Are Gender And Cultural Criminology Compatible?

• In Event: Theoretical Criminology Panel: Psychosocial and Cultural Criminology

Abstract

This paper starts with an empirical observation: namely, most (though not all) writings in recent ‘founding’ books and collected volumes about cultural criminology have been disproportionately written by and/or descriptive of cultural practices and activities engaged in by men. After documenting this observation in major published texts that have stimulated rising interest in cultural criminology – an orientation that recently combines criminology with phenomenology and long building sociological interests in culture – I move to a trio of analytic queries. First, is there something about the way cultural criminology has been defined in writings of Lyng, Ferrell, Hayward, Young and others that unwittingly explains or has tended to create gender-skewing as this ‘orientation’ has unfolded? Secondly, and as is an alternative possibility, is such gender-skewing possibly an effect of networks which, if self-consciously altered, would result in similar (or even different) outpourings of cultural criminological work equally by and about the practices of women? Third, but not least, this paper takes up the theoretical status of cultural criminology itself: is it a theory, a perspective, indeed an orientation? Does it offer much more than already is found in cultural sociology, and does it hold promise (or not) for further innovative theoretical development?

Author

• Lynn Chancer, Hunter College, CUNY