Abstract
Radical American criminology became a major force following the turbulent decade of the 1960s. The relative complacency of the most affluent and powerful country in the world was jolted by a series of shocks. It was challenged by the war in Vietnam, in which a nation of peasants was moving towards inflicting military defeat on the South Vietnamese and the United States. The war had a profoundly radicalizing effect on young Americans. Young men were liable for the draft, which presented them with an agonizing personal moral choice: either fight for the army of an imperial power which was propping up the corrupt and dubiously democratic regime in South Vietnam; or face obloquy and imprisonment, or exile, or engage in various dubious methods of evading the call to duty. Black Americans had achieved most of what they sought in the American South through non-violent protest, but were now attacking informal segregation in the north and west by force of arms in the case of the Black Panthers or simply by rioting. The material contentment of the 1950s was challenged by hippies in the 1960s. Universities played a significant role in these developments. Their students became radicalized or dropped out, and many of the younger faculty provided intellectual support.
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Notes
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© 2008 Mark Cowling
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Cowling, M. (2008). Radical US Criminology. In: Marxism and Criminological Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234710_5
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