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Generative Worlds of White-Collar Crime

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International Handbook of White-Collar and Corporate Crime

Abstract

A complex of issues surrounding white-collar crime has flummoxed investigators for nearly seven decades. They originate in disagreement over how to distinguish and define the concept and whether there is significant analytic payoff from doing so. This paper begins by briefly noting this definitional controversy and lays out an approach that is employed in the remainder of the paper. Next the paper notes that regardless of how white-collar crime is defined research shows striking differences between white-collar and common offenders. The focus then shifts to class-based differences in lives and child-rearing that provide working-class citizens and citizens of privilege with significantly different cultural capital. A major focus is constructions of white-collar crime by the latter that distinguish them from what is characteristic of street offenders. The paper concludes with an interpretation of white-collar-crime that is committed by privileged citizens that situates it in context of social class and cultural capital.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tennessee, Knoxville

    Neal Shover (Professor of Sociology)

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  1. Neal Shover
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminology, Law and Society School of Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, 92697-7080, USA

    Henry N. Pontell  & Gilbert Geis  & 

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Shover, N. (2007). Generative Worlds of White-Collar Crime. In: Pontell, H.N., Geis, G. (eds) International Handbook of White-Collar and Corporate Crime. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34111-8_4

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