Representations of and Resistance to Environmental Crime and Harm: A Green-Cultural Criminological Perspective: A Redux

• In Event: Visual Approaches in Green Criminology

Abstract

Green cultural criminology attempts to integrate cultural criminology into green criminology and vice versa. Green cultural criminology seeks to draw attention to cultural criminology’s analysis of urban space, and it endeavours to highlight ways in which green criminologists might adopt a cultural criminological lens by devoting greater attention to the mediated construction of ‘environment’, ‘environmental harm’, and ‘environmental disaster’; by dedicating more energy to the ways in which environmental harms are resisted on the streets and in the day-to-day; and by exposing patterns of constructed consumerism. This paper examines a selection of paintings, sculptures and mixed-media art that engage with a range of environmental problems. While part of the goal is to demonstrate the breadth of environmental issues and concerns depicted and represented in various artistic mediums, this paper also considers whether such art, in and of itself, may function as a form of resistance. This paper concludes by suggesting why such an exploration is fruitful for those interested in research at the interface of green and cultural criminologies.

Author

• Avi Brisman, Eastern Kentucky University