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Constitutive criminology

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Constitutive criminology is an affirmitive criminology theory posited by Stuart Henry and Dragan Milovanovic in Constitutive criminology: beyond postmodernism(1996) which was inspired by Anthony Giddens The Constitution of Society(1984) where Giddens outlined his theory of structuration.[1][2]

History of Theory

Founded by Dragan Milovanovic, Stuart Henry, Gregg Barak, and Bruce Arrigo, this constitutive theory was based on the post modernist concepts of critical criminology. Constitutive criminology was introduced in the 1980s, in Stuart Henry's studies on control in the workplace and crime.[3] The center piece of this constitutive theory is that crime and its control cannot be removed from the structural and cultural contexts in its entirety in which its produced. One main goal is for this theory to redefine crime as "the harm resulting from humans investing energy in harm-producing relations of power."[4] It also characterizes two types of harm: reduction and repression.[5] Offenders are described as "excessive investors investing energy to make a difference on others without those others having the ability to make a difference on them" whereas victims are described as those "who suffer the pain of being dined their own humanity, the power to make a difference."[5][6].

Influences

Constitutive criminology has a very vast array of individual ideas and theories that have come to shape what it is today. It has drawn ideas from well-known critical social theories to having roots within the chaos theory and postmodernism. [7] strong influence are a handful of scholars whose influences have been helpful in pushing this theory in new directions while also developing their own analysis.

Roots of Constitutive Theory

1. Symbolic Interactionism is the theory that human interaction and communication is facilitated by gestures, words, and other symbols with conventional meanings. [8]
2. Social Constructionism is the thought referring to the ways social phenoma are created, established, and then turned into human tradition. [8]
3. Phenomenology, founded by Edmund Husserl in 1900, believes in suspending all prior assumptions about causality and consequences in order to investigate the essence of meaning of immediate lived experience. [9]
4. Ethnomethodology is the method of nonspecialist' commonsense understanding of the organization and structure of society.[9]
5. Marxist Theory, influenced by Karl Marx, stats that crime and control have the potential to affect the other at the same moment in time from opposite directions with different goals inherent in the construction of each. [10]
6. Poststructural Theory maintains the meanings and intellectual categories are always unstable and ever changing. [8]
7. Structuration Theory, introduced by Anthony Giddens (1984), claims that not only is society socially constructed but it is formed by human agents through their everyday activities. [8]
8. Discourse Analysis covers the many different number of analyzing written, spoken, sign language, or any other important semiotic event. [10]


Constitutive criminology also has roots in chaos theory, structural coupling, strategic essentialism, topology theory, relational sets, critical race theory and intersections, autopoietic systems, and dialectical materalism

Works of Henry & Milovanovic

In 1989 Milovanovic approached Stuart Henry with the request of a six page, double spaced response on why he felt that Marty Schwartz' Critical Criminologist did not give justice to this critical theory. After joining forces with Milovanovic, Henry published a small work under this new title, The Critical Criminologist in 1989. From that point on, the two criminologist have teamed up and produced many works under the allegiance to their new theory, Constitutive Criminology.

Works by the Year

1991: Two preliminary position papers
1992: Third paper
1993: Short paper on definition of crime
1996: First book-length work; Constitutive Criminology: Beyond Postmodernism
1999: Edited; Constitutive Criminology at Work; Applications to Crime and Justice

Main Concepts

Constitutive Criminology, influenced by postmodernism, tries to understand the coproduction of crime by humans in their everyday life with products, institutions, and the ever widening societal structure. While this theory was being constructed, Henry and Milovanovic based it on the their main speculations about human nature and society around the postmodernists views on the constitution of crime. This intellectual theory covers the views about the individual and human behavior, society, crime and its victims, as well as our social structure. [11]

Human Agents & Behavior

Once inside this in-depth theory, the human agent is viewed as an active creator of his or her social environment, while at the same time the social environment is concurrently producing those who created it. For the human subjects and their environment to simultaneously evolve, transformations throughout their surroundings are made by interactions with other agents. [12] Henry and Milovanovic's concept of a "recovering subject" states that a human will never fully live their actively produced world, also the human subject is never a completed product if his environment. [13]Humans view themselves as more acted upon than acting", Giddens' wrote in 1984. With each human agent feeling so small on such a vast planet, many subjects forget their role in creating the social world.[14]

Justice Practices

With the strategy of less damaging words, Henry and Milovanovic believe they can reduce the frequency of harm, while trying to accomplish a mass social transformation.[15]The first point of attack in this transformation is to change the discourse that is absorbed in mainstream culture. For this goal to be met, large-scale social groups must help in this transformation, which in this case in the news media. With the news media as popular as it has become, it has a very strong influence on todays popular culture. The media produces and spreads the politically created social problems, such as assault, alcohol abuse, or robberies, which in turn causes the social world to act in more harmful ways. As the media portrays crime news in harmful ways, Henry and Milovanovic urges other criminologists to step up and execute a less harmful discourse for the social world to see and begin to understand.[16]

Knowledge

Constitutive criminology uses the postmodernists' view of knowledge as being political, subjective, and placed in order of rank. Knowledge can be used to take control of someone or something, while lacking values and a neutral point of view. According to Henry, "Use of knowledge is an expression of power or resistance to power."[17]He also sees knowledge as a consultation repeatedly being built and used by humans to make claims for the soul use of politics within ones actions. Knowledge and its conditions have always been a uniting concern within this theory, while subjects are slowly becoming more and more alike due to the media and the avalanche of propaganda that follows. [18]

Bibliography

References
  1. ^ O'Brien p. 25
  2. ^ Henry, p. ix, 1996
  3. ^ Curran p. 2
  4. ^ O'Brien p. 26
  5. ^ a b O'Brien p. 27
  6. ^ Henry, p. 116, 1996
  7. ^ Giddens p. 67
  8. ^ a b c d Henry/Milovanovic p. 19
  9. ^ a b Henry/Milovanovic p. 18
  10. ^ a b Henry/Milovanovic p. 20
  11. ^ Giddens p. 166
  12. ^ Einstadter p. 8
  13. ^ Henry/Milovanovic p. 75
  14. ^ Giddens p. 5
  15. ^ Henry/Milovanovic p. 107
  16. ^ Einstadter p. 6
  17. ^ Henry/Milovanovic p. 133
  18. ^ Giddens p. 338
Sources
  • Henry, Stuart; Milovanovic, Dragan (1996). Constitutive criminology: beyond postmodernism. Sage Publications. ISBN 9780803975842. Retrieved 12 January 2011.
  • O'Brien, Martin; Yar, Majid (2008-08-19). Criminology: the key concepts. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780415427937. Retrieved 12 January 2011.
  • Giddens, Anthony (1984). The Constitution of Society. University of California Press. ISBN 0520052927. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); External link in |title= (help)
  • Henry, Stuart (1999). Constitutive Criminology at Work: applications to Crime and Justice. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, Albany. pp. 3–154. ISBN 0-7914-4193-8. {{cite book}}: External link in |title= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Cowling, Mark. "Internet Journal of Criminology" (PDF). Postmodern Policies? The Erratic Interventions of Constitutive Criminology. Retrieved 6 October 2011.
  • Curran, Jeanne. "A Justice Site". Constitutive Theory of Criminology. Retrieved 11 November 2011.
  • Einstadter, Werner (2006). Criminological theory: Analysis of its Underlying Assumptions. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ISBN 13:9780742542914. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
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