NCJ Number
176582
Journal
Journal of Financial Crime Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Dated: October 1998 Pages: 103-110
Date Published
1998
Length
8 pages
Annotation
Crime as a factor in globalization is discussed in terms of its role in the current world cultural transition and in terms of the implications of globalization for contemporary concepts of crime and crime causes.
Abstract
The analysis notes that crime cannot be understood outside its social context of physical space, institutional process, patterns of relationships, and individual variation. Globalization suggests dualities such as local versus global, custom versus modernization, and market versus enterprise; these dualities will dominate the comparative contextual analysis of globalized crime. Social conflict situations arising out of modernization are important contexts for both crime and globalization and include the clash between traditional value systems and the enticements of modernization and the fracture of extended family socialization as a consequence of urban drift. Globalization is the progress towards one culture on the planet. Where modernization weakens culture, crime will emerge selectively to strengthen certain cultures and further weaken others. However, crime may also become a force that promotes a uniform global culture. The globalization of crime and crime control has transformed essential representations of crime so as to require the recognition of crime beyond behaviors, jurisdictions, and moral refrains. Crime is a feature of the transitional and the globalized society, and as such should be accepted as a common theme in globalization. Comparative crime research should examine the role of crime as an agent of social change and the durability of popular wisdom in representing crime and control now that a popular culture context is being transformed beyond cultural relativity. Reference notes