What is Criminology?

Criminology is a booming discipline, yet one which can appear divided and fractious. In this rich and diverse collection of essays, some of the world's leading criminologists respond to a series of questions designed to investigate the state, impact, and future challenges of the discipline: What is criminology for? What is the impact of criminology? How should criminology be done? What are the key issues and debates in criminology today? What challenges does the discipline of criminology face? How has criminology as a discipline changed over the last few decades? The resulting essays identify a series of intellectual, methodological, and ideological borders. Borders, in criminology as elsewhere, are policed, yet they are also frequently transgressed; criminologists can and do move across them to plunder, admire, or learn from other regions. While some boundaries may be more difficult or dangerous to cross than others it is rare to find an entirely secluded locale or community. In traversing ideological, political, geographical, and disciplinary borders, criminologists bring training, tools, and concepts, as well as key texts to share with foreigners. From such exchanges, over time, borders may break down, shift, or spring up, enriching those who take the journey and those who are visited. It is, in other words, in criminology's capacity for and commitment to reflexivity, on which the strength of the field depends.

Mary Bosworth is Reader in Criminology at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Cross College. She joined the Oxford Centre for Criminology in 2006. She is also concurrently Professor of Criminology at Monash University, Australia. Her major research interests are in punishment, incarceration, and immigration detention with a particular focus on how matters of race, gender and citizenship shape the experience and nature of confinement.

Carolyn Hoyle is Professor of Criminology at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Green Templeton College. She has been at the Oxford Centre for Criminology since 1991. She has published empirical and theoretical research on a number of criminological topics including policing, domestic violence, restorative justice, and the death penalty.

Preface: John Braithwaite
Introduction, Mary Bosworth and Carolyn Hoyle
PART I Criminology and its Constituencies
1. Conceptual allegiances: whose side are you on?
1. Criminology's Public Roles: A Drama in Six Acts, Ian Loader and Richard Sparks
2. Some Advantages of a Crime-Free Criminology, Michael R. Gottfredson
3. Critical Criminology: The Renewal of Theory Politics and Practice, Eugene McLaughlin
4. Disciplinarity and Drift, Jeff Ferrell
5. The Global Financial Crisis: Neo-Liberalism, Social Democracy and Criminology, David Brown
6. Against Evangelism in Academic Criminology: For Criminology as a Scientific Art, Pat Carlen
2. Methodological allegiances: how should criminology be done?
7. Shake it up Baby: Practicing Rock 'n' Roll Criminology, Kathleen Daly
8. Criminology's Disney World: The Ethnographer's Ride of South African Criminal Justice, Clifford Shearing and Monique Marks
9. Origins of Criminology, Nicole Rafter
10. He was a Woman: Pitfalls and Possibilities of Popular Audiences, Linda G. Mills
11. Sort Crimes, Not Criminals, Marcus Felson
12. Studying Desistance from Crime: Where Quantitative Meets Qualitative Methods, Paternoster and Shawn Bushway
13. Criminology and the Role of Experimental Research, Mike Hough
3. Political allegiances: what is criminology for?
14. Criminology and Social Justice: Expanding the Intellectual Commitment, Beth E. Richie
15. A New Look at Victim and Offender - An Abolitionist Approach, Thomas Mathiesen and Ole Kristian Hjemdal
16. Remembering Criminology's 'Forgotten Theme': Seeking Justice in U.S. Crime Policy Using an Intersectional Approach, Natalie J. Sokoloff and Amanda Burgess-Proctor
17. Postcolonial Perspectives for Criminology, Chris Cunneen
PART II Criminology and its Borders
1. The limits of the discipline: where do we draw the line?
18. Putting Crime Back on the Criminological Agenda, Lucia Zedner
19. Transcending the Boundaries of Criminology: The Example of Richard Ericson, Aaron Doyle, Janet Chan, and Kevin D. Haggerty
20. Criminology's Place in the Academic Field, David Garland
21. Why Can't Criminology Be More Like Medical Research?: Be Careful What You Wish For, Shadd Maruna and Charles Barber
22. Criminal Justice, Not Criminology?, Andrew Ashworth
23. Criminology, Accountability and International Justice, William A. Schabas
2. The limits of geography: does criminology travel?
24. Transnational Criminology and the Globalization of Harm Production, Ben Bowling
25. The Missing Link: Criminological Perspectives on Dealing with the Past, Stephan Parmentier
26. Why Compare Criminal Justice?, David Nelken
27. Visions of Global Control: Cosmopolitan Aspirations in a World of Friction, Katja Franko Aas
3. The limits of the academy: what is the impact of criminology?
28. Criminology as Invention, Lawrence W. Sherman
29. Criminological Cliques: Narrowing Dialogues, Institutional Protectionism, and the Next Generation, Kelly Hannah-Moffat
30. Official Criminology and the New Crime Sciences, Tim Hope
31. Criminology: Science and Policy Analysis, Alfred Blumstein
32. Criminology, Bureaucracy and Unfinished Business, Ian O'Donnell
33. Criminology and Government: Some reflections on Recent Developments in England, Tim Newburn
34. Being a Criminologist: Investigation as a Lifestyle and Living, Alison Liebling
Conclusion, Mary Bosworth and Carolyn Hoyle