Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Postmodern Criminology and its Feminist Discontents

Postmodern Criminology and its Feminist Discontents This article examines the work of self-defined exponents of a “postmodern” criminology. This school of critical criminology takes Jack Katz's Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil (1988) as its foundational text. Because Katz's book focuses on the sensual feel rather than on the causes of criminal behaviour, it has been acclaimed as a new and even heroic, post-positivistic approach to criminality. It is neither. Moreover, from any feminist perspective, there is nothing critical about it. The foundational concepts of Katzian-inflected “postmodern” criminology are caught in the same universalising, androcentric paradigms which bedevil the positivistic criminology it claims to displace. The so-called “postmoderism” which is said to inform this new school displays a spectacular ignorance of the conceptual advances made by feminist poststructuralist theorists in a range of fields. More broadly, this article aims to show that nothing, and certainly not the “postmodernism” of the Katzians, can save criminology as a discipline. Criminology in its ostensibly post-positivistic and “postmodern” formations is as intellectually and politically bankrupt as the positivism it imagines it transcends. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology SAGE

Postmodern Criminology and its Feminist Discontents

Loading next page...
 
/lp/sage/postmodern-criminology-and-its-feminist-discontents-7NKjDJcbKg

References (54)

Publisher
SAGE
Copyright
© 1999 The Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology and Authors
ISSN
0004-8658
eISSN
1837-9273
DOI
10.1177/000486580003300208
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This article examines the work of self-defined exponents of a “postmodern” criminology. This school of critical criminology takes Jack Katz's Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil (1988) as its foundational text. Because Katz's book focuses on the sensual feel rather than on the causes of criminal behaviour, it has been acclaimed as a new and even heroic, post-positivistic approach to criminality. It is neither. Moreover, from any feminist perspective, there is nothing critical about it. The foundational concepts of Katzian-inflected “postmodern” criminology are caught in the same universalising, androcentric paradigms which bedevil the positivistic criminology it claims to displace. The so-called “postmoderism” which is said to inform this new school displays a spectacular ignorance of the conceptual advances made by feminist poststructuralist theorists in a range of fields. More broadly, this article aims to show that nothing, and certainly not the “postmodernism” of the Katzians, can save criminology as a discipline. Criminology in its ostensibly post-positivistic and “postmodern” formations is as intellectually and politically bankrupt as the positivism it imagines it transcends.

Journal

Australian & New Zealand Journal of CriminologySAGE

Published: Aug 1, 2000

There are no references for this article.