Crime as a Category—Domestic and Globalized

Abstract

In a succinct article titled “Toward a Radical Criminology,” published in the first edition of The Politics of Law—A Progressive Critique, William Chambliss (1982) juxtaposed the traditional question that criminology asked, “Why is it that some people commit crime while others do not?” with the sociology of law question, “Why are some acts defined by law as criminal while others are not?” (ibid.:230). He explains the reappraisal of the leading question as due to the 1960s civil rights demonstrations, anti — Vietnam War protests, and the media reporting on blatant criminality by political leaders and giant corporations. These, among other happenings, forced a reappraisal of criminology’s focus on the individual and caused what Chambliss called a “paradigm revolution,” encompassing the more broadly liberal understandings of criminal justice of the 1950s and 1960s.

It is a crime to kill a neighbor, an act of heroism to kill an enemy, but who is an enemy and who is a neighbor is purely a matter of social definition.

—E. R. Leach (1968:27)

An earlier version of this paper was published in 2001 Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, Vol XIX. My thanks to Jed Kroacke for his help in preparing this revision.