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Hale et al: Criminology 2e

Chapter 7

This chapter explores the ways in which criminal practices and cultural dynamics intertwine within contemporary society. Criminologists recognize, for example, that many forms of criminality emerge out of criminal and deviant subcultures, and that these subcultures are themselves shaped by shared conventions of meaning, symbolism, and style. Increasingly, criminologists also explore the intensely collective experiences and emotions that emerge within these subcultures—experiences and emotions that define subcultural members' identities and reinforce their marginal social status.

At the same time, criminologists note that those who undertake enterprises conventionally defined as "cultural" in contemporary society—popular music, art photography, film and television programmes—regularly confront public accusations of promoting criminal and delinquent behaviour, and may even face criminal justice actions ranging from police raids to obscenity trials. Moreover, in today's society all such phenomena—criminal identities, popular controversies, crime control campaigns, experiences of crime victimization—are increasingly offered and displayed for public consumption. All of these phenomena also take shape within a larger mediated universe—a universe in which criminal subcultures appropriate popular images and create their own forms of mediated communication; political leaders launch public campaigns of criminalization and panic over crime and criminals; and everyday citizens go about consuming crime as news and entertainment. Because of this, criminologists today realize that a critical awareness of cultural dynamics is necessary if we are to understand even the most basic dimensions of crime and crime control.

In this context a new form of criminology—'cultural criminology'—has now emerged. After exploring the British and U.S. roots of this new approach, and highlighting its basic orientations, this chapter focuses on five key intersections of crime and culture—intersections that cultural criminologists find to be of particular importance in analyzing contemporary crime and crime control. In each of these intersections, complex cultural dynamics shape not only the practice of crime, but the politics of crime control and criminal justice.

Subculture and style.
Members of illicit subcultures create a collective ethos, an alternative orientation to social life, that often comes to be embodied in the subculture's distinctive styles of dress, comportment, talk, and interaction. These symbolic communities operate even when all members are not present, and so provide an ongoing and resilient way of life for those involved. Aware of this dynamic, legal authorities increasingly turn to these very subcultural styles and symbols in their attempts to prevent or control criminal activity—and yet in so doing raise troubling issues of stereotyping, profiling, and symbolic criminalization. The mass media and multinational corporations also attend to and appropriate these styles for media products and marketing campaigns, and so forge yet another link between crime and cultural dynamics.

Edgework, adrenalin, and criminological verstehen.
Recent work in cultural criminology finds that much illicit behaviour is shaped by a variety of intensely emotional experiences—experiences that take on significant meaning within criminal subcultures. Similarly, criminologists increasingly find that many criminals seek and embrace the extreme risk that generates these experiences, rather than shying from it. Such risky situations and intense emotions integrate subcultural skills with collective identity, and so construct experiences that transcend the boundaries of everyday life. These findings suggest a significant critique of criminological theories attuned to 'rational choice' or 'routine activity'; they further suggest that criminologists must employ ethnographic methods that can take them inside the immediacy of crime and criminality.

Culture as crime.
Contemporary debates over obscenity, indecency, pornography, and the mass media's alleged promotion of illegal behaviour all highlight yet another contested intersection of cultural dynamics and crime. Significantly, two threads run through the majority of these debates. The first is the ambiguous nature of mass media influence on individual behaviour, and the often unfounded assumptions made by political leaders and others in this regard. The second is the role of these debates in often heated 'culture wars' over sexuality, ethnicity, and morality. A close examination reveals that most contemporary debates over obscenity and pornography have emerged within large mediated conflicts over issues such as lesbian and gay rights and the role of ethnic minorities in society.

Crime, culture and public display.
While crime is often thought of as a secretive activity, residual indicators of criminality often remain available for public scrutiny, and therefore for collective interpretation or misinterpretation. In fact, some of the most prominent and politically influential anti-crime policies of recent decades have been based on the alleged interplay between crime and public display. Careful criminological analysis, however, suggests a far more complex range of meanings and symbols than those assumed by these policies. Moreover, it is not only crime that functions as public display; so do crime control and criminal victimization.

Media, crime, and crime control.
In contemporary mass society, the mass media provide the preponderance of information on crime and crime control, and so shape the public's understandings of crime and criminal justice. The mass media, though, transmit emotion as well as information; through sensationalism, dramatization, and the conflation of news and entertainment, the media misdirect public fears and spawn passionate support for inappropriate crime control policies. In this sense the mass media, and those who employ it, construct the reality of crime and crime policy more than they simply report on it. And yet, in a final twist of crime and culture, illicit subcultures themselves increasingly produce mediated images and communications, and in this way contribute yet again to the cultural construction of crime.