Author meets critics: 'Crime, Violence and Modernity: Connecting Classical and Contemporary Practice in Sociological Criminology' by Gordon Hughes (Routledge, 2022)

Session Submission Type: Author meets critics

Abstract

This ‘author meets critics’ panel discusses some of the key themes and provocations raised by Gordon Hughes’ monograph, 'Crime, Violence and Modernity: Connecting Classical and Contemporary Practice in Sociological Criminology' (Routledge, 2022). This book aims to make an original contribution to reconnecting contemporary criminological inquiry to the core concerns of the classical sociological imagination and to the intellectual resources of current comparative-historical sociology. Throughout the book Hughes also challenges the long-standing division of labour in criminology and sociology between ‘theory’, ‘method’ and ‘research’. Accordingly, the book’s concerns are as much about the challenges involved in the craft and working methods of being a sociological criminologist as it is about the rethinking of theory and concepts.

Among the themes to be addressed in the panel are:
• the strengths and limitations of the long-term, comparative classical perspective for contemporary research-theorising in sociological criminology;
• the role of critique and normative deliberation in social science;
• arguments for and against an intellectual rapprochement between current sociology and criminology in the academic field.

Subtopic

• Topic 7: Comparative and Historical Perspectives / Historical Comparisons of Crime

Critics

• Lesley McAra, Edinburgh University

• Robert John Mears, Bath Spa University

• Simon Hallsworth, University of Suffolk

Book Author

• Gordon Hughes, Cardiff University