Abstract
This article examines tensions that for the most part exist outside green criminology that could—and should—be brought under the green criminological gaze—issues that are not necessarily the province of green criminology but which have implications for the study of environmental crime and harm. Examples include: the conflicting messages that Western society encounters with respect to “victims” and “survivors”; claims of a lack of future orientation (Hayward 2012) in contrast to assertions of a risk-aversion in late modernity (Giddens 1999); frictions between the “precautionary principle” (Magnus 2008) and “precautionary logic” (Aas 2013); and the peculiarities of the “war on youth” (Grossberg 2001) in an era of “overparenting” (Kamenetz 2015) and “overindulged youth” (Kolbert 2012). The goal of the article is less to promulgate an agenda for green criminology than to heighten awareness of issues and contradictions that may contribute to environmental despoliation and degradation or frustrate efforts to address such harm.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Pepinsky’s observation that “[w]hen we hold people responsible, we take over responsibility for the consequences of their actions,” evokes the work of the late Nils Christie (1977) on “conflicts as property.” Given the venue of the seminar where an embryonic version of this article was first presented—the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo—where Christie had been a professor since 1966 until his untimely death in 2015, it seems appropriate to acknowledge the connection between Pepinsky and Christie’s work.
For a similar discussion—of how “redress[ing] environmental harm for some victims may lead to forced changes in industrial practices, potentially putting other victims out of work”—see Hall (2014: 137).
Of course, suggestions of an “environmental victimology” predate the work of Hall and Jarrell and Ozymy and others. For example, Williams’ (1996) article argues for the development of an “environmental victimology” as a discrete area of study—one distinct from an environmental justice approach—and works to define “victimization” in the context of environmental harms. While his piece describes limitations to the environmental justice movement, particularly its subjective definitions of victimization, its assumptions about power, and its taken-for-granted notions of group identity, it makes no explicit reference to “green criminology,” raising the question posed by Goyes and South in this issue of whether something is “green criminology” only if the author(s) say(s) so and use the term. Although this issue is outside the scope of the present article, Williams’ article seems to have become part of the green criminological canon as evidenced by its reproduction in two key readers: South and Beirne (2006) and White (2009).
Green (2006:4) may be overstating matters with his claim that we are experiencing “the emergence of rule by victim groups—‘victimocracy’.” But there is something utterly perverse about legislation that makes police officers a protected class under some states’ hate crime laws (see, e.g., Associated Press 2017; Beitsch 2016; Desrochers 2017; Douglas and Mueller 2016; Izadi 2016; Phillips 2016; Sneed 2015; see generally Wang 2015). As I have argued elsewhere, “police power is not about the control of crime and the minimization of harm, as criminology has so frequently suggested, but is instead a power that exists for the production and reproduction of order and capitalism and the securing of insecurity” (McClanahan and Brisman 2017: 334). Given that the police (at least, in the modern nation-state) are often armed with lethal weaponry and invested with the power and capacity to invade privacy and use force—“the ‘rules of engagement’ between the cop and suspect is never reciprocal,” Wall (2016: 1133) reminds us—it stretches the limits of the imagination to think that they are a persecuted group with a history of social disenfranchisement such that they require additional protection under the law. Indeed, the notion of “police-as-victims” renders the definition of “victim” equivalent to its antonym: aggressor, oppressor. Or, in the words of Cantú (2015), expanding hate crime legislation to include violence against the police “paradoxically, give[s] legal protection to a group that is notorious for perpetrating violence against the very people that hate crime laws were originally intended to protect.”
Other scholars and commentators have also commented on how the status of “victim” does not necessarily preclude one from also holding other positions of achieved status. For example, Wright (2016: 331) defines the “victim-hero” as someone “characterised by his/her suffering and by his/her actions of retribution in an effort to redeem the virtue of his/her loved one or of themselves (Anker 2005; Williams 1998)” (emphasis in original). Walklate (2017; see also 2016), to offer another example, distinguishes the categories of “primary,” “secondary,” “tertiary” and “indirect” victims/victimization and promulgates a continuum from the “victim-witness” to “witness-victim.”
For an overview of the Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development (often shortened to the “Rio Declaration”), see Brisman (2011).
References
Aas, K. F. (2013). Globalization and Crime 2/e. London, CA: Sage.
Anker, E. (2005). Villains, victims and heroes: Melodrama, media and September 11. Journal of Communication, 55, 22–37.
Associated Press. (2017). House Oks bill to expand Kentucky’s hate crimes law. Lex18.com. Accessed at http://www.lex18.com/story/34494432/house-oks-bill-to-expand-kentuckys-hate-crimes-law.
Barber, B. (2007). Consumed: How markets corrupt children, infantilize adults and swallow citizens whole. London: Norton.
Barrett, C. J. (2013). Courting kids: Inside an experimental youth court. NewYork: New York University Press.
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Toward a new modernity. London: Sage.
Beirne, P. (1995). The use and abuse of animals in criminology: A brief history and current review. Social Justice, 22(1), 5–31.
Beirne, P. (1997). Rethinking bestiality: Towards a concept of interspecies sexual assault. Theoretical Criminology, 1(3), 317–340.
Beirne, P. (1999). For a nonspeciesist criminology: Animal abuse as an object of study. Criminology, 37(1), 117–147.
Beirne, P. (2009). Confronting animal abuse: Law, criminology, and human-animal relationships. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Beirne, P. (2014). Theriocide: Naming animal killing. International Journal For Crime, Justice And Social Democracy, 3(2), 49–66.
Beitsch, R. (2016). Is killing a police officer a hate crime? PBS NewsHour. Aug 3. Accessed at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/killing-police-officer-hate-crime/.
Brisman, A. (2011). Rio declaration. In D. Chatterjee (Ed.), Encyclopedia of global justice (Vol. 2, pp. 960–961). Heidelberg: Springer.
Brisman, A. (2013). Not a bedtime story: Climate change, neoliberalism, and the future of the arctic. Michigan State International Law Review, 22(1), 241–289.
Brisman, A. (2016). Geometries of crime: How young people perceive crime and justice. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Brisman, A. (In Press). On narrative and green cultural criminology. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy.
Brisman, A., & South, N. (Eds.). (2013). Conclusion: The planned obsolescence of planet earth? How green criminology can help us learn from experience and contribute to our future. In Routledge international handbook of green criminology (pp. 409–417). London: Routledge.
Brisman, A., & South, N. (2015). ‘Life stage dissolution’, Infantilization and anti-social consumption: Implications for de-responsibilization, denial and environmental harm. Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 23(3), 209–221.
Brisman, A., & South, N. (2017). Green cultural criminology, intergenerational (in)equity and “life stage dissolution”. In M. Hall, J. Maher, A. Nurse, G. Potter, N. South, & T. Wyatt (Eds.), Greening criminology in the 21st century (pp. 219–232). Surrey: Ashgate.
Brisman, A., & South, N. (In Press a). Green criminology. In A. Liebligh, S. Maruna, & L. McAra (Eds.), The oxford handbook of criminology, 6th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brisman, A., South, N. (In Press b). Green criminology. In A. Brisman, E. Carrabine, & N. South (Eds.), The Routledge companion to criminological theory and concepts. London: Routledge.
Brooks, A. C. (2015). The real victims of victimhood. The New York Times. Dec 27, SR19.
Calcutt, A. (2000). Arrested development: Pop culture and the erosion of adulthood. London: Cassell.
Cantú, A. M. (2015). How “hate crimes against police” expose the fatal flaw within hate crime statutes. Truthout. Jan 15. Accessed at http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28543-how-hate-crimes-against-police-expose-the-fatal-flaw-within-hate-crime-statutes.
Carrington, K., & Hogg, R. (2012). History of critical criminology in Australia. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds.), Routledge handbook of critical criminology (pp. 46–60). London: Routledge.
Christie, N. (1977). Conflicts as property. British Journal of Criminology, 17(1), 1–15.
Croall, H. (2007). Food crime. In P. Beirne & N. South (Eds.), Issues in green criminology: Confronting harms against environments, humanity and other animals (pp. 206–229). Cullompton, Devon: Willan.
Croall, H. (2013). Food crime: A green criminology perspective. In N. South & A. Brisman (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of green criminology (pp. 167–183). London: Routledge.
Danesi, M. (2003). Forever young: The ‘teen-aging’ of modern culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Davies, P. A. (2014). Green crime and victimization: Tensions between social and environmental justice. Theoretical Criminology, 18(3), 300–316.
Desrochers, D. (2017). Bill to add first responders to hate-crime law passes House panel. Lexington Herald-Leader. Feb 9, 1A.
Douglas, W., & Mueller, E. (2016). ‘Blue lives matter’: Push to raise penalties for violence against cops. McClatchy DC. May 26. Accessed at http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article80058187.html.
Ferrell, J. (2013). Tangled up in green: Cultural criminology and Green criminology. In N. South & A. Brisman (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of green criminology (pp. 349–364). London: Routledge.
Feuer, A. (2013). ‘Preppers’ pack up for next disaster. Seattle Times Jan 26. Accessed at http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/lsquopreppersrsquo-pack-up-for-next-disaster/.
Fitzgerald, A. J. (2010). The ‘underdog’ as ‘ideal victim’? The attribution of victimhood in the 2007 pet food recall. International Review of Victimology, 17(2), 131–157.
Gerrig, R. J. (Ed.). (2007). The psychology of survivor: Leading pscyhologiss take an unauthorized look at the most elaborate experiment ever conducted. Survivor!. Dallas, TX: Benbella Books Inc.
Gibbs, C., Gore, M. L., Hamm, J. A., Rivers III, L., & Zwickle, A. (In Press). Conservation Criminology. In A. Brisman, E. Carrabine, & N. South (Eds.), The Routledge companion to criminological theory and concepts. London: Routledge.
Gibbs, C., Gore, M. L., McCarrell, E. F., & Rivers III, L. (2010). Introducing conservation criminology: Towards interdisciplinary scholarship on environmental crimes and risk. British Journal of Criminology, 50(1), 124–144.
Gibbs, C., McGarrell, E. F., Axelrod, M., & Rivers III, L. (2011). Conservation criminology and the global trade in electronic waste: Applying a multidisciplinary research framework. International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, 35(4), 327–346.
Giddens, A. (1999). Risk and responsibility. The Modern Law Review, 62(1), 1–10.
Giroux, H. A. (2004). The terror of neoliberalism: Authoritarianism and the eclipse of democracy. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Goyes, D. R., & South, N. (2016). Land-grabs, biopiracy and the inversion of justice in Colombia. British Journal of Criminology, 56(3), 558–577.
Green, D. G. (2006). We’re (nearly) all victims now! How political correctness is undermining our liberal culture. London: Institute for the Study of Civil Society.
Grose, M. (2017). Spoonfed generation: How to raise independent children. Sydney: Random House Australia.
Grossberg, L. (2001). Why does neo-liberalism hate kids? The war on youth and the culture of politics. The Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies, 23(2), 111–136.
Hall, M. (2010). Victims and policy making: A comparative approach. Cullomtpon: Willan Publishing.
Hall, M. (2011). Environmental victims: Challenges for criminology and victimology in the 21st century. Varstvoslovje, Journal of Criminal Justice and Security, 13(4), 317–391.
Hall, M. (2013). Victims of environmental harm: Rights, recognition and redress under national and international law. London: Routledge.
Hall, M. (2014). Environmental harm and environmental victims: Scoping out a ‘green victimology’. International Review of Victimology, 20(1), 129–143.
Hall, M. (2015). Exploring green crime: Introducing the legal, social and criminological contexts of environmental harm. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hall, M. (2016). Criminal redress in cases of environmental victimization: A defence. International Review of Victimology. doi:10.1177/0269758016672027.
Halsey, M., & White, R. (1998). Crime, ecophilosophy and environmental harm. Theoretical Criminology, 2(3), 345–371.
Hayward, K. (2012). Pantomime justice: A cultural criminological analysis of ‘life stage dissolution’. Crime Media Culture, 8(2), 213–229.
Hayward, K., & Young, J. (2012). Cultural criminology. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan, & R. Reiner (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of criminology 5/e (pp. 113–137). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ioffe, J. (2016). Apocalypse now: Survivalists dig in for November 9. Politico. Nov 8. Accessed at http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-2016-preppers-214433.
Itzkoff, D. (2017). Nearing the End of Logan’s Run. The New York Times Feb 19, AR10. Published online at “Hugh Jackman on Nearing the End of Logan’s Run” on Feb 15, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/movies/hugh-jackman-x-men-logan-wolverine.html?_r=0.
Izadi, E. (2016). Louisiana is the first state to offer hate crime protections to police officers. The Washington Post. May 26. Accessed at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/05/26/louisianas-blue-lives-matter-bill-just-became-law/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.de3db762a06b.
Jarrell, M. L., & Ozymy, J. (2012). Real crime, real victims: Environmental crime victims and the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA). Crime, Law and Social Change, 58(4), 373–389.
Jenks, C. (1996). Childhood. London: Routledge.
Kamenetz, A. (2015). How schools are handling an ‘overparenting’ crisis. National public radio. Aug 28. Accessed at http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/08/28/434350484/how-schools-are-handling-an-overparenting-crisis.
Kolbert, E. (2012). Spoiled Rotten. The New Yorker. July 2 (pp. 76–78). http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/07/02/120702crbo_books_kolbert.
Lacitis, E. (2012). ‘Preppers’ pack up for next disaster. Seattle Times. May 14. Accessed at http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/preppers-do-their-best-to-be-ready-for-the-worst/.
Lamb, S. (1999). New versions of victims: Feminists’ struggle with the concept. New York: New York University Press.
Leech, G. (2012). Capitalism: A structural genocide. London: Zed Books.
Magnus, D. (2008). Risk management versus the precautionary principle: Agnotology as a strategy in the debate over genetically engineered organisms. In R. N. Proctor & L. Schiebinger (Eds.), Agnotology: The making and unmaking of ignorance (pp. 250–265). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Matthews, R. (2014). Realist criminology. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
McClanahan, B., & Brisman, A. (2017). Police violence and the failed promise of human rights. In L. Weber, E. Fishwick, & M. Marmo (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of criminology and human rights (pp. 333–341). London: Routledge.
McGarrell, E. F., & Gibbs, C. (2014). Conservation criminology, environmental crime and risk: An application to climate change. Oxford Handbooks Online. 2014-11-03. Oxford University Press. Accessed Nov 7 2014. http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935383.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935383-e-54.
Mollard, A. (2017). Over-parenting is ruining our kids. The Daily Telegraph. Jan 7. Accessed at http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/overparenting-is-ruining-our-kids/news-story/852eead768624f0c5fa648cf195ecf49.
Mooallem, J. (2009). “The end is near!” The New York Times Magazine , 19 April (pp. 28–32, 34).
Pease, K. (2007). Victims and victimisation. In S. Shoham, O. Beck, & M. Kent (Eds.), International handbook of penology and criminal justice. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Pepinsky, H. (2012). Peacemaking criminology. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds.), Routledge handbook of critical criminology (pp. 186–193). London: Routledge.
Phillips, A. (2016). The state where targeting a police officer is a hate crime. The Washington Post. July 8. Accessed at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/08/the-state-where-targeting-a-police-officer-is-a-hate-crime/?utm_term=.5d7e15fbc274.
Piper, C. (2008). Investing in Children: Policy, law and practice in context. Cullompton, Devon: Willan.
Rivers, L., & Gibbs, C. (2011). Applying a conservation criminology framework to common pool natural resource issues. International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, 35(4), 269–291.
Sneed, T. (2015). Hate crime experts skeptical of call for cops to be covered by Federal law. US News & World Report. Jan 8. Accessed at http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/01/08/hate-crime-experts-skeptical-of-call-for-cops-to-be-covered-by-federal-law.
Sollund, R. (2011). Expressions of speciesism: the effects of keeping companion animals on animal abuse, animal trafficking and species decline. Crime, Law and Social Change, 55(5), 437–451.
Sollund, R. (2012). Speciesism as doxic practice versus valuing difference and plurality. In R. Ellefsen, R. Sollund, & G. Larsen (Eds.), Eco-global crimes, contemporary problems and future challenges (pp. 91–113). Surrey: Ashgate.
Sollund, R. (2013). The victimization of women, children and non-human species through trafficking and trade: Crimes understood through an ecofeminist perspective. In N. South & A. Brisman (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of green criminology (pp. 317–330). London: Routledge.
Sollund, R. A. (2015a). The illegal wildlife trade from a norwegian outlook: Tendencies in practice and law enforcement. In R. A. Sollund (Ed.), Green harms and crimes: Critical criminology in a changing world (pp. 147–169). Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sollund, R. A. (2015b). Introduction: Critical green criminology—An agenda for change. In R. A. Sollund (Ed.), Green harms and crimes: Critical criminology in a changing world (pp. 1–26). Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sollund, R. (2017). The animal other: Legal and illegal theriocide. In M. Hall, J. Maher, A. Nurse, G. Potter, N. South & T Wyatt (Eds.), Greening criminology in the 21st century: Contemporary debates and future directions in the study of environmental harm (pp. 79–99). London: Routledge.
Sollund, R. (In press). The use and abuse of animals in wildlife trafficking in Colombia: Practices and injustice. In D. R. Goyes, H. Mol, A. Brisman, & N. South (Eds.), Environmental crime in Latin America: The theft of nature and the poisoning of the land, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
South, N., & Beirne, P. (Eds.). (2006). Green criminology. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate.
Teven, J. J. (2004). Survivor the Amazon: An examination of the persuasive strategies used to outwit, outplay, and outlast the competition. Texas Speech Communication Journal, 29(1), 52–64.
Walklate, S. (2016). The metamorphosis of the victim of crime: From crime to culture and the implications for justice. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(4), 4–16.
Walklate, S. (2017). “Victimhood and witnessing.” Oxford research encyclopedia of crime, media, and popular culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Wall, T. (2016). Ordinary emergency: Drones, police, and geographies of legal terror. Antipode, 48(4), 1122–1139.
Walters, R. (2004). Criminology and genetically modified food. British Journal of Criminology, 44(2), 151–167.
Walters, R. (2006). Crime, bio-agriculture and the exploitation of hunger. British Journal of Criminology, 46(1), 26–45.
Walters, R. (2011). Eco crime and genetically modified food. Abingdon: Routledge.
Wang, Y. (2015). Should attacking police officers become a hate crime? A Minnesota city says yes. The Washington Post. Oct 8. Accessed at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/08/should-attacking-police-officers-become-a-hate-crime-a-minnesota-city-says-yes/?utm_term=.8a0d8659f315.
White, R. (Ed.). (2009). Environmental crime: A reader. Cullompton, Devon: Willan.
White, R. (2011a). Climate change, uncertain futures and the sociology of youth. Youth Studies Australia, 30(3), 13–19.
White, R. (2011b). Transnational environmental crime: Toward an eco-global criminology. Abingdon: Routledge.
White, R. (2013). Environmental harm: An eco-justice perspective. Bristol: Policy Press.
White, R., & Heckenberg, D. (2014). Green criminology: An introduction to the study of environmental harm. London: Routledge.
Williams, C. (1996). An environmental victimology. Social Justice, 23(4), 16–40.
Williams, L. (1998). Melodrama revisited. In N. Browne (Ed.), Refiguring American film genres (pp. 42–88). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Wilson, C., Robinson, T., & Callister, M. (2012). Surviving Survivor: A content analysis of antisocial behavior and its context in a popular reality television show. Mass Communication and Society, 15(2), 261–283.
Wright, S. (2016). “Ah … the power of mothers”: Bereaved mothers as victim-heroes in media enacted crusades for justice. Crime Media Culture, 12(3), 327–343.
Zitek, E. M., Jordan, A. H., Monin, B., & Leach, F. R. (2010). Victim entitlement to behave selfishly. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), 245–255.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Brisman, A. Tensions for Green Criminology. Crit Crim 25, 311–323 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-017-9365-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-017-9365-8