Cultural Criminology And The Carnival Of Crime

This book attempts to make sense of the current increase in violence, cruelty, hate and humiliation, arguing that an overly organised economic world has provoked desire for extreme forms of popular and personal pleasure.

Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime attempts to make sense of the current increase in violence, cruelty, hate and humiliation, which has come to permeate daily life. The text argues that an overly organised economic world has provoked a widespread desire for extreme, oppositional forms of popular and personal pleasure. This desire has resulted in a cathartic 'second life' of illicit pleasures often deemed criminal by those in power. Amongst the exciting issues Mike Presdee addresses are: * joyriding * street crime * antisocial behaviour in private via the internet * hate, hurt and humiliation in popular culture * the popularisation and criminalisation of sadomasochism and dance music cultures.

This text provides a perspective on the relationship between culture and crime which introduces the idea of cultural criminology, and examines how it can be applied to criminal and criminalized activity.

Cultural criminology has now emerged as a distinct theoretical perspective, and as a notable intellectual alternative to certain aspects of contemporary criminology. Cultural criminology attempts to theorize the interplay of cultural processes, media practices, and crime; the emotional and embodied dimensions of crime and victimization; the particular characteristics of crime within late modern/late capitalist culture; and the role of criminology itself in constructing the reality of crime. In this sense cultural criminology not only offers innovative theoretical models for making sense of crime, criminality, and crime control, but presents as well a critical theory of criminology as a field of study. This collection is designed to highlight each of these dimensions of cultural criminology - its theoretical foundations, its current theoretical trajectories, and its broader theoretical critiques-by presenting the best of cultural criminological work from the United States, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere.

This book discusses Stuart Hall's unique contribution to criminology. It suggests that this is captured best in Hall’s commitment to understanding a given historical moment, or conjuncture, in its full complexity, and his continuous deployment of an appropriate methodology, conjunctural analysis, to do so. This provides a running thread linking Hall’s early work on youth subcultures, the media, the state and hegemony to his later work on racial identities, racism and the politics of difference. This is contrasted with more theoretically-driven work in cultural criminology. Its failure to adopt a conjunctural approach constitutes, for the author, something of a missed moment. To demonstrate the continuing relevance of this form of analysis, the book provides a conjunctural analysis of Brexit, including its psychosocial dimension and concludes with a brief analysis of Trump’s failure to get re-elected. The book is intended for students of criminology and cultural studies.

Winner of the ASC Distinguished Book Award for International Research! 'Beautifully written and superbly conceived, with illustrations and examples that combine theory and practice across a range of disciplines, Cultural Criminology should be read by anyone – academics and smart readers alike – interested in crime, media, culture and social theory. Bravo to Ferrell, Hayward and Young on a tour de force that is at once cool and classic! Cultural Criminology will influence the field for a very long time to come.' - Professor Lynn Chancer, Hunter College, CUNY, USA `This is not just a book on the present state and possible prospects of our understanding of crime, criminals and our responses to both. However greatly criminologists might benefit from the authors' illuminating insights and the new cognitive vistas their investigations have opened, the impact of this book may well stretch far beyond the realm of criminology proper and mark a watershed in the progress of social study as such.' - Zygmunt Bauman, Emeritus Professor, University of Leeds, UK `Cultural Criminology offers a fresh new perspective on both criminality and criminal justice. It outlines the cultural hegemony of the powerful while also documenting the growing resistance to mindless criminalization and mass incarceration. Artfully written, the authors also document the work of those consciously creating a new political space to challenge the increasingly global, security society that seems inextricably tied up with late capitalism.' - Meda Chesney-Lind, University of Hawaii at Manoa `Creative, challenging and controversial: a manifesto for mean times' - Tony Jefferson, Visiting Presidential Scholar, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA Here is the definitive book on cultural criminology. Lively, innovative, engaging and accessible, Cultural Criminology draws together the work of three of the leading international figures in the field today. The book traces the history, current configuration, methodological innovations and future trajectories of cultural criminology, mapping its terrain for students and academics interested in this exciting field. The book highlights and analyses issues of representation, meaning and politics in relation to crime and criminal justice, covering areas such as: - Crime and the media - Everyday life and everyday transgression - Popular culture - Consumerism - Globalisation - Social control The use of vignettes, case studies and visual material throughout the text brings the subject to life. Cultural Criminology is indispensable to students, lecturers and researchers in criminology, sociology, cultural studies and media studies. Jeff Ferrell is Professor of Criminal Justice at Texas Christian University and Visiting Professor at the University of Kent. Keith Hayward is Director of Studies for Criminology/ Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Kent. Jock Young is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent and Distinguished Professor at John Jay College, CUNY. For more information about the authors and cultural criminology, see http://www.culturalcriminology.org

This book directly explores the question of why contemporary society is so fascinated with violence and crime. The Fascination with Violence in Contemporary Society posits that the phenomenon is, in part, because we have all become consumers of the sublime: an intense and strongly ambiguous emotion which is increasingly commodified. Through the experience of violence and the sense of disorientation that accompanies it, we obsessively seek out moments of intensified existence. Equally, crime continues to speak to the depths of the collective unconscious, questioning us about our transience and the model of society we wish to live in. Binik proposes that this is why the reaction to violence has become a tool with which to express and take ownership of a desire for social cohesion. This book uses interviews with viewers, dark tourists, collectors and others to further interrogate this social trend. Many of these are participants in the four key case studies explored within the study: emotional pathways while watching a true-crime TV series, the trend of dark tourism, murderabilia collecting and the fanaticism of (and for) Anders Breivik. This book seeks to answer one of the most pressing cultural trends of the modern age and fill in a gap in the criminological literature on the subject.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.