RT Article
T1 Doing criminological research: Affective states versus emotional reactions
JF Theoretical criminology
VO 24
IS 2
SP 335
OP 352
A1 Mercan, Boran Ali
LA English
YR 2020
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1734904852
AB Criminology has not yet adequately distinguished ‘emotional expression’ from ‘unconscious affect’. As a result, there are deficits in its understanding of criminal motivation. This article introduces a psychosocial approach that reveals the unconscious affects that are hidden within offender discourses. To do so it draws on Freud’s psychoanalytical account of affects and thus allows for an understanding of the energies and fantasies that lurk behind them. Using examples from crime ethnographies and restorative justice conferences, the article demonstrates that this theoretical orientation and these methods allow the criminologist to engage with the inner-world of offenders more deeply. Doing so, for example, shows that emotional reactions of offenders, in fact, fantasmatically conceal the latent negativity of anxiety and the fear of violent humiliation. Through establishing ‘affect’ as a more distinct analytic within criminology, its theoretical and methodological tool-box is significantly enhanced.
K1 Affect
K1 Crime
K1 Criminological ethnography
K1 Emotion
K1 Restorative justice
DO 10.1177/1362480618779399