Cultural Criminology (Essay Sample)

Cultural Criminology
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Cultural Criminology
The book, Cultural Criminology: An Invitation dwells on the subject of crime in the context of culture. In chapter Six, the authors talk about Dangerous Knowledge. They therefore ask question of interest to what crime reporting does to the minds of the receivers of this information. In their analysis, they ask whether television programs or newspaper headlines on crime create public views that cover misguided criminal justice policies, or whether organized crimes that sometimes follows football matches "relate to hegemonic masculinity, displaced class loyalty, and the symbolic violence of the sport itself" (Ferrell, Hayward & Young, 2008). In the argument put across by the authors, cultural criminology and its research take place within imprecise dynamics of style, method, and emotion. This in effect produces a wave of uncertainty amongst people and their problems. Crime is often ambiguous, with criminal intentions and other underlying factors that cause it being difficult to assess. Criminologists are also faced with the problems of dangerous details of criminal acts and the ever-changing "referentiality of symbolic communication." The greater problem that criminologists face in studying crimes is whether to approach it scientifically or theoretically. In giving a methodological approach, few theories are used with a colossal amount of methodology to produce equally few conclusions.
In the seventh chapter of Cultural Criminology: An Innovation, the point that comes out clear on the issue of performance and persuasion in cultural criminology is that everyone engaged in crime at the same time often engage in symbolic performance. A crime may therefore be an assertion of the perpetrator’s dominance on their victims, and a subtle a subtle sign of their insider status to their colleagues. If we are to understand criminology in the context of all human communication being symbolic performance such as in the case of crime after a football match, we must therefore select the "performance that is most appropriate to the situation and most persuasive of the audience" (Ferrell, Hayward & Young, 2008). To conclude the chapter, the authors make a list of facts in the field of criminology in the twenty-first century. Among these are that the mainstream criminology is an abject failure, criminology is unprepared for its role because of the positivity and rational choice theory currently applied to it, and that the progressive way in criminology is to investigate both crime and crime control as vital cultural processes where meaning is formed and shown, ...