Theorising and Researching the Youth Crime Nexus: Habitus, Reflexivity and the Political Ecology of Social Practices

Abstract

In the discussion that follows, I will explain how and why, in a research project on young people’s pathways into and out of crime, we applied Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Understanding how the work of Bourdieu became central to the project requires an understanding of the limits of theory within criminology and an understanding of why concepts such as habitus emerged as central to the analysis. Throughout history, the ‘youth crime problem’ has attracted substantial attention from within the social sciences. Much work within criminology has been dominated by the search for understanding the individual motivations that underpinned the actions of the ‘juvenile delinquent’. As a result, theories and research methodologies that explore the youth crime nexus are strongly shaped and influenced by criminological assumptions about ‘cause and effect’. In the first part of this chapter, I will give a brief history of this approach, highlighting core weaknesses and the limited understandings of ecology and social action embedded within theories that focus on youth offending. In the second part of the chapter, I will show how the work of Pierre Bourdieu, especially around habitus, reflexivity and social practice, offered an alternative and more sophisticated approach to understanding young people’s relationship with crime. By drawing on my experience researching young people’s relationship with crime in highly disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the UK, I will show how the concept of habitus makes an ‘analytical bridge’ between empirical data and social theory.