Cultural Criminology
Definition
An approach that studies crime, deviance and their control as expressions of meaning, style and emotion, drawing on subcultural theory, media studies and existential sociology rather than positivist or rational choice models.
Related terms
- Edgework
- Stephen Lyng's term for voluntary risk taking that pushes a person toward the boundary between control and chaos, used to explain the...
- Iconography of Crime and Punishment
- Eamonn Carrabine's approach to tracing recurring visual conventions, such as the hooded suspect or the barred cell, across news, art and official...
- Moral Panic
- A period of intense, media-driven public anxiety about a group or behaviour perceived as an exceptional threat to social order. Coined by...
- Seductions of Crime
- Jack Katz's phrase for the situational, emotional and sensory attractions that draw a person toward committing an offence in the moment, as...
- Visual Criminology
- A field that treats images, mugshots, crime scene photographs, film and surveillance footage, as primary evidence of how crime and justice are...