After the "Social Meaning Turn": Implications for Research Design and Methods of Proof in Contemporary Criminal Law Policy Analysis

• NCJ Number: 192318
• Journal: Law & Society Volume: 34 Issue: 1 Dated: 2000 Pages: 179-212
• Author(s): Bernard E. Harcourt
• Date Published: 2000
• Length: 34 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This essay critically examines writings from the "social norm" movement and explores some of the implications for methods of proof and research design in the social sciences; the author offers an alternative theoretical approach.

Abstract

A number of criminal law scholars and policy analysts are focusing on the way that law and social norms interact and how the interaction regulates human behavior. These scholars contend that certain policing techniques -- such as anti-gang loitering ordinances, youth curfews, and order-maintenance policing -- are effective because they change the social meaning of practices such as gang membership or juvenile gun possession. They believe that by changing social meaning these policing techniques reduce criminal behavior and encourage obedience to law. The author argues that the emerging scholarship in this field is best understood as a constructivist social theory, in that it focuses on the socially constructed meaning of such practices as gang membership, juvenile gun possession, and neighborhood disorder. The constructivist nature of norm-focused hypotheses has important implications for methods of proof. Proving a social meaning traditionally involves offering a rich contextual analysis of multiple meanings and counter-meanings, an analysis that intersects with and deepens other compelling accounts of social meaning and that is based on in-depth knowledge acquired through intensive interviewing, participating, observing, and exploring by detached researchers, corroborated as much as possible by statistical analyses. The alternative theoretical approach offered by the author focuses on the multiple ways in which the social meaning of practices (such as juvenile gun possession, gang membership, or disorderly conduct) and the social meanings of policing techniques (such as juvenile snitching policies, youth curfews, or order-maintenance policing) may shape individuals as contemporary subjects of society. This alternative theoretical approach has its own important implications for methods of proof and research design. The author develops these implications into a four-pronged research agenda. 65 references