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Critical Criminological Research

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Sydney Law School

Legal Studies Research Paper

No. 08/19

January 2008

Critical Criminological Research

Julie Stubbs

This paper can be downloaded without charge from the

Social Science Research Network Electronic Library
at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1084684.
Stubbs J (2008, forthcoming) ‘Critical criminological research’ in Thalia Anthony & Chris
Cunneen (eds) The Critical Criminology Companion Sydney: Federation Press.

Critical criminological research

Julie Stubbs
Faculty of Law
University of Sydney

Introduction
Detailed engagement with research is commonly consigned to methods courses, often treated
with suspicion or disdain as technocratic and resisted or avoided by students. It is typically
divided off from courses on theory as if the two are easily separable. Yet research and the
critical analysis of the construction of knowledge are fundamental to what we do as
criminologists and especially to the perspectives described as critical criminology. For
instance, the recognition of crime as a moral and political construct that is not fixed in time or
place, that there is ‘no ontological reality of crime’, has profound theoretical and
methodological implications that challenge the very notion that there might be a discipline of
criminology(Young 2002: 254; Barton et al 2007:207). While this is acknowledged and given
weight in some criminological traditions it is ignored by others.
This chapter can provide only a limited account of the large, diverse and fluid field of
critical criminological research. In doing so it risks suggesting greater consistency and
uniformity than the field contains and will necessarily gloss over key debates, tensions and
controversies in what is a continually unfolding area.

Theory and research

At the level of pedagogy, theory and methods are commonly presented as separate domains.
Social science methods courses too often present theory ‘as a set of variables to be measured
or applied in data interpretation, or as an hypothesis to be falsified or verified’, while theory
courses typically portray it as ‘one of many perspectives on the world, a description of social
objects or events, or as a school of thought’ (Frauley 2005: 245-6). Theory is reduced to
something to ‘be made reference to’ rather than as ‘conceptual work’. For Frauley, learning to
think theoretically, and to do theory, is integral to social science enquiry and criminology
(2005: 246). The dualism of theory and practice is false; ‘all theory is connected with the
empirical (although variably in terms of the level of abstraction), otherwise it would not
qualify as “social theory” in the first place’ (Bottoms 2000: 18 citing Layder 1998:4).
The relationship between theory and research is understood in various ways within
criminology. Bottoms (2000) provides a useful account. Simply put, classicism was engaged
mostly with normative theory, and their empirical assertions were largely untested. Positivism
adopts a hypothetico-deductive approach based on a version of the natural sciences which
assumes that theory-neutral facts can be collected, and theory in the form of an hypothesis is
tested to verify or falsify the theory (Bottoms 2000: 26-8). By contrast, ethnographic research
typically eschews positivism’s natural sciences model and emphasises that humans act on the
basis of the meanings the social world has for them; qualitative methods tend to focus on the
specific context of behaviours with less concern for generalization. Inductive reasoning is
used to build theory from an understanding of the social situation (Bottoms 2000: 30). Critical
criminological approaches typically conceptualise theory and research as inherently linked;
theorising and processes of knowledge formation are often subjects of critical inquiry (Jupp
1989: 23).

Characteristics of critical criminology and their implications for research

The label critical criminology(ies) has been applied to various established and emergent
theoretical perspectives that differ in significant ways, with diverse origins and political
allegiances (Carrington 2002). The perspectives commonly include Marxism, abolitionism,
feminisms, peacemaking, poststructuralist and postmodernist approaches; left realism,
constitutive criminology, cultural criminology and restorative justice are sometimes included.
However, some writers challenge the attempt to apply any unifying category or label. Instead
they emphasise the differentiation of such approaches and mark the fragmentation, fracturing
or plurality of criminology (Ericson & Carriere 1994). But is there some value in reflecting on
shared elements; if so what are they and what are their implications for research?
Some features of critical criminology/ies predate the common usage of that term and
are shared with or borrowed from allied disciplines. Common elements include an orientation
against - the mainstream, official definitions and statistics, positivism etc - and an aspiration
towards - social justice, human rights etc. Indeed according to Cohen, critical criminology
‘emerged because the spurious scientific claims of traditional criminology had served to
remove crime from politics’ (Cohen 1988: 18). Currie sees critical criminology as attempting
to realise a criminological imagination ‘able and willing to break free of old constraints and
look at the problems of crime and punishment with fresh eyes’ (2002: viii). He invokes C
Wright Mills’ (1959/1973) classic work The Sociological Imagination which sought to link
the individual with social structure and history (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007).
Such an integration of individual, structural and historical levels requires careful
methodological attention.
Characteristics commonly seen as typical of critical criminology/ies, or related
categories, include some or all of the following:
• transgressing mainstream criminology;
• challenging official definitions and statistics of crime and crime control;
• rejection of positivist methodologies;
• rejection of correctionalism;
• disavowal of the criminologist ‘as neutral scientific expert’;
• a critical posture towards agents, systems and institutions of social control;
• preference for sociological theories over individualistic theories;
• emphasizing the effects of social power and inequality as underlying
offending, victimisation and criminalisation;
• drawing on a wider body of social theory;
• engaging with normative questions;
• recognizing that research and knowledge are political;
• a desire for social change, social justice or human rights;
• political engagement, allegiances with social movements and ‘turning cases
into issues’;
• valuing the ‘view from below’; and,
• reflexivity concerning research and criminology (summarized from
Carrington & Hogg 2002: 2-3; Carlen 2002; Bottoms 2000: 33; Hudson
2000: 189; Loader 1998).

Critical approaches have been valued for ‘opening up new frameworks for inquiry’,
generating ‘often fruitful dialogue with a host of cognate disciplines’, emphasizing ‘that crime
and crime control are matters of political rather than just technical disputation’ and
recognizing that ‘criminological enquiry cannot be pursued adequately without posing some
fundamental questions about order, power, authority, legitimacy and social justice’ (Loader
1998: 201). 1 However, critical criminology/ies have also attracted a range of criticisms. Some
variants have demonstrated ‘the dangers of theoreticism’ (Loader 1998; Brown 2002; Carlen
2002), a ‘predilection for critique over reconstruction’ (Loader 1998: 201; Carlen 1998,
2002), insufficient normative engagement (Loader 1998), putting political goals above ‘the
search for truth’(Bottoms 2000: 33-35) or devising theory in the service of politics (Carlen
2002: 245). Brown reminds us that early versions were Eurocentric (2002: 92) and Carrington
detects ‘a deep lingering tension between feminism and radicalism over the legitimacy of the
experience of victimisation’ (2002: 129).

Challenge to the mainstream

Critical criminology is defined in part by what it opposes. This includes the ‘historically
predominant’ conception of criminology in instrumental terms which presumes that
‘criminology provides a set of techniques capable of generating reliable, scientific knowledge
concerning crime and its causes, knowledge that can contribute to effective policy making’
(Loader, 1998: 192-3) and that takes official measures of crime at face value. Criminologists
challenging the mainstream have long questioned definitions of crime, urging the
decriminalization of some behaviours, and moving beyond narrow constructions of crime to
include a wider range of objects of inquiry such as human rights, abuses of state power,
racialised and gendered violence, or a focus on the transnational and the global. Others wish
to reorient research and theory away from crime to concepts such as ordering, harm, or to
transcend the discipline altogether (Barton et al 2007).
One manifestation of mainstream criminology is what Loader labels ‘jobbing
criminology’, which in the UK is most aligned with institutional settings such as the Home
Office and Scottish Office, which has a ‘dependent relationship to official crime control
agendas’ (Loader, 1998: 193-4; see also Walters 2007). The Home Office is described as
wedded to ‘a set of empiricist epistemological assumptions as to what constitutes ‘good’
research’, such as an outmoded reliance on quasi-experimental design, and fails to recognise
‘the methodological pluralism that now characterises the wider sociological and
criminological field’ (Loader 1998: 193). He acknowledges that ‘jobbing criminology’ can
none the less challenge ‘political wisdom’ and is not reducible to being simply the servant of
its master, but the approach is deficient in that it typically resorts to ‘neutral, technical
language’ which does not articulate the ethics and politics at hand (Loader 1998: 193) and
pursues ‘a limited range of explanatory avenues, structuring enquiries largely around the
question ‘what works’?’(Loader 1998: 197). The challenge to criminology associated with
government institutions is particularly sharp in the UK (see further below, Walters 2007).
However, in Australia the debates are less fraught and the distinctions between the critical and
the mainstream are less clear. That is not to suggest that there are no differences in approach,
or no conflicts between protagonists pursuing different approaches. However, as Brown has
observed ‘in the Australian context there is not a monolithic ‘mainstream’ criminology’ and,
that in certain contexts it might be important to utilise ‘mainstream’ approaches and ‘enter
alliance with its practitioners’ in public debate and struggles’ (2002: 86).

Engagement with broader social theory

Theorists from outside criminology have had considerable impact on research within the field
both historically and in recent times. For feminist criminologists engaging with broader
theory has been productive and necessary, since criminology was late to acknowledge
feminism and indifferent or even hostile to its concerns. Critical criminologists commonly
draw on social theory to analyse behaviours or practices with reference to social structure and
in historical context. The chapters in this collection provide numerous examples of critical
criminologists’ engagement with broad social theory.
Hudson identifies three approaches as having been particularly influential in critical
criminology; they shared focus on ‘research which contributed to the emancipation of those
who are repressed by existing social and power relations’ (2000: 178). First is the critical
theory of the Frankfurt School which ‘concentrated on culture and ideology in authoritarian
societies, drawing on Marxist and psychoanalytic concepts’. The second is ‘‘discourse’
research using the ideas and methods associated with Michel Foucault’,… ‘investigat[ing] the
exercise of power in liberal societies, foregrounding the development and influence of the
human/social sciences’ (2000: 178). The third is standpoint research ‘replac[ing] the
centrality of concepts such as ‘class’ and ‘liberalism’ with patriarchy and gender divisions’
(further below, 2000: 178). Others identify Gramsci as having been very influential in the
emergence of critical criminology, especially in the UK; his work promoted the creation of
‘an alternative “counter-hegemonic” discourse infused with socialist values and principles,
that reconceptualized the organization of society’ (Barton et al 2007: 4).

Challenge to positivism (and phenomenology)

Critical criminology and critical research generally have been shaped in part in reaction to
positivism and to a lesser extent phenomenology. C. Wright Mills argued that ‘abstracted
empiricism’ damaged sociology by the ‘methodological inhibition’ associated with its appeal
to a limited version of the philosophy of the natural sciences. For Mills, ‘the kinds of problem
that will be taken up and the way in which they are formulated are quite severely limited by
the Scientific Method. Methodology in short seems to determine the problems’ (1959/1973:
67). The enduring influence of positivism in criminology and other disciplines has been
lamented by many but has been bolstered by the rise of new forms of positivism in the guise
of crime science (Walters 2007: 19-22).
Walklate (2000) provides a contemporary example of the ‘stranglehold’ of positivist
oriented work on criminology and victimology. She describes how ‘the commitment to the
use and deployment of the criminal victimization survey’ has ‘significantly defined the
parameters of the fear of crime debate’ such that fear and risk have been so commonly linked
(2000: 198), even to the point of calibrating whether fear is commensurate with risk and thus
‘rational’. Her own use of the same technique, informed by critical victimology and a
commitment to examining how people understood risk and fear challenged the dominant
perspective. She used both qualitative and quantitative methods, ensured that the crime
victimization survey was attuned to the local context, and moved across levels comparing lay
and professional perceptions with formal policy processes. She developed a more nuanced
understanding of the victim and how that label was ‘embraced’ or ‘attributed’, or not, and she
discovered that ‘trust’ had more to offer in understanding community dynamics than risk or
fear (Walklate 2000: 198). 2
Phenomenology perhaps had greatest influence in North America. It is associated
with the construction of social reality and gives emphasis to consciousness and perception;
‘the social world is constituted by rules of description and classification’ (Downes & Rock
1988: 202). It has a focus on the everyday and the micro-social. Phenomenological research
was central to challenging realist conceptions of crime statistics. Once crime rates were seen
as produced, like other phenomena, ‘by interpretative work and social organization…[t]he
solid facts of crime seemed to melt into a rather fluid and unreliable subjectivity’ (Downes &
Rock 1988: 207). Phenomenology continues to be influential in some forms of critical
criminology such as constitutive criminology but its micro-social focus does not sit easily
with others (Jupp 1989: 119-120).

Reflexivity
Reflexivity is a key feature of critical research with several meanings. It acknowledges that
theory is developed within a social and political context, and requires researchers to reflect on
their research practice and make adjustments accordingly (Harvey 1990: 10-11). Reflexivity
involves considering the validity of research findings and the question ‘what counts as
knowledge?’ (Jupp et al 2000:169). It can also refer to a method of research which entails
‘reflecting upon, analyzing and challenging dominant ideological positions in society’ (Jupp
et al 2000: 172; Hudson 2000). Reflexivity encourages questions about criminology and its
relationship to power and crime control (Hudson 2000: 176). Lisa Maher’s book Sexed Work
(1997) provides an excellent example of reflexive ethnographic work that is theoretically and
methodologically sophisticated, engaging multiple methods and levels of analysis.

The politics (and political effects) of research

Critical criminology recognises the politics and political effects of research. While positivism
has shown ‘deep suspicion’ of ‘political or moral engagement’, this is untenable when crime
is avowedly a political and moral construct and ‘doing research and theory in criminology is
itself inevitably linked to the political landscape’ (Bottoms 2000: 33). Foucault’s account of
power/knowledge is a profound challenge to the assumption within mainstream research that
knowledge is neutral and outside power relations. As Hogg demonstrates ‘techniques of
modern criminological thought … especially statistics, do not simply measure problems as if
they constituted some pre-existing reality … they are the means of bringing them within the
domain of knowledge and government’ (1998: 152). This highlights criminology’s
‘dangerous relationship to power’; ‘the categories and classifications, the labels and diagnoses
and the images of the criminal produced by criminologists’ legitimate crime control and ‘have
implications for the life-chances, for the opportunities freely to move around our cities, and
for the rights and liberties, of those to whom they are applied’ (Hudson 2000: 177). But what
are the implications for critical research? For Hudson the answer is not to withdraw from
research due to its moral and political risks, but to engage in ‘critical research which exposes
the political contexts in which criminological knowledge production is embedded’ (Hudson
2000 p 177). And of course Foucault’s body of work has generated a multitude of new objects
and sites for empirical research.
Critical criminology is not free of institutional constraints. For instance, academic
research has been commodified as universities seek to supplement inadequate budgets by
promoting funded research and as they submit to government research measurement exercises
like the RQF or RAE. Funding bodies set research agendas. In most jurisdictions there are
few avenues for independent research funding not tied to government schemes or agencies, or
corporate interests. The Australian Research Council (ARC) has National Research Priorities
3
which are not an easy fit with critical criminology, although critical researchers have
secured ARC funding for some projects. Several UK commentators have analysed the
consequences of funding that prioritises research aligned with the harsh agenda of New
Labour. For instance, Walters identifies government research as ignoring crimes of the
powerful while endorsing the regulation of the poor, and corporate research as motivated by
profit (2007: 28-32). He calls for a boycott on government funded and corporate contract
research; criminologists should instead ‘embrace diverse knowledges of resistance’ (2007: 30;
but see Loader 1998).
Challenging dominant constructions of knowledge is central to critical criminology
and has been a strong focus for feminists (Naffine 1997). This builds on theoretical traditions
that have sought to challenge the ‘hierarchy of credibility’ (Becker), ‘appreciate the deviant’
(Matza); to give voice to the excluded, and to value the ‘view from below’. Standpoint
epistemology is associated with a particular feminist approach (see below) but has a wider
meaning that Hudson traces to the Frankfurt School. Objective, value free knowledge is
unattainable, and thus, ‘since standpoint is inevitable, it had better be overt’ (Hudson 2000:
184). Standpoint is commonly used in two contradictory ways: to found claims to a superior
epistemology or politics, or to denigrate another’s work as arising from an interested
standpoint (Nelken 1994: 23). Nelken sees standpoint epistemology as useful for comparative
criminology in recognising ‘the limitations of culturally shaped standpoints’ as in
ethnocentrism, and in analysing how culture shapes ‘conceptions of crime and responses to
crime’ and ‘the discipline of criminology itself’ (1994: 24).

Normative engagement
Normative research is consistent with critical criminology’s aspirations for social change but
is often overlooked in discussions of criminological research, perhaps because of the tendency
to separate research and theory. Normative research differs from explanatory research and
seeks ‘a rational and principled explanation of the moral/political justifications for a given
course of action’ (Bottoms 2000: 48). Loader argues for greater normative engagement to
ensure that ‘doing criminology…always entails reflection upon questions of order, justice,
authority and legitimacy’ and articulates ‘ethically informed models of alternative
institutional arrangements’ (1998: 207). In the context of security, Zedner promotes
empirically grounded normative theorizing in order to ‘elaborate and defend a conception of
justice apposite to the potential and problems of security society’ (2007: 271). She sees
restorative justice as one of few contexts in which criminology has ‘develop[ed] a
constructive theory of change’ (2007: 270).
Critical social research
Critical social research has a long history outside criminology. It has an epistemological
foundation, or theory of knowledge, that sees knowledge as ‘structured by existing sets of
social relations’ that are oppressive (Harvey 1990: 2). Critical social research typically seeks
to establish what underlies the surface appearance of a phenomenon, to reveal the oppressive
nature of social relations and to inform social change. This often means working between
different levels of analysis, to connect the specific with ‘the structures, processes and
ideologies that underpin them’ (Jupp et al 2000: 19; Hudson 2000). It may involve theoretical
triangulation, that is, working with multiple theories that address different levels and
connecting criminological analysis with general social theory (Hudson 2000). Critical
researchers initially focused primarily on class; attention to race or gender based oppression
arose only from about the 1970s. Since then critical scholarship has engaged with other forms
of social relations (heterosexism, disability discrimination, religious oppression etc), with
questions related to imperialism and colonisation (Harvey 1990: 2-3), and more complex
conceptions of these categories begun to consider intersections between social categories.
Post modernist and post structuralist work have also had an important influence on critical
social research.
Within critical research ‘knowledge and critique are intertwined’; critique is not
something appended to ‘an accumulation of ‘fact’ or ‘theory’ gathered via some mechanical
process, rather it denies the (literally) objective status of knowledge…Knowledge is a
dynamic process not a static entity…’(Harvey 1990: 3). But does critical social research
imply any particular research method? It is important to distinguish between epistemology,
methodology and method. Epistemology is a theory of knowledge that entails ‘the
presuppositions about the nature of knowledge and of science that inform practical inquiry’
(Harvey 1990: 1). Methodology is ‘the interface between methodic practice, substantive
theory and epistemological underpinnings’ (Harvey 1990: 1), and ‘makes explicit the
presuppositions that inform the knowledge that is generated by the enquiry’ (Harvey 1990: 1-
2). Method is ‘the way empirical data are collected’ (Harvey 1990: 1).
It is not the method that designates an approach as critical; critical researchers use a
diverse range of methods, and methods are not ‘inherently positivist, phenomenological or
critical’ (Harvey 1990: 1). Critical research is shaped ‘at the level of methodology’ (Harvey
1990: 201). Some areas of critical criminology do have an orientation towards a particular
method or methods, with a strong tendency towards qualitative approaches such as participant
observation or in-depth interviews. However, debates about the relative merits of qualitative
and quantitative research commonly express epistemological or methodological differences.
At the level of methods, multi-method approaches (method triangulation) commonly employ
both qualitative and quantitative methods that have different strengths. For critical
criminology, as for other traditions, the appropriate method depends on the research
objectives.
Similar methods are used in markedly different ways. For instance, crime
victimization surveys have been used differently by researchers aligned with positivist, left
realist and critical victimology perspectives and various feminist approaches. 4 Researchers
adopting different epistemological and methodological frameworks understand official crime
statistics differently. From an institutionalist perspective associated with interactionist and
social constructionist theories, official statistics reflect the practices of the agencies that
produce them (Jupp 1989: 92-97). Radical perspectives see crime statistics as ‘reflect[ing]
structurally induced’ patterns of crime and criminalisation, demonstrating the ‘outcome of
class relations’ (Jupp 1989: 99). While unmasking positivist claims to objective and value
free knowledge might be seen to require a rejection of official statistics per se, critical
researchers can and do engage with official statistics including by exposing the conditions and
social context which shaped them.

Feminist criminological research

Early critical criminology showed little interest in feminist concerns (Carrington 2002: 123,
Naffine 1997). Thus, feminist scholars such as Maureen Cain saw the need ‘to be
transgressive of the discipline of criminology and its ideological and methodological
assumptions’(Carrington 2002: 118) and some feminists saw feminism and criminology as
irreconcilable (Smart 1990). None the less feminist criminology has been a vital part of
critical criminology.
Like critical research generally, feminist research is not defined at the level of
methods but by epistemological and methodological commitments (Harding 1987). Feminist
criminology initially focused on challenging theories that ignored gender, or treated it in
limited or stereotyped ways, and undertaking empirical research on women’s experiences of
crime and the criminal justice system (Daly and Maher 1998:2). This work made an important
contribution by documenting women’s experiences and opening up new areas of inquiry.
However, it often used a feminist empiricist approach that had serious epistemological
shortcomings; while it sought to improve scientific knowledge by making women subjects of
criminology, it didn’t question the underlying premises of science (Naffine 1997: 30-7). By
contrast, other feminists used standpoint epistemology ‘to place women as knowers at the
centre of inquiry’, (Naffine 1997: 46) to value subjugated knowledge and to give emphasis to
women’s experience. Some versions of standpoint feminism saw women’s knowledge as
more complete in that the ‘view from below’ added to and challenged dominant perspectives
(Naffine 1997: 45-60). However, standpoint feminism has attracted criticism especially for
essentialism, that is, for presenting a singular account that ignored differences between
women, commonly was based on a white, middle class, heterosexual standard (Naffine 1997:
53; Carrington 2002: 119).
Second phase feminist criminological work was influenced by earlier criticisms and
by developments within criminology and beyond such as critical race theory, postmodernism
and poststructuralism. Daly and Maher summarise that work as concerned with:
‘problematizing the term women as a unified category’, ‘acknowledging that women’s
experiences are, in part, constructed by legal and criminological discourses’, rethinking ‘the
relationship between sex and gender’ and ‘reflecting on the strengths and limits of
constructing feminist “truths” and knowledge’ (1998:3). However, they identify a tension in
recent developments between studies of ‘real women’ and those concerned with ‘women of
discourse’. The first metaphor describes research that ‘explores women as agents in
constructing their life worlds including their lawbreaking and victimization’, while the second
sees women as ‘constructed in and by particular discourses’. Daly and Maher argue that both
strands of feminist work are necessary, but they demonstrate that they are not easily
reconcilable because they have ‘their own theoretical referents and specialised vocabularies’
(Daly and Maher 1997:4). A recent example of feminist research that successfully integrates
poststructural theory and empirical research is Gail Mason’s study of homophobic violence
(2002).

Postmodernism and poststructuralism

It is difficult to map the many ways in which some critical researchers have engaged with
postmodernism or poststructuralist. The terms have been used in multiple ways, sometimes
interchangeably. Postmodernism is commonly associated inter alia with the rejection of grand
narratives, the unitary subject and science as the means to truth (Carrington 2002; Daly and
Maher 1998). Poststructuralism typically denotes an approach that challenges ‘hierarchical
binary oppositions in language’ and analyses the role of discourse in “shaping subjectivity,
social institutions and politics” (citations omitted, Daly and Maher 1998: 3). These positions
have unsettled taken for granted assumptions and provoked a rethinking of theory and
practice among some critical theorists. For instance, Carlen sees value in a form of
poststructuralism that ‘both recognises and denies structuralism’. She accepts ‘the effectivity
of the structures of social process and consciousness’ but also adopts a poststructuralist stance
to deny that they have any unitary meaning, or ‘that they always and already have perennial
applicability to any specific society, social formation or individuated subjectivity’ (1998:
71). 5
Critical criminological projects that draw on postmodernism or poststructuralism
have adopted or adapted various methodologies and methods. For instance, deconstruction 6
is commonly used by researchers to examine claims to truth within criminological, legal and
‘psy’ discourses. Cultural criminology, with roots in symbolic interactionism and subcultural
theory, also draws on postmodernist approaches and methodologies associated with cultural
studies, media studies and interpreting ‘the visual’ (Ferrell 2003). Some projects focused on
subjectivity have turned to psychoanalysis. For instance, Hollway and Jefferson have
developed a psychosocial conception of the subject that connects the psychoanalytic with the
discursive; they have adapted a narrative interview method as the best fit with their
methodological commitments (2001).

Some concluding thoughts

Critical criminology/ies are diverse and subject to ongoing development likely to be
influenced by borrowings from and dialogue with allied disciplines, and innovations
generated by inter-disciplinary work. Like criminology generally, critical criminological
research confronts conceptual and methodological challenges arising from factors such as:
transnational and global developments in the social order; the shift to a ‘pre-crime society’ as
conceived within crime control and scholarship in the domain of security (Zedner 2007);
reconsidering subjectivity; and constructions of and responses to difference.
I share Freidrich’s preference for a progressive pluralist critical criminology that:
aspires to ‘a more egalitarian, humane and authentically democratic society’; ‘acknowledges
the endless complexity, contradictions, and conundrums characterizing the totality of social
existence’, has a ‘skepticism toward exclusive 'truth' claims’ and recognizes ‘that many
different perspectives (and methods) can advance our understanding of facets or dimensions
of social reality’ (1996: 123). The plurality, complexity and lack of a shared origin among
critical criminology/ies, and the ongoing predominance of positivism within criminology
offer significant pedagogical challenges. Students need to engage in a kind of multiple shift.
The concern to link specific analysis with historical context and social structure necessitates
moving between levels in analysis, which in turn suggests the need for more complex and
considered methodological approaches than typical of single level analysis. Doing theory and
research as critical scholars fully literate in the discipline requires being conversant with and
having the capacity to critically engage those positions that are being challenged. However, it
also offers an enormous range of possibilities.

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281.
1
Loader’s commentary refers to ‘anticriminology’ following Stan Cohen, but the theoretical
approaches he lists are consistent with critical criminology.
2
Hollway and Jefferson (2001) introduced a more complex subjectivity to this debate in a
methodologically innovative way drawing on a critical realist epistemology (see Poynting this
volume). As socio-legal theorist Alan Norrie describes: ‘critical realism agrees that
experience of the real world is possible and necessary, but against it, insists that this is not a
sufficient basis for scientific understanding. Knowledge requires active theory building and
testing in order to provide depth explanations of the stratified reality that underlies the surface
forms given to experience’ (2005:164). Neither idealist approaches, nor empiricism are
adequate.
3
http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/DP08_FundingRules.pdf –
4
However, left realism has been challenged for ‘a latent slippage into positivism’ for its use
of this method (Walklate 2000: 187-8; Smart 1990).
5
Her position seems consistent with they way others have used critical realism, although she
doesn’t use that term.
6
Deconstruction involves ‘a careful reading and de-coding of text (written or spoken)…to
unveil the implicit assumptions and hidden values …embedded within a particular narrative’
 (Arrigo 2003: 48). Deconstructive approaches are not confined to postmodern or
poststructuralist theoretical perspectives.

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