ultra-realist criminology, this article introduces and delineates some core inte...

Criminology has been reluctant to embrace fictional narratives as a tool for understanding, explaining and reducing crime and social harm. -/- In this philosophical enquiry, McGregor uses examples from films, television, novels and graphic novels to demonstrate the extensive criminological potential of fiction around the world. Building on previous studies of non-fiction narratives, the book is the first to explore the ways criminological fiction provides knowledge of the causes of crime and social harm. -/- For academics, practitioners and students, (...) this is an engaging and thought-provoking critical analysis that establishes a bold new theory of criminological fiction. (shrink)

Literary Theory and Criminology demonstrates the significance of contemporary literary theory to the discipline of criminology, particularly to those criminologists who are primarily concerned with questions of power, inequality, and harm. Drawing on innovations in philosophical, narrative, cultural, and pulp criminology, it sets out a deconstructive framework as part of a critical criminological critique-praxis. -/- This book comprises eight essays – on globalisation, criminological fiction, poststructuralism, patriarchal political economy, racial capitalism, anthropocidal ecocide, critical theory, and (...) critical praxis – that argue for the value of contemporary literary theory to a critical criminology concerned with the construction of a just and sustainable reality in the face of climate change and other mass harms. This is the first criminology book to engage with literary theory from the perspective of criminology and provides a guide for criminologists who want to deploy literary theory as part of their research programmes. It supersedes existing engagements with poststructuralism in the philosophical criminological tradition because it entails neither a constructionist ontology nor a relativist epistemology. It shows criminologists how literary theory offers the tools to first deconstruct and then reconstruct meaning and value. -/- Literary Theory and Criminology is essential reading for all critical criminological theorists. (shrink)

Standing at the intersection of criminology and philosophy, this book demonstrates the ways in which mythic movies and television series can provide an understanding of actual crimes and social harms. Taking three social problems as its subjects – capitalist political economy, structural injustice, and racism – the book explores the ways in which David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011–2019), and Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) offer solutions by reconceiving justice in terms of personal and collective transformation, (...) utopian thinking, and the relationship between racism and elitism, respectively. In doing so, the authors set out a theory of understanding the world based on cinematic and televisual works of art and conclude with a template that establishes a methodology for future use. An Epistemology of Criminological Cinema is authoritative and accessible, ideal reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students, criminologists, philosophers, and film, television, and literary critics with an interest in social justice and social harm. (shrink)

This paper provides a brief but critical review of current thinking and debate about research ethics in criminology; it falls into two parts. The first part of the paper describes the sorts of ethical issues that tend to be flagged up in ‘textbook’ accounts of ethics in criminological research; some recent efforts to devise codes of ethics for researchers in criminology; and developments in what might be termed the ‘ethical policing’ of social research. The second part briefly (...) sketches some deeper issues to do with the ethics of research with ‘deviant subjects’. It suggests, in particular, that the ethical issues faced by criminological researchers cannot be ‘read off’ from a medical model of research. This, however, is not due simply to the greater use of qualitative methods of research in criminology. Rather, it is due to the distinctive political and ethical terrain occupied by criminology, which is significantly different to that occupied by medical research. (shrink)

This article is a theoretical treatment of feminist epistemology of crime, which advocates the centrality of gender as a theoretical starting point for the investigating of digital crimes. It does so by exploring the synergy between the feminist perspectives and the Tripartite Cybercrime Framework (TCF) (which argues that three possible factors motivate cybercrimes – socioeconomic, psychosocial, and geopolitical) to critique mainstream criminology and the meaning of the term “cybercrime”. Additionally, the article examines gender gaps in online harassment, cyber‐bullying, cyber‐fraud, (...) revenge porn, and cyber‐stalking to demonstrate that who is victimised, why, and to what effect are the critical starting points for the analysis of the connections between gender and crimes. In turn, it uses the lens of intersectionality to acknowledge that, while conceptions of gender and crime interact, they intersect with other categories (e.g., sexuality) to provide additional layers of explanation. To nuance the utilitarian value of the synergy between the TCF and the feminist perspectives, the focus shifts to a recent case study (which compared socioeconomic and psychosocial cybercrimes). The article concludes that, while online and offline lives are inextricably intertwined, the victimisations in psychosocial cybercrimes may be more gendered than in socioeconomic cybercrimes. These contributions align the TCF to the feminist epistemology of crime in their attempt to move gender analysis of digital crimes “from margin to centre”. (shrink)

This book critically explores the development of radical criminology through a range of written Ancient Greek works including epic and lyrical poetry, drama and philosophy, across different chapters. It traces the development of political power and the concepts of law, legitimacy, crime, justice and deviance in the Ancient Greek world and the political struggles that propelled that development, using the conflict perspective as a conceptual tool of the sociological analysis of reality. Theoretical discussions of crime and justice typically stem (...) from the better known works of Plato or Aristotle although this book explores the works preceding these. This book will appeal to those interested in the history of criminology and the historical production of criminological knowledge. (shrink)

In 1964, the British psychologist Hans Jürgen Eysenck published Crime and Personality, the book that set forth his theory of the criminal as a psychopathic poor conditioner. Crime and Personality went through three editions, and even those who vehemently rejected the theory acknowledged it as the most highly articulated and influential biological explanation of crime of its time. Yet today Eysenck’s name is fading from criminological memory - and none too soon, in the opinion of critics who continue to anathematize (...) him as a self-serving showman, charlatan, and dangerous right-wing conservative. This article addresses four questions. Who was Eysenck? What did he say about the causes of crime? Why was he (and why does he continue to be) such a controversial figure? And did he contribute any ideas of lasting significance to criminology? The answers open a window onto the late 20th-century revival of biocriminology, a return to biological explanations that continues into the present and seems to be accelerating. They also reveal characteristics of criminology itself as a knowledge enterprise that has changed over time. (shrink)

Coercive medico-legal interventions are often employed to prevent people deemed to be unable to make competent decisions about their health, such as minors, people with mental illness, disability or problematic alcohol or other drug use, from harming themselves or others. These interventions can entail major curtailments of individuals' liberty and bodily integrity, and may cause significant harm and distress. The use of coercive medico-legal interventions can also serve competing social interests that raise profound ethical, legal and clinical questions. Examining the (...) ethical, social and legal issues involved in coerced care, this book brings together the views and insights of leading researchers from a range of disciplines, including criminology, law, ethics, psychology and public health, as well as legal and medical practitioners, social-service 'consumers' and government officials. Topics addressed in this volume include: compulsory treatment and involuntary detention orders in civil mental health and disability law; mandatory alcohol and drug treatment programs and drug courts; community treatment orders; the use of welfare cards with Indigenous populations; mandated treatment of seriously ill minors; as well as adult guardianship and substituted decision-making regimes. These contributions attempt to shed light on why we use coercive interventions, whether we should, whether they are effective in achieving the benefits that are offered to justify their use, and the impact that they have on some of society's most vulnerable citizens in the names of 'justice' and 'treatment'. This book is essential reading for clinicians, researchers and legal practitioners involved in the study and application of coerced care, as well as students and scholars in the fields of law, medicine, ethics and criminology. The collection asks important questions about the increasing use of coercive care that demand to be answered, and offers critical insights, guidance and recommendations for those working in the field. (shrink)

Radical or Marxist criminology is an influential critique which emerged in the late 1960s and emphasizes how power inequality and structures, especially those related to class, affect the nature of crime, law and justice. The essays selected for this volume draw attention to the influence of structural forces, neglected crime and the ways in which law and criminal justice processes reinforce power structures and contribute to class control.

Abstract:Frantz Fanon is best known as the author of two monographs: Black Skin, White Masks (1952), a literary and psychological account of Black experience and anti-Black racism, and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), a political manifesto arguing for the need to respond to colonial oppression with revolutionary violence. His critics contend that the disciplinary division evinces a failure to successfully integrate the psychological with the political, which detracts from his intellectual legacy. In this article, I employ criminologist Jon Frauley’s (...) theory of the analytic value of fictional film to demonstrate that Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) not only provides an empirical referent for Fanon’s psychological and political theories but also reveals an underlying coherence that is not always obvious. I begin with a summary of Frauley’s theory and then alternate between Fanon’s theories and the way in which the film provides those theories with empirical referents. My conclusion, which highlights an essential continuity between individual transcendence and collective action in Fanon, draws on both Blade Runner 2049 and the military tactic of pseudo operations, which was employed to devastating effect against anti-colonial struggles in Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Emerging New Voices in Critical Animal Studies: Vegan Studies for Total Liberation, co-edited by Nathan Poirier, Anthony J. Nocella II, and Annie Bernatchez of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies, is a brilliant radical engaging intersectional book promoting total liberation from new fresh critical animal studies voices throughout the world. This captivating critical animal studies collection, influenced by historical and ongoing radical movements such as green anarchism, Black liberation, prison abolition, feminism, Queer liberation, disability rights, and (...) decolonization, is one of the most powerful texts in the last decade within the animal liberation movement. We must begin to listen to new and young scholars for social justice to evolve in order to end speciesism and all forms of oppression. Read, share, reflect and act on this interdisciplinary collection of scholar-activists from sociology, anthropology, criminology, economics, philosophy, cultural studies, eco-theology, environmental studies, and education that will transform the global movement for radical social justice and propel total liberation forward. (shrink)

In a situation of advance and consolidation of the ultra-right in Latin America, in which security claims and government interventions in the name of the “combat against insecurity” have been one of its most dynamic vectors, this work is aimed at exploring the contours of another approach to the question of crimes and punishments. During the seventies, in the heat of dictatorships and exiles, a critical, combative, partisan criminological model was forged in Argentina. This other model is tributary of (...) a strategic assembly between the “Foucault effect” in Argentina and Latin American critical criminology. Specifically, the traces of this process are covered through three strong ideas: 1) the “Foucault effect” in Argentina and critical criminology are the ties of a certain critical attitude; 2) that history is realized in a topological structure: it unfolds in the ups and downs experienced by intellectuals here in the dictatorship and there in forced exile; 3) these imports, readings and uses of Foucault overflow and dislocate Foucauldian analysis itself. (shrink)

"The fields of settler colonial, decolonial, and postcolonial studies, as well as Critical Animal Studies are growing rapidly, but how do the implications of these endeavours intersect? Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies explores some of the ways that the oppression of Indigenous persons and more-than-human animals are interconnected. Composed of twelve chapters by an international team of specialists plus a Foreword by Dinesh Wadiwel, the book is divided into four themes: Tensions and Alliances between (...) Animal and Decolonial Activisms Revisiting the Stereotypes of Indigenous Peoples' Relationships with Animals Cultural Perspectives Colonialism, Animals, and the Law This book will be of interest to undergraduate, postgraduate students, activists, as well as postdoctoral scholars, working in the areas of Critical Animal Studies, Native Studies, postcolonial and Critical Race Studies, with particular chapters being of interest to scholars and students in other fields, such as Cultural Studies, Animal Law, Critical Prison Studies, and radical criminology"--. (shrink)

The expression 'the criminal question' does not at present have much currency in English-language criminology. The term was carried across from Italian debates about the orientation of criminology, and in particular debates about what came to be called critical criminology. One definition offered early in the debate described it as 'an area constituted by actions, institutions, policies and discourses whose boundaries shift'. According to this writer, crime, and the cultural and symbolic significance carried by law and (...) criminal justice, is an integral aspect of the criminal question. 'The criminal question' draws attention to the specific location and constitution of a given field of forces, and the themes, issues, dilemmas and debates that compose it. At the same time it enables connections to be made between these embedded realities and the wider, conceivably global, contours of influence and flows of power with which it connects. This in turn raises many questions. How far do the responses to crime and punishment internationally flow from and owe their contemporary shape to the cultural and economic transformations now widely known as 'globalisation'? How can something that is in significant ways embedded, situated, and locally produced also travel? What is not in doubt is that it does travel - and travel with serious consequences. The international circulation of discourses and practices has become a pressing issue for scholars who try to understand their operation in their own particular cultural contexts. This collection of essays seeks a constructive comparative view of these tendencies to convergence and divergence. (shrink)

High levels of police corruption have been a persistent historical tendency in police services throughout the world. While the general area of concern in this book is with police corruption and anti-corruption, the focus is on certain key philosophical and ethical issues that arise for police organisations confronting corruption. On the normative account proffered in this book the principal institutional purpose of policing is the protection of legally enshrined moral rights and the principal institutional anti-corruption arrangement is what is referred (...) to as an integrity system. The latter includes oversight bodies with investigative powers and internal affairs departments as well as specific devices such as early warning indicators, professional reporting mechanisms and integrity tests. Key concepts analysed in the book include corruption, noble cause corruption and collective moral responsibility. The key ethical issues analysed include investigative independence, professional reporting, covert operations and integrity tests. (shrink)

This article contributes to recent existentialist interventions in critical criminology (see Lippens and Crewe 2009) and offers the existential concept of ‘event’ as a guiding image for critical victimology. Whereas existential criminologists have examined crime and wrongdoing, very little attention has been given to victimization. I utilize the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Claude Romano to offer a critique of existing approaches to victimization within mainstream criminology and develop an evential analytic to understand the event (...) of victimization. This paper brings together existential philosophy and victimology to offer an alternative approach to victimization. I engage with the ‘problem of number’ in conventional victimology and offer a critique of quantitative approaches to victimization based on the unsubstitutability and singularity of existence. Through a discussion of selfhood and embodiment from an evential standpoint, this paper moves beyond existing victimological approaches to identity. I also consider the relationship between victimization and trauma. In the final section of the paper I carve out an alternative research agenda through a discussion of bearing witness and events of victimization. (shrink)

Abstract:The purpose of this introduction is to set out the scope and content of this special issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education, which takes Aesthetic Education through Narrative Art as its subject. I begin by delineating the “aesthetic” itself and then identifying the denotation of “aesthetic education” with which the issue’s authors are concerned. This is followed by a characterization of “narrative art” that belies my preference for representation rather than art and draws attention to the multiple modes of (...) representation that constitute complex narratives. I next turn to the title of the special issue, an abridged version of Aesthetic Education through Narrative Art and its Relevance for the Humanities, which is an installation research project funded by the Croatian Science Foundation to investigate the relationship between aesthetic and artistic values on the one hand and ethical, political, and social values on the other. The project is multidisciplinary among philosophy, criminology, film studies, and cognitive science, and three of the authors are members of the project team. I conclude by introducing each of the six articles, which employ two approaches, one from philosophical aesthetics and the other from critical criminology. (shrink)

The crucial problem the proposed paper tries to shed light upon is especially the link between the concept of recognition, dignity of human persons. These problems are analyzed from the perspective of a critical criminology. The thesis of the paper is that Axel Honneth’s work on recognition offers a fruitful framework to those who want to criticize functional approaches to criminal law, for those who want to develop a critical criminology and a negative foundation of the (...) dignity of the human person. The paper tries also to show that without recognition there is no possibility of having a healthy democratic process and therefore the main function of criminal law must be the protection of recognition-relationships. KEY WORDS – Recognition. Dignity of human persons. Criminology. (shrink)

Rafe McGregor's Narrative Justice provides a powerful argument for the merit of an education by and through aesthetics as a way of challenging criminal inhumanity. As a work at the intersection of critical criminology and philosophy, it is a challenging and thoughtful articulation of the criminological imagination.1 Ultimately, McGregor's argument highlights the possibility of a political education through aesthetic engagement. The exemplary narratives that McGregor uses are varied and richly evocative. My commentary on the book is in keeping (...) with this spirit and suggests an exemplary narrative of my own as a way of both complementing McGregor's book and outlining its merits, as well as proposing a future line of... (shrink)

Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice explores the intersections of the carceral in projects of oppression, while at the same time providing intellectual, pragmatic, and undetermined paths toward abolition. Prison abolition is at once about the institution of the prison, and a broad, intersectional political project calling for the end of the social structured by settler colonialism, anti-black racism, and related oppressions. Beyond this, prison abolition is a constructive project that imagines and strives for a transformed world in which justice (...) is not equated with punishment, and accountability is not equated with caging. Composed of sixteen chapters by an international team of scholars and activists, with a Foreword by Perry Zurn and an Afterword by Justin Piché, the book is divided into four themes: - Prisons and Racism - Prisons and Settler Colonialism - Anti-Carceral Feminisms - Multispecies Carceralities. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, activists, and scholars working in the areas of Critical Prison Studies, Critical Criminology, Native Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Black Studies, Critical Race Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Critical Animal Studies, with particular chapters being of interest to scholars and students in other fields, such as, Feminist Legal Studies, Animal Law, Critical Disability Studies, Queer Theory, and Transnational Feminisms. (shrink)

During the 1990s, the Berlin women’s prison was reformed to do justice to female inmates. This redesigning of space and programs was intended to meet women-specific conditions and needs. The present paper engages with this prison reform as transformation in the name of gender justice. Based on interviews with prison reformers, criminologists, and policymakers, as well as on the analysis of historical documents, we illuminate how a specific figure of the “criminalized woman” helps to translate the abstract notion of social (...) justice into situated practice. From the 1970s onward, a new knowledge of women’s crime would emerge: it constituted female offenders as victims of patriarchal oppression and victimization, allowing the prison system to be criticized as androcentric and discriminatory against women. We argue that subsequent reform pursued gender justice in the form of difference-based, gender-responsive programs and spaces targeting individual inmates’ character and mindset. Thereby, the reformers’ initial critique of social justice would be unintentionally depoliticized and so gender, economic, and political inequalities remained unaddressed. Our purpose is hence twofold: first, to review the recent history of women’s incarceration in Germany, and second, to add a social justice focus to the international criminological debate on gender, prison, and reform. (shrink)

This book grapples with multispecies violent exploitations embedded in corridors of power within the Animal-Industrial Complex (A-IC). The A-IC is a useful framework for understanding how exploitative human-animal relations are central to capitalist relations and profit accumulation. 'A-IC-related-violence' - killing animals for economic gain - has a ripple effect which results in profound consequences for humans as well. This collection of international scholarship explores topics as varied as how A-IC-related-violence is reproduced and sustained through rapidly changing discursive strategies, ideological architecture, (...) and particular cultural forms that elide and legitimize animal cruelty. Several chapters expose collusion between governments, corporations and academia as central to maintaining dominance of A-IC-related-violence. Other scholars explore the trouble with making the conditions of "meat" production visible - of de-fetishizing meat commodities. The scholarship critically explores dynamic components of an apparatus that enables A-IC-related-violence and harm but is situated within the capitalist order and charts A-IC-related-violence as the key profit generating practice in select domains of the A-IC. The book unmasks inherent cruelties in a proliferation of social forms that ultimately reflect a socio-economic system that centralizes capitalist life characterized by endless growth, competitiveness, and profligate consumption. This is essential reading for those engaged in critical criminology, green criminology, violence studies, peace and conflict studies, critical animal studies or animal rights-oriented scholars. (shrink)

How are we to understand criminal law reform? The idea seems simple—the criminal law on the books is wrong: it should be changed. But 'wrong’ how? By what norms 'wrong’? As soon as one tries to answer those questions, the issue becomes more complex. One kind of answer is that the criminal law is substantively wrong: that is, we assume valid norms of background political morality, and we argue that doctrinally the criminal law on the books does not embody those (...) norms. Another kind of answer is that the criminal law as it stands presupposes certain empirical facts, and yet those facts do not hold. Traditionally, criminal law reform has been informed by both these answers. Analytical theorists examine doctrine for its conceptual structure, and social scientists examine the actual workings of the criminal justice system. This tidy picture is, however, challenged by social constructivist accounts of the criminal law. They challenge the stability and conceptual purity of doctrine, and they challenge the objectivity of social science. On the basis of these challenges, they undermine the ambitions of traditional criminal law reform, and argue that the only reforms to the criminal law that matter are politicized ones—that criminal law reform is pointless unless it serves the interests of the marginalized and the dispossessed. It seems undeniable that in some sense our perceptions of crime in our society are indeed moulded by social forces, and that crime does not exist independently of the social structures and processes that help to define and control it. But why should those insights have the implications for our understanding of criminal law reform that they are alleged to have? How could it follow from those insights that criminal law reform either becomes radicalized or valueless? The aim of this paper is to show that what can legitimately be taken from the emphasis on the social constructedness of crime does not require wholesale abandonment of the traditional picture of criminal law reform, even though it may require some modifications of that picture. (shrink)

Crime, Justice and Human Rights is an introduction to the philosophy, law and politics of human rights, uniquely tailored to criminologists and criminal justice practitioners. Integrating human rights and criminological frameworks across a range of subject areas - from criminalization and state crime, to crime prevention and critical analyses of the operation of the police, courts and penal system - the authors highlight both the potential and the limitations of human rights in informing new directions in criminology. Featuring (...) case material from Europe, North America, Australia and beyond, this critical, multidisciplinary text supports the teaching of human rights across a wide range of criminological topics, and assists students, researchers and independent readers to incorporate human rights paradigms into their criminological analysis. (shrink)

The book defines and critically discusses the following five principles: the harm principle, legal paternalism, the offense principle, legal moralism and the dignity principle of criminalization. The book argues that all five principles raise important problems that point to rejections (or at least a rethink) of standard principles of criminalization. The book shows that one of the reasons why we should reject or revise standard principles of criminalization is that even the most plausible versions of the harm principle and legal (...) paternalism that have been offered so far are rendered redundant by general moral theories. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the other three principles (or versions thereof), the offense principle, legal moralism and the dignity principle of criminalization, can either be covered by the harm principle, thus making these principles also redundant, or be seen to have what look like other unacceptable implications (e.g. that versions of legal moralism are based on speculative and incorrect empirical assumptions or violate what is called the criminological levelling-down challenge). As such, there is reason to move beyond traditional principles of criminalization, and instead to investigate alternative principles the state should be guided by when attempting to justify which kinds of conduct should be criminalized. Moreover, this book presents and defends such a principle – the utilitarian principle of criminalization. (shrink)

"E. B. Pashukanis was the most significant contemporary to develop a fresh, new Marxist perspective in post-revolutionary Russia. In 1924 he wrote what is probably his most influential work, The General Theory of Law and Marxism. In the second edition, 1926, he stated that this work was not to be seen as a final product but more for ""self-clarification"" in hopes of adding ""stimulus and material for further discussion."" A third edition was printed in 1927. Pashukanis's ""commodity-exchange"" theory of law (...) spearheaded a perspective that traced the form of law, not to class interests, but to capital logic itself. Until his death, he continued to argue for the ideal of the withering away of the state, law, and the juridic subject. He eventually arrived at a position contrary to Stalin's who, at that time, was attempting to consolidate and strengthen the state apparatus under the name of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Inevitably, Pashukanis was branded an enemy of the revolution in January 1937. His works were subsequently removed from soviet libraries. In 1954, Pashukanis was ""rehabilitated"" by the Soviets and restored to an acceptable position in the historical development of marxist law. In Europe and North America, a number of legal theorists only rediscovered Pashukanis's work in the late 1970s. They subjected it to careful critical analysis, and realized that he offered an alternative to the traditional Marxist interpretations, which saw law simply and purely as tied to class interests of domination. By the mid-1980s the instrumental Marxist perspective in vogue in Marxist sociology, criminology, politics, and economics gave way, to a significant extent due to Pashukanis's insights, to a more structural Marxist accounting of the relationship of law to economics and other social spheres." --Descripción del editor. (shrink)

The book is a critical analysis of the work of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx. It focuses on their separate analyses of the role of law in society, pointing out their faults and errors, and the resultant impact on modern social science. The author takes issue with Weber's work on rationality, with Durkheim's work on repressive and restitutive law, and with Marx's work on social justice and law as part of the super-structure. In each section of the (...) book he shows the implications that flow from a re-assessment and re-interpretation of their work for an understanding of society. The book is multi-disciplinary, making ample reference to law, sociology, anthropology, history, religion, ecology, criminology, philosophy and economics. Its various chapters discuss a wide range of themes, including rationality, tradition, science, political authority, conflict resolution, community, justice and altruism. (shrink)

Previous research on unethical business behavior usually has focused on its impact from a financial or philosophical perspective. While such foci are important to our understanding of unethical behavior, we argue that another set of outcomes linked to individual well-being are critical as well. Using data from psychological, criminological, and epidemiological sources, we propose a model of unethical behavior and well-being. This model postulates that decrements in well-being result from stress or trauma stemming from being victimized by, engaging in, (...) or witnessing unethical behavior, or even from being associated with individuals involved in such behavior. (shrink)

What is law? How is legal responsibility defined? How does law reflect moral judgment? Why are law's definitions uncertain and conflicted? Basic questions for liberal law and criminal justice - what could they have to do with the forgotten historical figure of the Beautiful Soul? Starting from concrete legal issues, Alan Norrie develops a critical vision of law in its relation to morality and socio-historical context. Liberal law, he argues, is marked by splits and contradictions (antinomies), signs of something (...) missed. Traced historically, such conflicts can be read today in law's treatment of legality and justice, judgment and responsibility. A critical understanding must also be self-critical. From splits in law, Norrie moves to the split in critique: between its socio-historical and ethical forms. Drawing on critical realism and deconstruction, on the dialectics of Hegel, Adorno and Bhaskar, he argues for a form of critical thought that is at once historical and ethical. Thinking critically about critique finally leads to the Beautiful Soul, and its unexpected relation to law. These essays will be of interest to academics and advanced students of legal theory; criminal law, criminology and criminal justice; law and social theory; and critical legal studies. (shrink)

This fourth part outlines a strategy for overcoming the limitations of the knowledge system for engineering by combining intellectual maps, preventive approaches, umbrella concepts, and round tables as described in the earlier parts. A discussion of the issues faced by modern medicine illustrates the paradigmatic nature of the diagnosis and prescription made for engineering. The social sciences face mirror-image problems. One response has been the rise of new disciplines such as communications, environmental studies, urban affairs, criminology, and policy studies. (...) To avoid the limitations of discipline-based knowing and doing, a similar strategy for their transformation will have to be implemented. Considerable synergies would result if parallel efforts to transform the present knowledge system were carried out throughout the university. Some suggestions are made as to how this can be supported by organizational and institutional changes. Finally, it is suggested that such a transformation of the university could make a critical and decisive contribution to overcoming the current economic, social, and environmental crises. (shrink)

Predictive Sentencing addresses the role of risk assessment in contemporary sentencing practices. Predictive sentencing has become so deeply ingrained in Western criminal justice decision-making that despite early ethical discussions about selective incapacitation, it currently attracts little critique. Nor has it been subjected to a thorough normative and empirical scrutiny. This is problematic since much current policy and practice concerning risk predictions is inconsistent with mainstream theories of punishment. Moreover, predictive sentencing exacerbates discrimination and disparity in sentencing. Although structured risk assessments (...) may have replaced 'gut feelings', and have now been systematically implemented in Western justice systems, the fundamental issues and questions that surround the use of risk assessment instruments at sentencing remain unresolved. This volume critically evaluates these issues and will be of great interest to scholars of criminal justice and criminology. (shrink)

This paper explores the visual construction and representation of co-accused women offenders in court drawings. It utilises three case studies of female co-defendants who appeared in the England and Wales court system between 2003 and 2013. In doing so this paper falls into three parts. The first part considers the emergence of the sub-discipline, visual criminology and examines what is known about the visual representation of female offenders. The second part presents the findings of an empirical investigation, which involved (...) engaging in a critical, reflexive visual analysis of a selection of court drawings of three female co-offenders. The third part discusses the ways in which the court artists' interpretation, the conventions of court sketching, and motifs of female offenders as secondary actors, drew on existing myths and prejudices by representing the women as listening, remorseless ‘others’. (shrink)

Can you recognize an opportunity when it comes your way? Even though the concept seems fairly basic, most people harbor regrets about missed opportunities that in retrospect might have significantly improved their lives. This book will give you the critical tools to sort through the complexities that often obscure the perception of an opportunity and help you take full advantage of what author Donald Morris calls high-end opportunities - pivotal situations that can change your life for the better.Morris begins (...) by developing a model of opportunity in the abstract, analyzing its elements and the contexts and frameworks that affect our recognition of opportunities. Drawing from a wide range of applications, including investing, business, law, criminology, gambling, and even religion, he shows how opportunities can be defined in various contexts. He also examines highly undesirable situations, where opportunity is lacking, such as poverty and historical instances of slavery, to further illustrate, by way of contrast, the defining characteristics of opportunity.How does a significant opportunity differ from a simple option? How does taking advantage of opportunities differ from being an opportunist? Does our ability to predict the future affect our opportunities? What do we mean by equality of opportunity? By addressing these and other probing questions, Morris shows how to develop more critical perceptions of real opportunities.Donald Morris, CPA, Ph.D., is professor of accounting and chair of the Accounting, Finance, and CIS Department at Eastern New Mexico University. The former owner of an accounting firm and a onetime instructor of philosophy, he is the author of Dewey and the Behavioristic Context of Ethics. (shrink)

This important new book provides an original and compelling argument for a new theory of aesthetic education. Rafe McGregor proposes a model of interdisciplinary inquiry, applying a combined philosophical and critical approach to illuminate issues in a social science. The book makes an original contribution to the field of narrative criminology.

Predictive policing has become a new panacea for crime prevention. However, we still know too little about the performance of computational methods in the context of predictive policing. The paper provides a detailed analysis of existing approaches to algorithmic crime forecasting. First, it is explained how predictive policing makes use of predictive models to generate crime forecasts. Afterwards, three epistemologies of predictive policing are distinguished: mathematical social science, social physics and machine learning. Finally, it is shown that these epistemologies have (...) significant implications for the constitution of predictive knowledge in terms of its genesis, scope, intelligibility and accessibility. It is the different ways future crimes are rendered knowledgeable in order to act upon them that reaffirm or reconfigure the status of criminological knowledge within the criminal justice system, direct the attention of law enforcement agencies to particular types of crimes and criminals and blank out others, satisfy the claim for the meaningfulness of predictions or break with it and allow professionals to understand the algorithmic systems they shall rely on or turn them into a black box. By distinguishing epistemologies and analysing their implications, this analysis provides insight into the techno-scientific foundations of predictive policing and enables us to critically engage with the socio-technical practices of algorithmic crime forecasting. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Criminal Law: An Introduction explores the central concepts of criminal law, such as intention, complicity, duress, and how they work, both within criminal law practice and in our everyday lives, from legal and philosophical perspectives. At the heart of the book is the central philosophical concept of responsibility: what does it mean to be responsible for an act, to hold someone responsible for an act, or to give an excuse in order to avoid responsibility for an act? (...) Offering talking points to enrich an ongoing conversation, this unique textbook addresses all of these questions in an accessible way for law and non-law students alike. Real cases are examined in detail and a critical approach to the criminal law is adopted throughout. The focus will be mainly on the criminal law of England and Wales, with occasional cases from other jurisdictions, and occasional examples from other areas of law This text will be ideal reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of law, philosophy and criminology, as well as political science and sociology. (shrink)

Punishment is a topic of increasing importance for citizens and policy-makers. The same can be said for academic researchers and students. Mass imprisonment has reached record high levels while public confidence is often lacking. New thinking is required urgently to address these challenges. Moreover, there have been several key developments in the philosophy of punishment over the last 20 years absent in leading guides including the communicative theory of punishment, restorative justice and my novel unified theory of punishment. -/- My (...) book Punishment is a critical introduction to the philosophy of punishment attempting to offer a new and refreshing approach to benefit scholars and students alike. While the book is primarily philosophical, it brings together relevant insights from law, criminology, criminal justice, politics and sociology. The aim is to provide both a comprehensive overview with new insights on many familiar theories of punishment. (shrink)

While the low conviction rate for cases of sexual violence is often justified by the so-called ‘he-said-she-said’ nature of these cases, the increasing presence of digital evidence has begun to challenge this justification. This digital evidence can provide new opportunities for intervening in and prosecuting sexual violence. However, it may also be used against complainants or deemed still insufficient for proving guilt. Thus, while digital evidence may be challenging typical criminal justice responses to sexual violence, it may equally be utilised (...) to buttress entrenched stereotypes and criminal justice practices that lead to complainant dissatisfaction and serve to support low conviction rates. I draw on critical feminist legal theory, feminist engagements with digital technology and sexual violence, and visual criminology to theorise the burgeoning role of the digital witness in sexual violence cases. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 458 [Access article in PDF] Philip Barker. Michel Foucault: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. Pp. xiii + 160. Paper, $19.00. The significance and value of an analyst's contribution to intellectual life and understanding is to be found in the influence his or her ideas exert on forms of thought and analysis. In the case of Michel Foucault the impact (...) of his work is felt in a wide range of disciplinary fields, including philosophy and history, disciplines to which he explicitly directed his attention, as well as other areas of intellectual endeavor, notably, sociology, criminology, political science, cultural studies, feminism, architecture, and literary analysis. Indeed, there are now few disciplinary fields that have not experienced the Foucault effect.Writing an introduction to Foucault's work is not an easy task. There are so many interpretations and issues to address, and there are already a large number of texts published on his work. Undaunted by the magnitude of the task, Philip Barker has produced a fine text, one that simultaneously manages to offer a clear introduction to the key elements of Foucault's work as well as provide food for thought for those already relatively familiar with the Foucaultian legacy. In an impressively wide-ranging text, Barker opens his discussion with a consideration of the question of how we are to read Foucault. Reflecting on Foucault's discussion of the author function, discourse, the circulation and meaning of texts, as well as the difficulties of commentary, Barker introduces the reader to the features of a "Foucauldian style of textual criticism." From here the text proceeds to cover such key substantive concerns in Foucault's work as the articulation of power, truth and strategy (Chapter 2) and discipline, subjectivities and selves (Chapters 3 and 4), before turning to a discussion of Foucault's "archaeological strategy," conception of historical analysis, and critical interrogation of the sovereign subject (Chapter 5). In the two final chapters of the book Barker seeks to encourage the reader to be more than a passive consumer of Foucault and to develop a "critical interaction" with Foucault's work. Through a series of brief reflections on philosophy, the politics of theory, and the notion of "thinking against," Barker, drawing on a text by Longinus, attempts, with a good deal of success, to put into practice Foucault's idea of "thinking differently" (Chapter 6). The book ends on a more personal and somewhat self-indulgent note, but one hopefully that will still encourage introductory readers to get to grips with Foucault's work for themselves.Barker has succeeded in producing a concise and generally stimulating introduction to Foucault's work, and it should encourage readers to try to make sense of Foucault's work for themselves. An introduction can do nothing more than open up some of the possible themes and issues to be found in the work of a thinker, and there is no substitute for engaging directly with the rich range of possibilities present in Foucault's several texts. Barry Smart University of Portsmouth... (shrink)

Abstract:In the spirit of green cultural criminology, which considers the way(s) in which environmental crime, harm, and disaster are constructed, represented, and envisioned by the news media and in popular cultural forms, and narrative criminology, which explores how stories can influence (promote, curb, prevent, or resist) action, including harmful action, this provisional article seeks to intercede (although, perhaps, “intervene,” in the McGregorian sense, is more accurate) in the debate, of sorts, between the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh and the (...) British critic, editor, and theorist Mark Bould. Whereas Ghosh, in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), laments the failure of contemporary literature to engage with climate change, Bould, in The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture (2021), considers whether all stories might be stories about climate change. Taking Salman Rush-die’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) as an example, this article argues that this phantasmagorical tale about the problems of censorship could be applied to and analyzed in the context of climate change. The article considers how we might tell (more, better) stories of climate change and concludes by calling for a marshalling of diverse stories to reflect the most pressing issue of our time. (shrink)

Scientism' is indeed a word that we need. We need it because it describes a way of thinking that has profound and radical implications in almost every sphere of life. We need it because that way of thinking is becoming more and more dominant in Western culture... John Cowburn first introduces us to scientism as the belief "that only scientific knowledge is valid", "that science can explain and do everything and that nothing else can explain or do anything" and "that (...) science and reason, or scientific and rational, are co-extensive terms".. Whether considering science, philosophy, psychology, criminology or Christianity, he very helpfully focuses in on those key developments and shifts of thought that have been critical in building up the intellectual edifice of scientism. Cowburn's knowledge of the great Western thinkers of the past few centuries is most impressive and it has enabled him to even-handedly distil out the salient contributions each has made and then to bring these together into a coherent and compelling narrative. Indeed, his balanced, big-picture perspective is in itself enough to commend this book to anyone who wants to grow in their understanding of the macro-evolution of the subject. Cowburn's book gives us an excellent place to begin'. From the Introduction by Dr Tim Patrick. (shrink)

While the presence of monsters in popular culture is ever-increasing, their use as an explicit or implicit category to frame, stigmatise, and demonise the other is seemingly on the rise. At the same time, academic interest for monsters is ever-growing. Usually, monstrosity is understood as a category that emerges to signal a transgression to a given order; this approach has led to the demystification of the insidious characterisations of the (racial, sexual, physical) other as monstrous. While this effort has been (...) necessary, its collateral effects have reduced the monstrous to a mere (socio-cultural) construction of the other: a dialectical framing that de facto deprives monstrosity from any reality. 'Monstrous Ontologies: Politics, Ethics, Materiality' proffers the necessity of challenging these monstrous otherings and their perverse socio-political effects, whilst also asserting that the monstrous is not simply an epistemological construct, but that it has an ontological reality. There is a profound difference between monsters and monstrosity. While the former is an often sterile political and social simplification, the end-product of rhetorical and biopolitical apparatuses; the latter may be understood as a dimension that nurtures the un-definable, that is, that shows the limits of these apparatuses by embodying their material excess: not a 'cultural frame', but the limit to the very mechanism of 'framing'. The monstrous expresses the combining, hybridising, becoming, and creative potential of socio-natural life, albeit colouring this powerful vitalism with the dark hue of a fearful, disgusting, and ultimately indigestible reality that cannot simply be embraced with multicultural naivety. As such, it forces us towards radically changing not the categories, but the very mechanisms of categorisation through which reality is framed and acted upon. Here lies the profound ethical dimension that monstrosity forces us to acknowledge; here lies its profoundly political potential, one that cannot be unfolded by merely deconstructing monstrosity, and rather requires to engage with its uncomfortable, appalling, and revealing materiality. This book will appeal to postgraduate students, PostDocs, and academics alike in the fields of philosophy, critical theory, humanities, sociology and social theory, criminology, human geography, and critical legal theory. (shrink)

Therapeutic translations of the microbiome-gut-brain (MGB) axis are reconstructing the educational subject in a manner amenable to Foucauldian analysis. Yet, at the same time, under the sway of MGB research social scientists are taking a biosocial turn that threatens the integrity of Foucault’s historicizing philosophical project. Meeting that challenge head-on, this article argues that the MGB axis augments the neurobiological constitution of the educational subject by means of a dietetic mode of subjectivation. Absent a pedagogical element, there is a hollowness (...) to critical academics’ claims that holobiontic self-conceptions springing from the axis can elicit a resistant subjectivity. Though wild pedagogies might inform a resistant tactics of the self, contemporary self-technologies are – as Foucault has taught us – a pale shadow of the ancient Greek conception of dietetics as an holistic, embodied and ensouled practice. At the intersection between the disciplinary apparatuses of criminology and education, therefore, the MGB-driven biosocial turn unambiguously reinforces the social control function of schooling. (shrink)