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Postmodern Criminology

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Postmodern Criminology
ERIC MADFIS
Postmodern criminology adopts its concern with
language, symbols, and knowledge from the
larger postmodern movement. Postmodernism,
often claimed to be indefinable, refers to a broad
assortment of themes relevant to disciplines
as diverse as art, architecture, literature, and
sociology (Schwartz & Friedrichs, 1994). The
nature of postmodernism is complex, abstract,
interdisciplinary, and expansive, which unfor-
tunately makes it a subject innately difficult to
characterize in any simple fashion. As many post-
modern theorists believe language is best utilized
as an art form and not merely for the purpose of
communication, any attempt to summarize and
abridge dense theoretical prose inherently suffers
from being pointedly unpostmodern.
Across various disciples, postmodernists share
a common desire to access new and different
“ways of knowing and being” (Longstreet, 2003,
p. 11). They stress the “[s]ocially constructed
thus arbitrary nature of social rules, norms, and
values” and reject notions of objective reality
(Lanier & Henry, 2004, p. 318). Not only can
there be no universal consensus regarding con-
ceptions of crime and law, in many readings
of postmodernism all accounts of reality are
interpretations.
Historically, postmodernism is best understood
as a rejection of eighteenth-century Enlight-
enment ideals, particularly notions of rational
thought and the scientific method (Best &
Kellner, 1991). That modern period asserted that
science, through objectivity and rational thought,
could reveal truth and knowledge. Through sci-
ence, humanity would be able to resolve social
problems. Postmodern theory questions these
assumptions and critiques the racism, sexism,
imperialism, and class exploitation that have
arisen from modern “progress;” modern science
has resulted in new devastations like nuclear war,
pollution, and the Holocaust (Lanier & Henry,
2004, p. 319). Accordingly, postmodern thinkers
The Encyclopedia of Theoretical Criminology, First Edition. Edited by J. Mitchell Miller.
© 2014 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2014 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118517390/wbetc104
began to question the validity of scientific knowl-
edge and authority. Michel Foucault (1980)
argues that so-called objective science – and
knowledge more generally – are controlled by
powerful experts who make claims to possess
special knowledge and thus make decisions for
the less powerful and well educated. To Foucault
(1977, 1980), all knowledge is merely claims of
truth shaped by personal, cultural, or political
views. Thus, the postmodern solution is to favor a
plurality of perspectives and subjectivity (Best &
Kellner, 1991).
Operating under the assumption that even
knowledge is socially constructed, the postmod-
ern development of discursive analysis stresses
that society’s major harms and conflicts result
from the creation of “discursive distinctions,”
whereby an individual or group makes inroads to
impose their own reality onto others (Lanier &
Henry, 2004, p. 319). Moral entrepreneurship is
extended to encompass scientific claims, and false
distinctions (such as gender dichotomy, mental
illness, etc.) serve to exclude and marginalize
individuals and groups. After rejecting these dis-
tinctions, postmodernism suggests that scholars
ought to concentrate their energy instead upon
exposing the social construction and domination
of privileged knowledge (Lanier & Henry, 2004).
Derrida (1970) called this procedure “decon-
struction,” but it is also often referred to as a
“critique.” A postmodern critique, which goes
beyond mere criticism of the arguments for a
particular position or policy, is the constant
and unrelenting process of challenging the basic
assertion of objective truth. The goal of critique
is to reveal the human hands and group interests
hidden behind the formation of accepted facts
and philosophies. When postmodernists decon-
struct written texts and spoken discourse, they
focus upon words and sentence structure to reveal
the implicit assumptions and hidden ideological
values given preferential status through language
and grammar.
Though both radical and postmodern criminol-
ogy come out of the conflict tradition (Arrigo &
Bernard, 1997) and thus understand conflict
rather than consensus as the overriding human
2 POSTMODERN CRIMINOLOGY
premise, conflict arises and manifests itself in
distinct ways for the two schools of thought.
Radical criminology views conflict as occurring
primarily between groups vying for material
dominance; postmodern criminology focuses
instead upon struggles over ways of knowing and
communicating reality.
Henry and Milovanovic (1991) redefine crime
to better fit a postmodern conception. Because
postmodernists understand knowledge claims as
domination, crime must be broadened to encom-
pass all forms of injury and injustice. Crime,
in this conceptualization, means any harm that
results from investing human time or energy into
power relations (Barak, Henry, & Milovanovic,
1997). Harm comes from myriad unequal
relationships where people are fundamentally
disrespected or prevented from becoming fully
social beings (Henry & Milovanovic 1996). They
further separate crime into two types. The first
are crimes of reduction, which signify any loss
relative to one’s previous standing (Henry &
Milovanovic, 1996). These crimes may be losses
of property such as theft, losses of health or life
such as assault or homicide, or losses of dignity
such as rape or hate crime. The second type are
crimes of repression, which occur when people
are limited in their humanity and full potential
(Henry & Milovanovic, 1996). When people
suffer from an externally-imposed boundary like
poverty, sexism, racism, or any other institu-
tionalized restriction, this construction similarly
views them as crime victims.
One stream of postmodern thought to recently
emerge in criminology is that of constitutive
criminology. Milovanovic (1996) rejects the lin-
ear systems and correlation models dominant
in criminological thought. Borrowing insights
from chaos theory in the physical sciences, he
suggests using nonlinear models and maps in
order to demonstrate “disproportional effects”
and the various periodicities and bifurcations
which arise even for the same parameter value
(Milovanovic, 1996). Through this new, multi-
dimensional model, vertical white bands appear
and may be utilized to reveal “order out of disor-
der” (Milovanovic, 1996, p. 573). Without delving
deeply into his complex method, Milovanovic
argues that predictive models and linear causality
should be rejected in the social sciences as cer-
tainty may not exist, free will and determinism
may not be incompatible with one another, and
the various semiotic fictions created by the public
and even some criminologists are what truly
accounts for crime (Henry & Milovanovic, 1991;
Milovanovic, 1996).
This theoretical tradition concludes that minor
alterations of existing policies will not result in
any significant change in crime rates as causa-
tion is far more complicated than the orderly
constructions previously designed in modern
social science scholarship. Constitutive crim-
inology rejects the search for singular causal
forces of crime and views crime as the result of
numerous elements, such as individuals, culture,
community, and social structure all interacting
together and expressed through the discourses
by which we describe the world. Because crime
phenomena both determine and are determined
by the narratives used to describe them, the best
way to reduce crime is to reduce the human
investment in the ideology of crime production
and prevention and replace our unhealthy dis-
course with one of peace and inclusion (Henry &
Milovanovic, 1991).
The ultimate postmodern goal is to under-
stand new ways of knowing. In order to move
beyond modern notions of linear causality, some
postmodern criminologists apply chaos theory,
a system of nonlinear dynamic systems origi-
nally formulated in mathematics and physics,
to the social sciences. This new knowledge is
designed to challenge scholars with a different
methodology and way of conceptualizing order
and disorder. One notable chaos criminologist,
T. R. Young (1991, 1998), concludes that both
order and chaos are integral parts of the human
condition. Linguistic scholarship reveals that
language requires both structure and variation in
order to be useful and adaptable. The same ten-
sion between rule maintenance and transgression
operates in the social system. Chaos criminol-
ogy emphasizes that we must comprehend the
importance of variability and chaos in addition
to uniformity and disorder in order to even
peripherally understand causality. Young (1991)
asserts that through unconventional methods
such as nonlinear dynamics, one can locate deter-
ministic chaos which allows for the development
of irregular solutions. By observing bifurcations
and abandoning unidirectional causal connec-
tions, scholars ought to locate “change points”
 POSTMODERN CRIMINOLOGY
where new patterns of behavior emerge (Young,
1991). Thus, the search ought not to be for high
correlations but for changing correlations, and
this is thought to free scholars to analyze the dual
nature of autonomy and determinism (Young,
1998).
Young (1998) argues that the solution to crime
is not to augment law and order in all circum-
stances. The correct amount of order is crucial,
and after a certain point additional control
only leads to further disorder. Chaos criminology
argues that the ultimate goal is the correct amount
of order, not order over all else; thus concepts of
chaos and disorder should not be wholly pejora-
tive (Young, 1991). Chaos should not be reduced
to fault or sin, as it holds the potential for radical
social transformation and constitutes creativity,
variation, and spontaneity in human relation-
ships. Accordingly, Young (1991) pleads for a
twenty-first-century postmodern criminology
which avoids the safety of orthodox criminology
and is not afraid to explore the ways that chaos
can be beneficial to academia and the larger
society.
Since the inception of postmodernism, semi-
otics and discourse analysis have been utilized.
However, these developments, which highlight
the significance of language, symbols, and signs,
have only recently been applied to criminological
concerns. Because postmodern criminologists
assert the primacy of language, they often utilize
specific jargon, engage in wordplay, and invent
neologisms. Through postmodern deconstruc-
tion, they analyze texts to break through layers
of hegemonic domination. Because “opposi-
tional” language is not incorporated into the
dominant forms of communication, alternative
ways of knowing are entirely dismissed (Arrigo &
Bernard, 1997, p. 44). Though objective reality
is a false goal, one may at least break through
the domination of others to access his/her own
subjectivity.
Because scientific knowledge is questioned,
conventional criminological concepts are
believed to be fraught with contradictions. For
example, the term “violence” is a representation
entirely dependent upon cultural and historical
contexts, without which it is meaningless and
wildly variable. For postmodernists, the chal-
lenge is to understand why violence symbolizes
what it does and how the things associated with
3
the word “violence” (like a bar fight or other
street crime) come to be conceptualized. This is
done via the process of deconstruction, which
breaks through social construction and reveals
the power dynamics and group interests beneath.
In this way, it is similar to radical criminology,
yet it goes further. Rather than being concerned,
as the Marxists are, with those who control the
means of economic production, postmodernists
are concerned with those who control the means
of language production with the power to define
law and crime (Arrigo & Bernard, 1997). Of
course, both critical criminologies are united by
the recognition that those who control linguistic
production, more often than not, are the political
and economic elite (Arrigo & Bernard, 1997).
An excellent example of the linguistic side of
postmodern criminology is Young (1996). Via
her analysis of criminal conversations and outlaw
texts, she reveals what various “images of crime”
constitute in the public and private mind. Young
argues that when we read or hear about criminals
or deviants being marginalized or exiled from a
community, we both empathetically see ourselves
in the role of the outlaw and simultaneously
fully partake in the separation of the outlaw’s
behavior from our own. Through her own outlaw
texts, Young seeks to reconcile this contradiction,
which she views as a false dichotomy, to gain
insight into the border between discourse and
reality.
Throughout its history, postmodernism has
often been met with harsh criticism. One of the
most trenchant, Russell (1997), leveled numerous
claims against the validity and utility of post-
modern criminology. Russell asserts that the
postmodern movement, as a whole, is conser-
vative and gutless in its lack of commitment to
extensive structural social change. Further, he
found the suggestion that discourse is the direst
threat to the powerless to be a naive and idealistic
claim. According to Russell, postmodernism is
dangerous in its relativism and denial of Enlight-
enment ideals of truth and justice. He finds its
discussion of the ills of dominant elite discourse
expressed with dense and ostentatious verbosity
to be hypocritical. Further, Russell (1997, p. 72)
asserts that postmodernism decries meta-theory
and meta-narratives, yet it itself is another
meta-narrative “seeking to present a ‘totalized’
understanding of the world.” He concludes
 4 POSTMODERN CRIMINOLOGY
that postmodern thought superficially stresses
altering private lifestyle and symbols rather than
deep-seated socio-political structures.
Whatever validity these criticisms hold, by and
large they represent concerns with postmodern
theory as a whole rather than with the specific
criminological branch of postmodernism. While
several innovative thinkers have worked fervently
to formulate a new postmodern criminological
paradigm, their impact on orthodox criminology
remains, at present, fairly marginal. However,
postmodern criminology has already made great
strides to rethink crime definitions, challenge
criminological claims of objective knowledge,
reject linear causality and prediction, assert the
potentially positive aspects of disorder, and apply
the analysis of symbols and language to the
scholarship on crime and punishment.
SEE ALSO: Constitutive Criminology; Critical
Criminology; Foucault, Michel.
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