Travels of the Criminal Question Cultural Embeddedness and Diffusion

by Melossi, Dario; Sozzo, Máximo; Sparks, Richard

• ISBN13: 9781849460774
• ISBN10: 1849460779
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-02-03
• Publisher: Hart Publishing

Summary

The expression 'the criminal question' does not at present have much currency in English language criminology. The term was carried across from Italian debates about the orientation of criminology, and, in particular, debates about what came to be called critical criminology. One definition offered early in the debate described it as 'an area constituted by actions, institutions, policies, and discourses whose boundaries shift.' According to this writer, crime - and the cultural and symbolic significance carried by law and criminal justice - is an integral aspect of the criminal question. 'The criminal question' draws attention to the specific location and constitution of a given field of forces, as well as the themes, issues, dilemmas, and debates that compose it. At the same time, it enables connections to be made between these embedded realities and the wider - conceivably global - contours of influence and flows of power with which it connects. This in turn raises many questions. H

Author Biography

Dario Melossi is Professor of Criminology in the Faculty of Law at the University of Bologna. Mximo Sozzo is Professor of Sociology and Criminology in the Faculty of Social and Juridical Sciences at the National University of Litoral. Richard Sparks is Professor of Criminology in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	p. ix
Introduction. Criminal Questions: Cultural Embeddedness and Diffusion	p. 1
Cultural Embeddedness of Punishment
Concepts of Culture in the Sociology of Punishment	p. 17
Neoliberalism's Elective Affinities: Penality, Political Economy and International Relations	p. 45
Theorising the Embeddedness of Punishment	p. 65
Diffusion of Post-Fordist Penality
State Form, Labour Market and Penal System: the New Punitive Rationality in context	p. 95
Post-Fordism and Penal Change: The New Penology as a Post-Disciplinary Social Control Strategy	p. 113
Travels of Discourses of Criminology and Crime Prevention
Lombroso's 'La Donna Delinquente': its Strange Journeys in Italy, England and the USA, Including Scenes of Mutilation and Salvation	p. 147
The Governance of Crime in Italy: Global Tendencies and Local Peculiarities	p. 161
Cultural Travels and Crime Prevention in Argentina	p. 185
Index	p. 217
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