What is Cultural about Cultural Criminology?

In this paper, I undertake a critical evaluation of the central claims of cultural criminology. In particular, I argue that the project is characterized by important confusions over what is meant by culture' in the analysis of deviant and criminal activity. These confusions are found both in cu...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: O'Brien, Martin (Author)
Format: Electronic/Print Article
Language:Undetermined language
Published: 2005
In: The British journal of criminology
Year: 2005, Volume: 45, Issue: 5, Pages: 599-612
Online Access: Volltext (doi)
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Availability in Tübingen:Present in Tübingen.
IFK: In: Z 7
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Summary:In this paper, I undertake a critical evaluation of the central claims of cultural criminology. In particular, I argue that the project is characterized by important confusions over what is meant by culture' in the analysis of deviant and criminal activity. These confusions are found both in cultural criminology's key empirical works and in the emerging theoretical frameworks that seek to interpret crime through the lens of culture. I suggest that the absence of detailed engagement with classic debates in social anthropology serves to undermine cultural criminology's assertion that the lens of culture provides a critical tool for understanding criminal acts and note that the project is characterized by a contradiction between its ethnographic imagination and its anthropological imagination. The absence of a detailed theoretical account of culture renders cultural criminology vulnerable to Gouldner's (1975) charge that its practitioners represent contemporary zoo-keepers' of deviance
ISSN:0007-0955
DOI:10.1093/bjc/azi045