NCJ Number
218892
Date Published
2007
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This chapter explores the dynamics between offline and online aspects of social governance, particularly governance of crime, and addresses the question of how the environment of our corporal lives differs from the environment of our cyber lives.
Abstract
Acknowledging the blurred lines of distinction between the virtual and the real carries a number of benefits for criminological inquiry. Issues of cybercrime and life on the screen touch on some of the central themes and transformations within the field of criminological interests: from questions of impersonality and disembeddedness of social relations, transnational crime and the changing role of the State in a globalizing world, to the issues of postmodernity, subjectivity, technology, and control. The purpose of this chapter is to reflect on the ability of cyberspace and information and communication technologies (ICTs) in general to redefine and bring new dimensions to some central criminological concepts, from terms such as community, society, identity, and danger, to the production of cultural values and mechanisms of social governance. The question arises as to whether there should be some lesson-drawing between worldly criminology and its cyber counterpart. There is the need to develop concepts and methods that are sensitive to the complexities of the global. Notes, references