NCJ Number
217404
Journal
Crime, Law and Social Change Volume: 46 Issue: 1-2 Dated: 2006 Pages: 35-50
Date Published
2006
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This article applies the sociology of knowledge to criminological thought and offers an example of how the sociology of knowledge can inform research on terrorism.
Abstract
The author argues that independent of the willingness to use force, the region, and the specific goals of the terrorists, the long standing knowledge systems of the terrorists must be taken into account to explain the rise of violent terrorism and its distinct targets. The main argument is that the sociology of knowledge can be applied to the study of crime to offer insight into the distribution across time and space of the cognitive and normative tools that influence patterns of norm breaking behavior. In making this argument, the author begins with a review of the implicit use of knowledge in criminological theory, which illuminates that knowledge has been at the forefront of criminological theories for decades. The sociology of knowledge, particularly the traditions that focus on repression and resistance, can be found within rational choice theory explanations of crime, as well as learning theory, neutralization theory, and more recently, cognitive criminological approaches. Despite the implicit use of the sociology of knowledge within criminological thought, its explicit use as a guiding theory of crime has been all but absent. The author contends that the conscious and explicit use of the sociology of knowledge, including neo-Durkheimian, neo-Marxist, and neo-Weberian perspectives, offer many benefits to criminological thought. To illustrate the contribution the sociology of knowledge can make to the study of crime, a sociology of knowledge perspective is applied to the explanation of the simultaneous rise of terrorism across different regions of the world. Footnotes, references