Criminological Futures
Dangerous Knowledge
& Innovation
Presentations:
The ‘trailer’ for your final project
How you are evaluated:
• Limit of 5-6 minutes (per
presentation)
• What was interesting about your
observations related to one or two
concepts?
• Engaging – Prepared (practice...)
• Can be a video (trailer),
performance, visual ‘essay’
w/music, etc
Techno Tips...
• Expect everything to fail
– PREZI never works as well
as people hope it will
– Consider saving files to
Dropbox as backup
– No more than 5 slides (ppt)
• Non-techno presentations
are always welcome
Avoid...
Alternative
Final Projects
The assignment guidelines
apply to all projects.
Rule of thumb:
3/5ths of the document
dedicated to
demonstrating your
understanding of
theoretical concepts...
Cultural Crim Recap...
It is a theoretical framework
• Critical perspective (Marx..)
• Symbolic Interactionism & Structure (Mills...)
Assumptions: Power is performed culturally. By
moving between the level of analysis (MicroMeso-Macro) we can access the relationship
between the individual & the social (Merton)
Crime & Culture
Interrogating ‘crime’
through the lens of
culture
• Emotion/Excitement
– Heroic fantasies
– Ultimate meaning
• Subterranean Values
• Reaction to larger
cultural institutions....
Late Modernity...
A way to speak about the present
without defining it as pre/post
modern
(issue: autonomy)
• Ontological Insecurity
– Sensation Gatherers
– Edgework
– Politics of Inclusion/Exclusion
– Commodification of resistance
Contemporary Consumer Culture
We are caught up in a cycle
of consuming identities as
a response to anxieties,
creating endless needs &
markets.
Conspicuous Consumption
(Veblin)
– Waste is built into
capitalism
– Seduction of ignorant
consumption
Phenomenology of Crime…(65-70)
Cultural phenomena is part of
the process of collective
meaning
• Situational dynamics of emotion
• Sites of contested performance
• Cultural practice as lived
– Embodied
– Emotional
Politics of transgression
Mardi Gras
Banality of Evil (Arendt)
Subterranean Values (Mardi Gras
Carnival of Crime (Presdee)
Commodification of Crime
Vocabularies of Motives
Politics of Violence
Ontological Insecurity
• Hyperpluralism
• Defamiliarity
Criminology of the State (p.75)
The Colonization of
Everyday Life
Habermas
Hedgemonic media
Reliance on Image
Image manipulation
Theoretical Response
• Ahistorical approaches
• Positivist Criminology
(anti-humanism)
• Theoretically vapid
analysis
Dangerous Knowleges?
• Crime & trees
• Youth gangs
• Gun runners
• Rap music...
Critiques...
Romanticism
“we don’t focus on crimes
that disturb the comfort
of the powerful”
Understanding humans
Without an
understanding of
people & culture, we
will never have good
policy.
Critical Research
Research & Knowledge
Chicago School
1920s & 30s
Depression & ‘Red Scares’
‘Book length’ sociology
Ethnography
*Positivistic approaches to
urban life
Research & Knowledge
North America
late 40s & 50s
Post-War Economy &
American Dream
Corporate
Management
Practices
Promises of Science
Survey Research
Research & Knowledge
1950s & 60s
Subcultural ethnographies
Unorthodox methodologies
70s & 80s
‘Neo-liberal’ shift
Governmentality
Promises of Objectivity
Curing Nations of Crime
Irony of Ethics….
Ethnographies
• Liquid (activism)
• Instant (emotion)
Writing from below
• Appreciating the
tensions : creativity
& harm
Methods of Cultural
Criminology
• Degradation Ceremonies
• Spectacle of Crime
• Politics of inclusion &
exclusion (see index
p.235)
• Culture Jamming...
Visual
Criminology
Environmental Criminology
Civic Criminology
Such criminologists need their
objects of study more than the
objects need them, and in the
face of strong expressions of
subjectivity, attributions of
subjectivity from without
become totally inappropriate.
Ruggiero critique
Wobblies, Dada and
Mobs...
“Resistance is
everywhere...”
What will you resist?