NCJ Number
213971
Editor(s)
Bruce A. Arrigo,
Christopher R. Williams
Date Published
2006
Length
298 pages
Annotation
This book presents a series of chapters that consider the intersection of philosophy and criminology.
Abstract
The introduction explains that the academic disciplines of philosophy and criminology rarely converge to consider the same subject matter--crime. This was not always the case; the editors point out that the academic separation of philosophy and criminology is relatively recent and that notions of crime, law, and justice are firmly rooted in philosophical traditions. Following the introduction, there are four main sections that each contain two chapters. Each section represents ideas within the main philosophical traditions: ontology, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. The first section on ontology and crime offers discussions on the nature of crime’s reality. One chapter considers the distinction between reality and image through an analysis of serial murder and, specifically, the case of Aileen Wuornos. The second chapter examines the public perceptions of public harassment, school violence, and domestic violence. The second section presents two chapters on epistemology and crime. One of the chapters draws on actor-network-theory to illustrate how the process of criminal knowledge production is a tribal process while the other chapter challenges the conventional wisdom concerning theory testing in criminology. The third section considers ethics and crime, with one chapter addressing the possibility of an ethics that gives rise to crime or nonnormative behavior: an ethics of freedom. The next chapter further develops the notion of an ethics of crime by applying a Deleuzian informed ethic to the explanation of nonnormative behavior. The final section addresses the image, perception, and symbolism of crime. The first chapter in this section argues that by removing the practice of punishment from visibility, society has created a dislocation and consequent proliferation of crime. The last chapter further expands on the aesthetics of crime and punishment by presenting a cultural criminology that takes a decidedly philosophical approach. Tables, references, index