Abstract
What is a criminological imagination for? This paper considers
developments in criminological theory that question orthodox concerns
with contesting representational claims about crime and control,
emphasising instead the performative qualities of criminological thought;
that theory brings into being the very social relations it then explains.
Against the proposition that performativity liberates criminological
thought from the burdens of sociological realism, it is argued the two are
interdependent; criminological futures are invented through
representations of the present. Further, a rejection of sociological realism
obviates the anterior conditions of any particular imagination, notably
other, competing, imaginaries. This anteriority is demonstrated through
reference to four inventions of ‘community safety’, a floating signifier
within contemporary criminology with no fixed referent and a multiplicity
of significations. Rather than demonstrating the detachment of
performative and representational claims, the polyvalence of this concept
reveals the necessary dependence of each invention on contested
representations of the present; of what community safety ‘really’ is about.
| Item Type: |
Monograph
(Working Paper)
|
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Status: |
Published |
| Schools: |
Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education) |
| Subjects: |
H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) |
| Publisher: |
Cardiff University |
| Date of First Compliant Deposit: |
30 March 2016 |
| Last Modified: |
06 Feb 2020 21:58 |
| URI: |
http://orca-mwe.cf.ac.uk/id/eprint/24274 |
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