Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen: The Fictional Reality and the Criminological Imagination

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10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley

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Cr i mi nology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen



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Th e Fic tio na l R eal i t y an d t h e C r im ino lo gic a l I m agi n at i o n

Jon Frauley



Cr i mi nology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen

CRIMINOLOGY, DEVIANCE, AND THE SILVER SCREEN

Copyright © Jon Frauley, 2010.

First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978-0-230-61516-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frauley, Jon, 1972– Criminology, deviance, and the silver screen : the fictional reality and the criminological imagination / Jon Frauley. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-230-61516-8 (hardback) 1. Crime films—United States. 2. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) in motion pictures. 3. Reality in art. 4. Criminology—United States. I. Title. PN1995.9.C66F73 2010 791.43'6556—dc22

2010021215

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: December 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.



All rights reserved.


To my cherished family—Leigh, Isobel, and Amelia


—Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals



There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective “knowing”; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our “concept” of this thing, our “objectivity,” be.

Acknowledgments

ix

Preface

xi

1

Remarks on Conceptualizing, Analytic Languages, and the Disciplined Imagination

1

2

Criminology and the Fictional Social Reality

31

3

The Criminological Imagination

73

4

Moral Transcendence and Symbolic Interaction in Falling Down

99

5

Subculture and American History X

123

6

Pathology, Power, and Medicalization in K-PAX

157

7

Biopolitics and the Governance of Genetic Capital in GATTACA

195

Notes

217

References

229

Index

245



Contents




Many thanks to all those who have helped me along the way, especially Frank Pearce and R. Paul Datta. If nothing else, Frank Pearce has taught me that systematic and rigorous theorizing is a craft that good, critical, and relevant social science and critically minded, politically and socially conscious human beings cannot do without. That this practice is often neglected tells us not about its dispensability but about the state of sociological and criminological scholarship today. I owe a great debt to him for my own intellectual formation. Thanks to Richard J. F. Day, Laureen Snider, Roberta Hamilton, and Terry Willet. Although it has been years since I studied with them, they have left an indelible mark on me. Thanks to Erich Schellhammer and Alan Hunt for guiding me toward and through some important intellectual puzzles. To all those unnamed but indispensable souls who have helped me out in times of need. I also express gratitude to my colleagues in the Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa, for creating a dynamic and intellectually stimulating environment and for taking a chance and giving me a job. Thanks to our excellent and invaluable support staff whom I could not do without. Thanks to Peter Kraska for being a remote but important interlocutor, to Noel Ward for his friendship over many years, and to George Rigakos for his support and friendship. I also thank Terry Tatum, director of research (Historic Preservation Division, Department of Zoning and Land Use Planning, City of Chicago), for her quick and invaluable assistance and making it possible for me to use the photo of the historic Uptown Theatre in Chicago as the cover of this book. I also express my gratitude to Samantha Hasey and Burke Gerstenschlager at Palgrave for their patience and for working with me to bring this book to print (well beyond its initial due date). Lastly, and most importantly, this book is dedicated with thanks to my two beautiful little girls, Isobel and Amelia and my lovely wife, Leigh, for enriching my life. Thank you, Leigh, for your love and dedication.



Acknowledgments




This is not a book about film. It is about the usefulness of fictional realities for a craft practice of theorizing. It uses film as a vehicle for analytic reflection on criminological and sociological ideas and as a tool for illustrating these ideas. These ideas, these concepts, can and must be operated to extract criminological significance and meaning from social objects. In this sense, they are tools. The analytic languages of criminology and sociology are sometimes mistaken for hypothetical descriptions of phenomena; this book argues against this view. Our analytic languages provide us with tools for description and analysis: tools that can be refined through use and which enable and constrain our examiniations. Fictional realities, whether literature or film, are social objects that can be utilized to help us grapple with and clarify our analytic languages. They are especially useful for illustrating the importance of imaginative and creative thinking for social science. They contain arguments and insights, however rudimentary, about our social world. They are nontraditional sources of information for scholars to puzzle through. They are empirical referents for use in demonstrating analysis and illuminating the strengths and weaknesses of our analytic languages. This text focuses on film because films help us reflect on the analytic languages of social science in creative and imaginative ways. There seems to be a dearth of imagination and creativity in criminology today. Criminology has always been a semiprofessional field, long fragmented and marked by conflict over what ought to be its proper objects of study, methods, and procedures for knowledge production. There has also been controversy surrounding its status as a social science, among other things. I have often contemplated these issues in my writings and through my teaching. I have struggled to make sense of the place and role of social theory in criminology. It is especially puzzling for some students and perhaps colleagues to make sense of my courses that emphasize theorizing itself, not just the content of theories. In the classroom, I think that students and professors who are accustomed to the study of surveys of information to later



Preface

Preface

be regurgitated on a test or employed in a thesis are frustrated by my emphasis on theorizing. Sadly, seldom do students wonder from where a particular set of concepts have come. Over many years I have tried to teach theorizing, thinking theoretically and conceptually, no matter which courses I have taught, because I believe that thinking conceptually and imaginatively should not be reserved only for “theory” courses. All social scientists ought to be able to contemplate abstractions and work in a considered way with abstract concepts to forge carefully crafted analytical narratives. This book is the outcome of my interest in theoretical practice and pedagogy. I have utilized film and fiction in my teaching for many years in an attempt to show students that thinking systematically, rigorously, reflexively, and imaginatively is more important than memorizing content. One must have an imagination and use it to make sense of things, to make connections between things that are seemingly unrelated, and to reveal something new in what one is studying. Importantly, good social science demands a disciplined imagination. I think that engaging with fictional realities through a circumspect use with reflection on our analytic languages goes a long way to unlocking that imagination.



xii

4

Remarks on Conceptualizing, Ana ly ti c Languages, and the Di sci plined Imagination

T

I ntro duc ing Th emes and P remises o f th e Book

he impetus for this book is largely dissatisfaction with the dominant understanding of the place and role of theory and theorizing within criminology and sociology. The book argues for what I call a “craftenterprise” approach to theory, which is outlined in this chapter. This is distinguished from a “history-of-ideas” approach. The craft-enterprise approach involves a systematic and considered practice of conceptualizing, and the history-of-ideas approach involves a narrative style of relaying information. That is, craft-enterprise emphasizes “doing” theory, and the history-of-ideas approach focuses more on the receiving of information about theories. “Theory” in this text is understood as something that requires a craft practice for its production as well as its application. The use of “craft practice” suggests a time-consuming, methodical, rigorous, reflexive, and systematic endeavor. As Ian Craib (1984) has persuasively argued, we routinely encounter theory as a finished product but rarely are we asked to contemplate the process of its production. Likewise, as José López (2003) has remarked, students are often told to go out and “do” research but seldom are they tasked with “doing” theory. “Doing” theory, to draw on Craib, is to explicitly engage in thinking conceptually, a crucial and fundamental aspect of all social scientific analysis. In advocating a craft-enterprise approach to theory, this book also argues for what I am calling the “fictional reality.” The fictional reality, 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Chapter 1

Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen

as experienced through literature and film, is a useful analytical and pedagogical tool. Theory as an instrument for analysis requires a craft enterprise for its production and reformulation; the use of fictional realities serves as a strategy to illustrate theorizing as an analytical practice involving examining, explicating, formulating, or reformulating concepts. If theory is held to be a practice where one engages in systematic conceptual work, a “hands-on” pedagogical approach makes sense. The problem, however, is the pervasive history-of-ideas approach to theory, which does not advocate or express an active and engaged approach to theorizing. The history of ideas model does not advocate or draw attention to the ideas examined as the outcome of a practice of theorizing. This book argues that the process of theorizing or the practicing of theory is centrally important for criminology and sociology. It argues in favor of the “craft-enterprise” approach to analysis and pedagogy, centered on engagement with fictional social realities. The “fictional reality” is a fictional social world that can serve as an empirical referent to ground theorizing (i.e., the operation, formulation, or reformulation of analytic concepts). Fictional worlds offer contained social realities that can be used to exemplify abstract concepts and can also operate as empirical referents to which our concepts and theories can be applied. In this way, clarification can be gained as to the explanatory or descriptive limits and strengths of the tools that social scientists routinely operate, and as such, avenues are opened for reformulation or extension of concepts (or perhaps the production of new ones). The importance given to theoretical practice, however, complicates some common understandings of what theory is. Much theory teaching within criminology and sociology and many works published in these disciplines (more so in criminology than sociology) situate theory as concerning a stock of ideas or perspectives or, to borrow from Alan Hunt (1989) and Anthony Woodiwiss (1990), a set of “cereal boxes” that patiently await consumption or a “buffet or smorgasbord of ideas” to be eclectically mashed up. For example, it is common to see theories presented as if they are perspectives or descriptions of the world. This, however, is inappropriate if we are to focus on the process of their use or production (including their reformulation). We might see them as descriptions but only in the limited sense that they are outcomes of conceptual work and indicative of that work. Following this idea, this book seeks to illustrate the use of theories and operation of concepts, rather than the description of content. It would be equally wrong in this light to attempt to teach theory as if theories were simply clusters of information that could be 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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disseminated through an encyclopedic text for consumption by readers. Such an encyclopedic-consumptive approach (i.e., a “history of ideas”) offers neat and tidy summations of key terms, but it does not enable one to grapple with the process from which such “key terms” were produced or how such “key terms” have been made not only to interrelate with one another (and thus derive their meaning and power as analytic concepts) but also to refer to extralinguistic things (or in some cases to other concepts). The encyclopedic-consumptive model also does not enable one to grapple with some of the conflicts that theories represent; that is, conceptual frameworks are borne of conflict and often conflict with one another. This is more than a simple matter of competing perspectives or descriptions. Sometimes differences can be resolved or compatibilities can be found, but often one has to simply be content to see in these rival positions a basis for producing competing and sometimes conflicting explanations of social phenomena. What is missing from the encyclopedic-consumptive view is the notion that theories are outcomes of a practice of theorizing that is circumscribed by conflict and contestation. All positions on deviance, according to Stephen Pfohl, originate from “historically specific standpoints. They employ the perspectives of particular authors within contradictory and often politically charged social contexts” (1994, 6). The fact that the “images” of crime and deviance produced are “divided along disciplinary lines” (Pfohl 1994, 6) suggests that conflict is unavoidable. For Pfohl the production of analytical narratives and the use of analytic concepts are inherently political because “all theories politically empower (if only temporarily) certain viewpoints over others” (1994, 9). The production of analytical narratives and the “power effects” of their use “are never neutral scientific matters. They are always political as well as scientific concerns, connected to the historical organization of both power and knowledge. Who gains and who loses as certain perspectives take on the accent of truth? To ask this question is to begin theorizing, not only about deviance, but also about how various theories of nonconformity contribute to or challenge existing relations of power” (Pfohl 1994, 8). I have not endeavored to write a textbook but rather a scholarly and intellectually engaging text on theory and theorizing, taking the “criminological imagination” and the “fictional reality” as my points of departure. In doing so, I explore and argue for the use of the fictional reality as both an analytical and pedagogical tool and situate this within, and thus also advocate for, a craft-enterprise approach to theory that is characterized by a disciplined imagination. I attempt to break with the all too pervasive assumption within sociology and 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Conceptualizing, Languages, and Disciplined Imagination


criminology that theorizing and working with primary texts in a systematic and analytical way is too difficult for undergraduate students or somehow “second order” to the task of doing research. I once had a reviewer, many years ago, comment on one of my since published manuscripts, claiming that students “need to learn to walk before they can run.” (Running was equated to theorizing and walking to consuming the content of existing theories.) This comment reflects the encyclopedic-consumptive model that this book argues against. If we substitute “thinking conceptually” for “theorizing,” we begin to expose some of the incorrect assumptions of the common way of thinking about theory: abstract conceptualizing is commonly thought to be beyond the capacity of most or not required for empirical research. This, of course, is nonsense. Another related problem with this view is that it assumes that content is necessary before one begins to think theoretically or grapple with abstract concepts. As Bourdieu (1992), Bourdieu et al. (1991), Craib (1984), Gramsci (1957), Hunt (1989), López (1993), Frank Pearce (1989), and others have persuasively argued, it is simply not true that thinking conceptually is dependent on absorbing or consuming content. All people routinely grapple with abstract concepts; the issue is not whether this is done but how. Thinking theoretically, according to Craib and Gramsci, is something that must be done in the course of everyday life. The question then becomes, “How well is this done?” The authors mentioned argue for a reflexive, circumspect, methodical, systematic, and self-aware practice. One’s theorizing may be more informed and considered if one has contemplated the content of existing theories, but this is not a prerequisite for thinking systematically, analytically, or critically. Likewise, a content-centered approach would have us understand analytic concepts as simply categories with definitions, which is naïve and misleading. Theorizing can and ought to be discussed as a topic in its own right and as something that can be investigated. This is what lies behind calls for a more reflexive and rigorous disciplinary and theoretical practice (Datta, Frauley, and Pearce 2010; Frauley 2005, 2010; Hunt 1986, 1989; Kraska 2006; Nelken 1994; Pearce 1989; Woodiwiss 1997, 2001, 2005). This practice goes well beyond consumption of content toward gaining an appreciation and deeper understanding of the generating and operating of theoretical concepts and the implications of selecting and operating some theories over others. A curriculum that is focused solely on content or information fails to impart this. It must be recognized that content-oriented approaches fail to convey the idea that theories offer conceptual systems that can be utilized to 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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produce content (e.g., descriptions or explanations of social phenomena). This book is an attempt to develop and advocate an alternative to this dominant, orthodox approach in the craft-enterprise model and illustrates this through an engagement with a number of fictional social realities. Theorizing involves the systematic consideration and use of analytic concepts to produce new concepts, to refine or extend old ones, and to produce descriptions and explanations. This, I should add, does not always require one to engage in empirical research but does require that one engage with an empirical referent: something “out there” apart from the domain of ideas. Many engage in theoretic research or work on concepts, and this should not be thought of as “intellectual masturbation” or secondary to the collection and analysis of data. Theoretic research takes as its data the conceptual systems that make up a discipline. Without these conceptual systems, science would not be possible. Indeed, human beings would not be able to function without some conceptual system to enable making sense of surroundings and daily activities. Theoretic research or a strict emphasis on theorizing focuses on knowledge production or the concepts of a theoretical position. This does not mean, however, that empirical engagement is unnecessary. As Derek Layder (1993) has argued, the empirical domain can and should help us grapple with a substantive object as well as general theoretical issues. To this end, we grapple with abstractions daily in different contexts. Thinking explicitly about the process of theorizing helps us focus on the process of conceptualizing that we all must engage in (especially social scientists). To this end, we can see that the creative use and application (or adaptation) of an existing set of concepts is part of “theorizing” and quite achievable within the scope of theory courses and all courses, for that matter. This begs the question as to whether “theory” is actually separate from other areas within criminology and sociology. It is a quite common practice within universities to treat theory as separate from other areas to the point where it might be assumed that theory can be altogether avoided. But it must be remembered that the separation of theory from method or theory courses from substantive courses is a bureaucratic rather than scholarly division. Theory might be considered separate from methodology, reinforcing that it is somehow insulated from other areas of social science, but it is simply not possible to formulate and pose research questions, collect data systematically, or interpret the significance of one’s data without the use of some set of analytic concepts or engaging in the process of conceptualizing. University programs make artificial distinctions between 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




areas in order to make things manageable and to promote a modular system of education. These bureaucratic divisions are sometimes seen as actual divisions in knowledge and therefore necessary divisions in knowledge construction and education, which is extremely damaging to the educational experience (this can be seen in the “ghettoization” of theory within sociology and criminology). There is no doubt that we must divide things up to properly focus and delve in deeply, and it makes sense to work with these divisions to narrow our focus, but such divisions are largely arbitrary. If we take “theory” to involve a practice of systematic and analytical conceptualizing rather than substantive content, it is easier to see that theory cannot be avoided, especially given that all explanations are theoretical and that all social science knowledge production requires the use of one or more modes of reasoning. Moreover, we cannot make sense of anything without employing some set of categories to help us organize and interpret, so conceptualizing is a crucial foundation for all social science practice, whether for empirical researchers, theorists, or students attempting to learn about crime or deviance. It should be stressed that being theoretical does not mean having an encyclopedic knowledge of important theorists and their ideas. In order to be theoretical, one might have this knowledge, but it is not absolutely necessary. This false notion seems to be an outcome of the artificial divisions that isolate theory and a practice of theorizing from other aspects of scholarship. This is reinforced by a textbook industry that does nothing more than present information in neat and tidy packages, obfuscating intellectual struggle and contemplation of messy realities. The representation of theory offered by these packages is very misleading and lulls some into thinking theory is a substantive topic like criminal law or victimization, and once one has digested and regurgitated the facts, one can move on. The problem is that there are no “facts” when it comes to theorizing. There are sets of concepts that require explication and operation, after which we can get to the business of producing a particular understanding and interpretation of the “facts.” Theory is seldom presented as a fun, exciting, and puzzling intellectual pursuit but often as something that is painful and requires the memorizing of tidbits of information about what somebody once said about something. This is a real travesty. The most enjoyable part of education is allowing one’s mind to wander, to be inquisitive, to learn how to employ a disciplined imagination to tackle personal and social problems as well as conceptual problems or ambiguities. An ability to think clearly, abstractly, relationally, logically, and systematically and to be able to offer a reasoned assessment on issues 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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rather than simply conjecture or uninformed personal opinion is quite valuable for life as a whole, not simply for social science. Criminology and sociology have many analytic languages. This book is about some of them. It offers a view as to how they work, their content, and more importantly their power for shaping description and explanation (i.e., the production of analytical narratives or “theoretical stories” [Pfohl 1994, 6]). This book does not attempt to present these languages in a systematic way or provide a detailed description of their content. There are many good textbooks that do this. The aim of this book is to present some of the tools that criminologists and sociologists can use for analysis. Our disciplines’ analytic languages often lead us to accept as fact what is merely meaningfully constructed for us in a particular way. Social scientists who understand this process of “disciplining” one’s analysis and who purposely engage their “disciplined imaginations” to provide rigorous, well thought out interpretations and explanations of the things that interest them do so by knowingly and contemplatively selecting and utilizing an analytic language and thinking about its state of development and the implications of its use. Thinking about some important and influential ideas within criminology and thinking about how these ideas provide us with a language that we think through—that we operate or utilize to produce our own descriptions, explanations, and interpretations— will help us understand how our thought (whether common-sense thinking or that of social science) is disciplined, shaped, and guided by the concepts that we use. Together these concepts form an analytical framework that we peer through; they filter what we see and how we can understand the things we experience or imagine. Social science, like all problem or puzzle solving, requires imagination and creativity. The systematic nature of analysis is enabled by a disciplined imagination. This disciplined imagination is enabled by the use of analytic concepts (an analytic language). Analytic languages facilitate this systematic and disciplined thinking; they allow us to forge connections between things, derive significance from observations, draw inferences, order and organize our thoughts and information, develop and pose questions, describe things, and elaborate explanations. To engage in the practice of conceptualizing is to make systematic use of analytic concepts—to refine concepts or construct concepts in the exploring of social phenomena. By focusing on some analytic languages of criminology and producing analytical narratives about the films selected, this book offers an exploration and development of the concept of “criminological 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




imagination.” It does this by first exploring the work of some creative criminologies as represented by Jeff Ferrell (1995a, 1995b, 1999), Vincenzo Ruggiero (2003), and Nicole Rafter (2006). It then draws on the work of C. Wright Mills (1959), Frank Williams (1984), Derek Layder (1993), and others to move toward a developed notion of “criminological imagination” as a general framework that can be used to guide the use of more substantive analytic languages (e.g., Foucault, Goffman, Becker) in the analyses of social realities depicted in a selection of films. This book offers a close reading of selected texts, thinking about how these texts provide us with an analytic framework or, simply put, a “language” for constructing analytical narratives. The goal of this book is to help us develop and employ our criminological imagination in a disciplined way and to outline the conditions under which this can be achieved.

Co re Th emes that S ubtend the Text There are six core themes that will be addressed throughout the text, which serve as the premises upon which the book is built, structured, and arranged. In other words, there are six general postulates that subtend the text, around which it has been conceived. These six postulates imply that the encyclopedic-consumptive approach to theory (i.e., a history-of-ideas model) is inappropriate as a pedagogical and analytic model. These six postulates are as follows: 1. Creative and imaginative theorizing (i.e., thinking theoretically) is necessary for a critical and intelligent social science. 2. In the fictional reality, we find an underused and undertheorized conceptual and pedagogical tool. 3. Explication of key criminological and sociological concepts is enabled through systematic exploration and application to fictional social realities. 4. In exploring and applying concepts, we can bridge the theoryapplication or theory-practice divide, allowing us to engage in practicing theory (i.e., a theoretic practice). 5. Structure and action are different facets of social reality but necessarily interrelated. 6. Theorizing must be guided by but not limited to an empirical referent. These six postulates imply that the encyclopedic-consumptive approach to theory is inappropriate as a pedagogical and analytical 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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model for fostering a theoretically engaged, critical social science. They are discussed in more detail in the following sections.

Creative and imaginative theorizing is necessary for a critical and intelligent social science. In many respects, criminology and sociology facilitate creative and imaginative undertakings. Criminology, however, is not known for doing this very often. (Or perhaps, it does do this often for some and not often for others.) If sociology and criminology are to be classified as social sciences that articulate in an intelligent and sophisticated fashion features of sociality, there must be a concerted attempt to not only think but also act creatively and imaginatively within these disciplines. The use and role of imagination and creative theorizing within criminology and criminal justice has long been neglected as an area of investigation. It is relatively rare to find exemplars of imaginative and creative criminology. This may be due, in part, to criminology’s growth and development as a protective service field (Frauley 2005). As cultural, feminist, Marxist, and postmodernist criminologies illustrate, criminology has grown and advanced beyond a strictly protective service orientation. However, it still suffers from a veritable crisis of identity that springs from its initial development as an instrumental policy science. That is, in an effort to be scientific (as conventionally understood) much of the more creative and speculative elements found within disciplines such as sociology or physics have been lost in criminology (see Williams 1984, 1999). In many respects, many criminological studies have adopted a distorted notion of what science entails, rendering them “scientistic.”1 Even those who claim to be critically minded social scientists often end up accepting a caricature of “science” and hold on to the belief that science means “positivism.” In turn, positivism is held to mean “quantitative” social science, and as a result, criminology as a social science is often held to be positivistic and mainly quantitative! Hence many sociologists and sociolegal scholars have dismissed criminology as a theoretically bereft, conservative, and uncritical endeavor. For those who do not subscribe to such sweeping generalizations, a qualitative orientation often ends up becoming the default “critical” position, although much qualitative criminology is quite uncritical and empiricist. In light of this trend, many critical criminologists have adopted a qualitative approach to social inquiry, but in doing so they reject “science” (understood as “positivistic science”). This stance uncritically 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Postulate One: Creative and Imaginative Theorizing


accepts a limited view of science, and worse it leads some to believe that qualitative social inquiry is somehow more critical because it is less “scientific” (i.e., less quantitative)! Similarly, a great number of people hold that criminology is a narrow, positivistic field that solely focuses on crime. This is false. Moreover, in taking crime to be the sole object of study in criminology, criminology is maligned for being a handmaiden to the state (because “crime” is often uncritically conceived in legal terms as the “violation of the criminal law”). In other words, some critical scholars reject criminology by uncritically accepting a state definition of crime as the only way of conceptualizing crime and, in turn, impute this understanding to criminologists. Likewise, some who accept criminology as having the capacity to be a critical, imaginative, and worthwhile field hold that one must reject science to be critical (and therefore undermine criminology’s capacity to be a critical social science of a non-empiricist variety). Criminology is not organized solely around the study of violations of the criminal law, nor is it primarily the study of the administration of the criminal law, although many do take criminal law violations and the criminal justice system to be centrally important and rightly so. But a narrow approach to criminal law and criminal justice will foster what some see as criminology’s irrelevance. There are good grounds for John Braithwaite (2000) to argue that criminology is a dying field in its preoccupation with “crime–courts–corrections” at the expense of other more important forms of control and governance within advanced capitalist societies; or for David Garland and Richard Sparks (2000) to argue that criminology today runs the risk of becoming irrelevant in that its traditionally narrow focus does not enable it to make sense of political and economic developments that are reshaping crime and social problems and indeed criminology itself. I think these are valuable and valid concerns. However, it is wrong to suggest that criminology is intellectually stunted and very narrow in scope or that it adopts wholeheartedly a legalistic conception of crime. I do think there is some merit to claims that criminology is at risk of sliding into irrelevance because it cannot sufficiently grapple with theorizing in aligned fields or major political and economic changes that pose serious intellectual challenges to the relevance of criminological knowledge (Braithwaite 2000; Garland and Sparks 2000; Haggerty 2004; Wood and Shearing 1999). However, this is not because criminology lacks the tools to do so but because these tools remain underdeveloped or largely ignored. There is much to suggest that criminologists need to incorporate theorizing and thinking theoretically as fundamental and core 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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aspects of criminology. This would help, at the very least, to avoid being trapped by caricatures and straw problems. This book advocates a practice of theorizing not simply for criminologists but for anyone interested in understanding and operating concepts in a systematic way, whether this be in the academy or the realm of politics, law, economics, or what have you. Criminology has much to contribute to all manner of contemporary debates, but it remains tied to outdated notions that operate as obstacles to its development. In other words, many criminologists, other social scientists, practitioners, and lay persons accept an ideological rendering of the discipline and “prefer to think without having critical awareness” (Gramsci 1957, 58). This is very ironic indeed as self-proclaimed critical scholars uncritically accept an ideological rendering of criminology in order to reject or critique it. Having stipulated this, I do indeed believe that many criminological studies are uncritical and theoretically unsophisticated and that most do not aim to produce explanations but rather descriptions. This however does not negate that within criminology there is an underdeveloped potential and means to realize something more. For instance, there is a tendency within criminology to take a state-centered view of control, one that is simply outdated as many sociolegal and political science scholars have demonstrated (Braithwaite 2000; Cotterall 1995; Dean 1991, 1994b, 1999; Garland 2001; Hunt 1993, 1997a, 1997b, 1999b, 2002; Jessop 1993; O’Malley 1991, 1996; Pearce and Valverde 1996; Rose 1999; Rose and Miller 1992; Walters 1997, 2000, 2004). Rather than abandon such a state-centric view, however, we might contemplate what this means for criminology’s traditional study of what remains a fundamentally important site for establishing law and policy that determines how human beings will be treated by state agencies. Reformulating or moving away from a state-centered approach is not the same, for example, as abandoning the study of the role of the state in crime control and the regulation of everyday life. A myopic focus on the police–courts–corrections triad is unwarranted, but we need not abandon this altogether. Rather we would do well to avail ourselves of theoretical resources to help us rethink important criminological categories such as “state,” “law,” “punishment,” or “social control” and situate this triad in its political, economic, social, and perhaps moral context. In short, this is a call to expand the domain of criminological objects and to broaden the scope of criminology. As some have argued (Ericson 1996; Fattah 1997), criminology as a “hybrid” discipline and an “inter-institutional” field is well positioned to continue to be relevant and vibrant. In order 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




to expand the scope of criminology and encourage the study of a wider array of criminological objects, we require analytic languages that enable us to (1) articulate, question, and deconstruct boundaries; (2) (re)formulate the objects and approaches to these objects; and (3) produce prescient and relevant descriptions and explanations that can challenge those of other fields. Attention to theories as analytic languages (as opposed to “perspectives” or “descriptions”) has been scant within criminology, and this might explain why some see criminology as a theoretically bereft and limited field of inquiry that is irrelevant in comparison to other social sciences. Criminology today is more robust and sophisticated than it has ever been before but the dominant representations of the criminological enterprise, especially those found in most criminology journals and textbooks, inadvertently paint it as a conservative and theoretically stunted endeavor. As a whole, criminology has grown as a discipline, but it traditionally has not set its own theoretical agenda and has been averse to the broader realm of social theory. This book illustrates that criminology and social science generally require a disciplined imagination, and it is a field’s theories and concepts (or lack thereof) that can potentially enable or constrain this imagination. A major question that this book addresses is, What is the criminological imagination? This book can be read as an extended discussion and response to this question, which can be compared with C. Wright Mills’s (1959) inquiry into the “sociological imagination.” Asking this question requires us to contemplate the “quality of mind” offered by criminology and whether or not the promise of critical, holistic, theoretically sophisticated, and empirically grounded inquiry has been or can be realized within criminology. As I discuss in Chapter 3, Frank Williams (1984) and John Whitehead (1985) have argued that criminologists have not done a good job of realizing this promise or developing the quality of mind outlined by Mills. Recent writings that make reference to the criminological imagination confirm Williams’s and Whitehead’s assertion, treating “criminological imagination” as a descriptive term rather than a reference to a powerful conceptual system. Thus the “promise” of Mills’s conceptual and methodological framework has been only partially explored and not fully unlocked by criminologists. This book illustrates one way we might develop a concept of “criminological imagination” for both analysis and pedagogy. As such this book demonstrates there is no reason that criminology cannot be or should not be recognized as a field in which creative, imaginative, and innovative thinking can be found. Criminology offers analytical and 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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Postulate Two: Fictional Reality as a Conceptual and Pedagogical Tool In the fictional reality we find an underutilized and undertheorized conceptual and pedagogical tool. One assumption that underlies this book is that criminology, even if not widely practiced as such, evinces signs of being or having potential to be an imaginative and creative endeavor. This is explicitly contemplated in Chapter 2. A rigorous, methodical, analytical, and systematic investigation of crime, crime control, and related issues does not mean that there is no room for innovative, imaginative, or creative thought; it demands this. Works of fiction offer complex and layered social realities that can be explored criminologically and sociologically. This demonstrates that one can approach social science as an exciting and creative practice and illustrates the usefulness of criminological theory for deepening our appreciation and understanding of the complexities of everyday life (Frauley 2010). Fiction can be utilized to make the abstract concepts of familiar criminological theories more “real,” especially because we can find the use of criminological ideas already within popular fiction (Brown 2004; Rafter 2006). Unfortunately, few social scientists have approached fiction in this way. As Ruggiero has noted, “While some sociologists and criminologists do have time to read fiction, few use it to clarify concepts to themselves, discuss them with colleagues and transmit them to students” (2003, 1). Likewise, Rafter notes, “Even though film plays a central role in generating representations and understandings of crime, criminologists have traditionally ignored it, clinging to a narrow social science perspective that pays little attention to the interactions of crime and culture” (2006, 4). This book enlists film not only to clarify some of the core ideas that animate criminological practice but also to illustrate how these core ideas can be utilized in a systematic way to conduct creative analyses and produce imaginative descriptions and explanations. I believe that we can engage with the broader cultural realm to help us perhaps renovate and reinvigorate criminology and on the other hand utilize criminological ideas to help us reinterpret cultural practices. In this light, although this book is not a textbook in the traditional sense, it is hoped that it will nonetheless be useful for both thinking 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


methodological tools that allow it to be relevant to a broad array of societal issues. We will be able to illustrate this by asking, What is the criminological imagination?


about and teaching the craft of theorizing and illustrating both the analytical and pedagogical use of the fictional reality as a cultural artifact that can both challenge our criminological imaginations and keep them grounded. This approach challenges the dominant understanding and treatment of theory within criminology and criminal justice studies. In the dominant “history-of-ideas” model, theory is thought to be a narrative or description of reality, sometimes as something in need of verification or falsification to establish the validity of claims, or a source of abstract ideas that derive their value from being operationalized. Such views of theory are problematic, however, if we consider theories to be sets of interconnected analytic concepts that can be operated as tools that enable researchers to produce interpretations, descriptions, and explanations. In this view, the value of theory is not derived from its being validated as true but rather comes from its potential to offer systematic explanation and redescription of that which is taken for granted and its general applicability to help us rethink old problems or discover new things. Postulate Three: Explication of Concepts Through Application Explication of key criminological and sociological concepts is enabled through their systematic exploration through and application to fictional social realities. The majority of theory textbooks offer descriptions of the central categories that important thinkers have developed and utilized. However, discussion of the development process itself is rare, as is discussion of the textbook author’s own position from which he or she is working and from which he or she has produced an interpretation of, or commentary on existing theory. The problem with this strategy is that the process of the development of specific categories advanced by each thinker (which allow for precision in analysis) is expelled from the discussion as if inconsequential or tangential. This hinders a full appreciation of the analytical capacity of the framework being discussed. This is because the key categories of the framework are often simply defined and their relation to one another not fully articulated. Nor is the context of their production, consequence of their use, or benefit of their clarification or extension illuminated. Theory in this regard is often not presented as a language of analysis that can be used or refashioned and thus as a necessary resource that enables and disciplines our imagination. There is an ontological assumption that belies this approach to describing categories: each category is treated as mutually exclusive rather than as deriving its meaning from its relation to other key 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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categories in the system. In addition, the fact that these categories form a “system” is neglected. These failings—lack of explicit discussion of both the process of concept formation and the operation of concepts, and that concepts are more than simply discrete units with definitions—help portray the ideas found within the social sciences as perspectives or potential variables rather than as systems for interpretation, description, and explanation. This kind of treatment makes it difficult to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of theoretical frameworks, leading to the seemingly logical conclusion that this can be done through testing for validity against empirical reality. Analytic categories are the lenses that enable us to produce coherent and systematic descriptions and explanations of social phenomenon, and by not discussing them as forming a system or coherent analytic language, theories are reduced to mere “perspectives” or descriptions of reality. It is also problematic that a social science theory text would advance any position on theories without advancing an argument as to the plausibility of such an interpretation, but this is what textbooks often do. They do not present arguments and are not representative of social science scholarship. In fact, they are quite misrepresentative of the nature of scholarship as well as what it is that social scientists actually do. We want to avoid this to gain a sense of the process of using and combining analytic tools in a creative (yet rigorous) way. Systematically exploring, clarifying, constructing, and reformulating the tools of analysis can be described as conceptualizing and is vitally important to the criminological imagination. The social reality depicted in the films can be analyzed by operating our concepts, used to illustrate and explore the process of conceptualizing. In systematically applying key analytic concepts, the hope is that these will be clarified and the craft of theorizing illustrated. The text offers an engagement with some of the most prominent and influential sociological and criminological theories, illustrating how they can be systematically applied to offer unique descriptions and explanations of the social realities depicted. Abstract concepts through application and illustration are made more “real” or “concretized.” As we begin to view films and read fiction as social scientists, we begin to strengthen our analytical abilities. Although, for the purposes of this book, this is done to illustrate the argument that I advance (craft enterprise and analytic and pedagogical usefulness of fictional realities), these exercises can also be utilized independently for teaching criminological theory or simply for their focus on filmic realities. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley



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In exploring and applying concepts, we can bridge the theory—application and theory—practice divides as it will be necessary to operate concepts to produce description or explanations. Working through these ideas in order to clarify them and then to use them to investigate our films is a way to highlight and emphasize the link between conceptualizing and the practical work of analysis. In other words, this book explores some analytic languages by putting them to work to explore facets of filmic realities. An important aspect of this is the demonstration of how theoretical concepts function as lenses through which we describe and explain things. Although we are utilizing films as the object or empirical referent, the process is the same for analyzing different objects: crime, policing, domestic violence, youth delinquency, corporate deviance, abuses of power, and so on. We are primarily engaging in a qualitative investigation that is similar to the qualitative analysis of visual materials or documents such as court transcripts, police records, archival materials, newspapers, and so forth. In this way we bridge theory and practice, offering exploration and application of some analytic languages that have been influential for criminological analysis. Postulate Five: Structure and Action Structure and action are different facets of social reality but necessarily interrelated. Much contemporary social theory and methodological work has shown a deep interest in how it is that social action and social structure combine, enable, and constrain one another. The work of C. Wright Mills (1959), Roy Bhaskar (1975, 1979), Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1990a, 1984), Anthony Giddens (1984), Andrew Sayer (1992), Derek Layder (1993), Margaret Archer (1995), and many others has been concerned to specify the relationship. This text does not purport to resolve this “agency-structure” problem or attempt to offer a unique position on this, but it does acknowledge its importance and that this interconnectedness has implications for analysis. Holistic analysis must in some way attempt to theorize the relation between social action and social structure. This text illustrates how C. Wright Mills attempted to resolve this issue, and this plays a central role in the development of the concept of criminological imagination. Concern with the concept of criminological imagination is a concern for articulating a general theoretical framework that can be used to guide more specific inquiry. For instance, each film selected contains 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Postulate Four: Bridging the Gaps

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the two “poles” of action and structure, and investigation of these facets of the filmic realities can be guided by a fuller, more robust concept of criminological imagination. This can be done by engaging with the work of Mills. More specific criminological and sociological concepts can then be utilized systematically to analyze the content of the filmic realities. My analysis of each film is an exploration of these poles and the relation between them and will serve to highlight limitations and strengths of the analytic languages employed (and integrated via the criminological imagination). Postulate Six: Theorizing Must Be Guided But Not Limited By an Empirical Referent The concern with fictional social realities exemplifies a concern that theorizing must be grounded. This is not to suggest that all theory must be “grounded theory” or limited by empirical data. Grounded theory is, as Layder (1993) has argued, constrained and limited by empirical observation. This is different than the belief that theorizing ought to be guided by but not constrained by the empirical. In this sense, theorizing must happen in conjunction with the exploration of an empirical referent, which keeps it grounded and ensures that our theorizing helps us develop a deeper understanding, more adequate description, or explanation of something. However, this same referent also acts as a vehicle for thinking about and speculating on questions of general theory. Thus enquiry into policing, for instance, also enables contemplation of organizational behavior more generally. The films reviewed here operate as the empirical referent—the means by which we can explore criminological concepts and their value for conceptualizing broader features of sociality.

Oth er Features of Thi s Text Original Investigations of Cinematic Realities As I explore fictional realities to illustrate my argument and explicate some important and influential theoretical concepts, I also produce original interpretations, descriptions, and explanations of some popular films. This contributes not only to a cultural and imaginative criminology but also to sociology, cultural studies, media studies, and film studies, which I hope will appeal to readers apart from academics and students in the fields for which the use of this text is primarily intended. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley



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The sociological and criminological treatment of fictional realities provides an innovative context in which to engage readers in the exploring of criminological and social theory and theorizing. It highlights the strong connections that criminology and criminological ideas have with popular culture and the uses of a disciplined imagination for analytical thinking and everyday life. Thus this context will, I hope, prove interesting not only to academics and students of a wide range of fields but also to those who are merely inquisitive.

Hi s to ry o f I deas and C r aft Enterpr i se: Two Mo del s f o r Approac hi ng Theory To adequately contextualize the aforementioned remarks on the craftenterprise approach, which I have advocated and the limitations of a history-of-ideas approach to theory and theorizing within criminology, in the remainder of this chapter I offer a more detailed discussion. The two models of theory enable different experiences and descriptions of theory and its role and place within social science. A history-of-ideas model advocates an idealist notion of theory in which sets of concepts are treated as ideas or perspectives to be relayed and expressed in narrative format.2 Theory when treated as a perspective is positioned as something that is aligned with notions that are held in one’s mind. This is similar to considering theory to be merely ideology, conjecture, or a belief. Indeed, from my own experience, in many cases theory and ideology are conflated by students, with students often defining theory as a “belief” or an “assertion” or someone’s opinion or perspective. From within this model, theories are not recognized as systems of analytic concepts with objective characteristics that delimit what can be reasonably and intelligently stated about one’s object. Pedagogically, the history-of-ideas model (the encyclopedic-consumptive model) aims to communicate an interpretation of the content of existing theories without explicating the concept-construction and interpretive process. Discussion of content is substituted for explication of how existing theories were crafted, how new sets of concepts can be constructed, existing ones reformulated, or how such systems might be put to work in analysis. As Alan Hunt has argued for legal studies, which applies equally well in our case, “a self-conscious heuristic use of conceptualization and abstraction [is necessary] in order to achieve the pedagogical objective of facilitating an understanding of the implications that flow 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Exploring Theory in an Innovative and Engaging Context

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from alternative concepts and discourses and to provide the means of making sustainable choices between these alternatives” (1989, 147). A history-of-ideas approach does not draw attention to or illustrate concept formation, the operation of concepts, that choices are made between alternative sets of concepts, or that these concepts through our choices shape our understanding of our practice and what we perceive to be significant about our object of study. The limitations of the history-of-ideas model stem largely in part from its concern with only the outcome of such processes. In his discussion of theorizing, Ian Craib (1984) contrasts two ways of approaching theory: as an active process of thinking analytically and conceptually or the more or less passive reception of what are outcomes of the process of theorizing. This captures the distinction being made here between a craft-enterprise model and history-ofideas model: the former emphasizes active production and thinking theoretically, while the latter concerns reception of content. A great many theory texts illustrate the ubiquity of the history-of-ideas model. Although there are some very good texts that seek to explicate the principal concepts of theoretical frameworks and their implications, these texts are rare. Criminology, it should be stressed, is and has been well served by a history-of-ideas model for research (as distinct from pedagogy). Knowledge of historical conditions and contingencies in the development of the ideas that become dominant and subordinate within one’s discipline and illustration of the incremental growth and emergence of one’s field and its objects of inquiry are invaluable, but more must be done to promote theoretical literacy within criminology. In terms of pedagogical practice, a history-of-ideas model is less attractive because it does not promote theoretical literacy. This means, among other things, it does not provide the sort of groundwork necessary for enabling a broad understanding of the scope and relevance of contributions made by theoretical systems for enabling the crafting of descriptions and explanations of the myriad objects of criminology. The ability to go beyond the content of theoretically rich works, particularly those that may not be specifically labeled as criminological, is especially important for the development of theoretical literacy. Recognizing the criminological relevance of works that may not contain the familiar categories that have come to define criminology (e.g., crime, criminal, criminality, justice), such as works by sociolegal scholars or political economists, would be difficult without an ability to think broadly and relationally. The value of such works does not rest on whether or not they specifically engage with something recognizably 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




“criminological” but on whether or not powerful analytic concepts are articulated, which can lend themselves to the criminological study of the complex processes and arrangements within capitalist societies that serve to produce, reproduce, or transform things of interest to criminologists. Likewise, theoretical literacy requires one to understand how concepts operate and that they are not descriptions of empirical things. The value of well-crafted theoretical concepts for empirical research is lost when concepts and theories are held to be simply a source of variables, ideas, or perspectives or are approached in a theoreticist or representationalist manner.3 As López (2003, 1–2) has astutely remarked, there is a penchant within the social sciences for thinking that methods must be taught in a “hands on” way. However, this sentiment often does not extend to theory. This is a pedagogical issue and relates to whether or not “theory” connotes more readily a craft enterprise or history of ideas and why this might be. It is plausible to assume that for the majority of theory instructors, the study of theory calls for a history-of-ideas approach because this is the dominant or more mainstream approach. An example of this dominance lies within the teaching tool of the overly descriptive textbook, which remains unchallenged for the most part because of the dearth of attention within criminology to theorizing and the lack of any formalized area similar to the sociology of knowledge. If the practice element within theory is not recognized or if it is taken to be irrelevant, then it would be strange indeed to ask students to theorize, especially if this is contrasted with “research” or “method,” as it usually is. If, however, one focuses on the process by which theories are produced and hence the production of the interpretive and explanatory devices utilized by social scientists in their research, theorizing as a practice is more easily envisioned to be a part of research and important to method. Considering this dilemma, Angela West (2005) has explored the use of fiction as a pedagogical device and advocates, albeit tacitly, what I am calling the craft-enterprise model for theory and theorizing. Her descriptive essay, which summarizes and illustrates how one might interpret a particular work of fiction, is noteworthy because it advocates the idea that providing an empirical referent for students to puzzle over is important. This pedagogical method can be applied not only for clarifying abstract concepts but also for eliciting the process of theorizing and avoiding the pitfalls associated with students’ reception of only the end result of theorizing (such as eclecticism). West writes, “Students often have difficulty distinguishing among theories and detecting the subtle differences or distinctions among 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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them. Helping students apply the theories to observable behavior may clarify those distinct traits or characteristics and enhance their ability to use what they learn about these theories and how the theoretical integrates with the practical in their everyday lives. Additionally, students may have difficulty with abstract thinking. Anything having to do with ‘theory’ seems abstract and is often intimidating. Any concrete exercise that places the theoretical in a context that students can understand is useful” (2005, 341). We can gather several ideas from West that pertain to our discussion. First, the process of distinguishing and detecting differences between and among theories is to engage in diagnosis, evaluation, and assessment. Second, application of a theory can only be carried out if one has some understanding not only of what a theory’s categories refer to and the process of reference but also of how concepts operate together as a system for detecting subtle differences, distinctions, characteristics, and so on. Third, the process of the application of concepts enables clarification not only of the object under investigation but also of the theoretical system being employed. Fourth, engaging in this process of abstraction, which allows for distinguishing, detecting, diagnosis, evaluation, assessment, application, and clarifying, enables participants to engage in a craft practice. Craft practices, informed by craft norms, are time-intensive, rigorous, and methodical practices. Learning to theorize in a considered and systematic way is to learn a craft. When approaching theory through a craft-enterprise model, concepts appear as tools (devices or technologies), both fashioned and operated, not as perspectives or potential variables. However, as I have elsewhere argued, this sort of consideration is often held to be second order within criminology (Frauley 2005). Kraska has illustrated that this second-order status poses significant problems that must be addressed in order to enable criminal justice studies to become more sophisticated and acquire academic legitimacy (2006). Thinking about and engaging in the process of producing, operating, and refining analytic concepts, rather than only grappling with the outcome of theorizing, is necessary. The craft-enterprise model promotes active learning and theoretical literacy and can propel criminology and criminal justice studies beyond the history-of ideas-model, ensuring reception of information about perspectives.




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The practices associated with the craft-enterprise and history-of-ideas models have different normative underpinnings. The implications of this for pedagogical practice, and in turn for the reproduction of academic fields, will be clarified by drawing on the work of the social anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu and the philosopher Immanuel Kant. The point of such a discussion is to examine broadly, albeit briefly, what sort of criminology can be or is reproduced through different pedagogical models. Kant has emphasized two modes of thought that I think are useful for capturing differences between a pedagogical model aimed at disseminating information and one aimed at stimulating higher order cognate abilities. Bourdieu offers a way for us to account for how the reproduction and transformation of the practical manifestation of these modes of thought (called habitus) are articulated within institutional fields. Thus both Kant and Bourdieu provide us with a novel way of describing how a particular form of criminological practice and normative underpinning are pedagogically reproduced. Kant contrasted what he termed “public reason” with “private reason.” According to Kant, public reason refers not only to the reasoning or logic employed by a person in a scholarly fashion to formulate and defend a position on something but also to expose one’s position and mode of reasoning to general critique before the reading public. Private reason refers to an instrumental and narrower form of reasoning that focuses more on finding a solution to problems as defined within the context of industry and government (Kant 1997, 10). In the criminological context, these forms of reason are captured by Garland and Sparks’ (2000, 192) discussion of the different social and institutional locations from which criminological knowledge is produced: the academy, government, and popular culture.4 The first two (the academy and government) most closely approximate Kant’s scheme. Substantive discussion of the different roles and objectives of differing criminologies highlights that the different forms of reason Kant identified aptly characterize these different configurations of criminology and their respective “coercive facticities” (see Menzies and Chunn 1999; Stenning 1999; Tombs and Whyte 2002, 2003; Walters 2003; Walters and Presdee 1999; White 2001).5 The categories of public reason and private reason characterize distinct but sometimes conflated sets of practices and forms of judgment, which relate to different kinds of objects or problems (e.g., issues that are 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


P r inc ipl es o f P r ac ti c e and th e C r imino lo gi c al Fi eld

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external to criminology such as social problems, problems of criminal justice administration, or problems of social order and those that are internal to the field such as epistemological problems). These forms of judgment and procedures are reflected in pedagogical practice and research and depend on the objects or problems being addressed. Although the distinction observed by Kant and by Garland and Sparks does not apply to all practical situations, it nevertheless characterizes very different forms of criminological inquiry and ways of organizing the criminological field. Kant’s distinction can be further applied to criminology by drawing on Bourdieu. Bourdieu offers a valuable way of understanding the relationship between pedagogical practice and the organization of criminological inquiry and in turn how the structure of the criminological field enables and constrains not only practices within it but also the practical sensibilities (habitus) one needs in order to engage successfully in these practices. Bourdieu provides us with convincing empirical and theoretical accounts of how the principles of practice and forms of reason are shaped and reproduced in a nondeterministic manner in fields of professional practice. He writes, “Practical evaluation of the likelihood of the success of a given action in a given situation brings into play a whole body of wisdom, sayings, commonplaces, ethical precepts (‘that’s not for the likes of us’) and, at a deeper level, the unconscious principles of the ethos which, being the product of a learning process dominated by a determinate type of objective regularities, determines ‘reasonable’ and ‘unreasonable’ conduct for every agent subjected to those regularities” (1977, 77). The ethos mentioned by Bourdieu is similar to what Kant describes as a form of reason. These forms of reason that contain unconscious principles that determine reasonable and unreasonable conduct are internalized by actors and take the form of what Bourdieu calls habitus. Here, habitus is the mechanism by which actions are calculated and executed, and it is the product of a type of learning process that is dominated by the “objective regularities” that are characteristic of social fields.6 These objective regularities can be thought of as having a “coercive facticity.” The production of a practical sense—a particular type of habitus—is driven by the structural arrangements of social fields (such as criminology or more broadly education). The arrangements that characterize a social field are, in turn, subject to external forces as described in the following paragraphs. One site of the criminological enterprise is higher education, which, as a political institution, is shaped in part by external national and international political and economic currents. These currents 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




have a bearing on the internal configuration of fields such as criminology and knowledge-producing (i.e., research) and reproducing (i.e., pedagogy) practices. In turn, a practical sense is forged within this context of immediately pressing “objective regularities.” These objective regularities often manifest as recurring social problems that a field sometimes takes up as its own or manifest as problems internal to a field that must be overcome in order for scholarship to advance. This conditioning of institutionalized fields and conditioning of habitus by field help shape pedagogical practice and impact our reasoning of how best to achieve teaching objectives, what these objective ought to be, and more broadly what will be communicated about the field (e.g., that it is a social science or behavioral science, that it is characterized by private reason or public reason, etc.). The practical sense animates the practices that reproduce a particular type of criminological field (i.e., one that is dominated by private or public reason). This has implications for how theory’s place and role in criminology is conceptualized and in turn the pedagogical practices that will seem most suitable. The aim of this discussion has not been to displace a historyof-ideas approach but to offer a different model and strategy for pedagogical practice that more adequately captures what is done with theory by social scientists. Within criminology there is a general belief that theory can be taught as a content-oriented course while research courses must be “hands on” in order to be of any practical benefit. This dominant ethos makes sense for a criminology of private reason but not a criminology of public reason. I suggest that a qualified “hands on” approach is needed for criminological theory and that the recent interest in fictional realities (discussed in the next chapter) can help us develop such an approach. At this stage, however, a few words on the coercive facticity of concepts are in order.

Th e Objec t-Lik e Char ac ter o f Analy tic C onc epts An important feature of the craft-enterprise model for theorizing is that concepts are tools that must be operated to make reference to features of sociality. This is to produce interpretations, descriptions, explanations, and experiences of social phenomena. The claim that all social science description as well as fictional worlds are dependent on concepts that are external to the text denotes that these concepts are object-like entitites. Concepts are analytic tools or intellectual technologies that exist independently of the mind of the researcher, which 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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can be operated and refined to grant researchers more penetrating views of their objects of study. These range from concepts that are broad in scope (such as deviance, social structure, or power) to more concrete but limited concepts (such as fraud and crime). Concepts have a “coercive facticity”: they have a reproductive and transformative capacity that impacts both the persons operating them and the practices that characterize the criminological field. This realist conceptualization is different from both that found within positivist and interpretivist, interactionist social science. For the positivist camp, concepts are held to be abstractions requiring operationalizing so that empirical indicators of them might be identified and measured. Within this orientation, some concepts such as “validity,” “reliability,” “replication,” and “generalization,” are not held to be concepts at all but rather factual aspects of the scientific method. That is, they are narrow in scope and thus appear as “facts” when they are actually statements about states of reality (terms that make reference to an aspect of research procedure; see Sayer 1992). On the other hand, much interpretivist social science evinces a form of idealism. The interpretivist interest with the perspectives of social actors tends to situate the concepts used by actors in the construction of their perspectives as also part of those perspectives rather than as something distinct from and necessary to their production.7 In neither case are concepts taken to be mechanisms that can be acted on that have transformative effects. An analogy that uses a telescope will help us make sense of what I am calling the realist position: The telescope tube can be thought of as the frame or structure of a theoretical system. The lenses are the analytic concepts that we must peer through in order to produce a description, explanation, or understanding of an object. This book argues for and develops a pedagogical practice that stems from the position that theoretical concepts must be crafted, operated, refined, reformulated, and possibly discarded; that this process is akin to a craft-enterprise; and that such a practice must be undertaken relative to an empirical referent in order to avoid theoreticism and representationalism, both of which plague much positivist and interactionist social science. Even when one manages to escape such trappings within one’s own research, it is a different matter altogether to find or develop a workable pedagogical practice that can exemplify such an approach. The pedagogical practice discussed in this chapter is an exemplary practice (similar to Ruggiero’s reflexive realism, outlined in Chapter 2) that emphasizes both the craft element in the construction and operation 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




of analytic concepts as well as these concepts’ object-like status. This pedagogical model is valuable for criminology and sociology because it provides an alternative practice and strategy through which to communicate and picture the nature of theory and theorizing: one that complements but also moves beyond the dominant history-of-ideas approach (i.e., an encyclopedic-consumptive orientation). It also serves to provide an alternative model of the role of concepts in empirical research. This book advocates the use of fictional realities as a strategy for cultivating analytical and reasoning abilities within criminology because these fictional realities provide for a “hands on” approach to theorizing. That is, they can be utilized as the necessary empirical referent that scholars and students can actively engage with. The craft-enterprise model challenges (without necessarily discarding) the pervasive history-of-ideas approach to theory and in so doing is necessarily realist in its position on the nature of theories and concepts. The craft-enterprise model holds that theoretical concepts have an ontological status that renders them “real” in the sense that they can be crafted, worked on, and indeed manipulated as tools to extend the human capacity to visualize the qualities of objects and their relational context. Likewise, our analytic languages provide a system that exists independently of the descriptions and explanations that are crafted. From this viewpoint, a theory is not ideational because it exists independently of the mind, furnishing a set of logically and coherently structured set of categories that researchers utilize to produce logically and coherently organized descriptions, explanations, and experiences of criminological objects. These descriptions, explanations, and experiences would include the visualizing or picturing of the stratification of simpler to more complex relations (including possible outcomes that could be actualized or impugned depending on the context), some of which will not be amenable to direct experience. Theoretical systems are obviously created by individuals, but once articulated they take on a coercive facticity. This quality of coercive facticity can be clarified by a few different examples: First, Emile Durkheim (1995) spoke of “collective representations.” These are general to a society (widely dispersed) and act on a society’s subjects in shaping their conduct. In this way, collective representations, which are not material but are nevertheless “objective,” have what we can characterize as a coercive facticity. Today, a very powerful collective representation is terrorism: what it is, who participates, who is at risk, appropriate responses including what is considered the proper configuration of law enforcement and security institutions, notions about citizen conduct and rights, patriotism, and foreign and domestic 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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economic and social policy, among other things are crystallized as a widespread and (seemingly) natural collective sensibility about the nature of terror and insecurity. This has proven to be powerful for shaping legal, political, and economic relations and in turn the conduct of subjects within advanced capitalist societies. The second example of coercive facticity is found in what Foucault called a “discursive formation” (1972a). Discursive formations are contingent groupings of scientific statements and knowledge-producing practices. Discursive formations and scientific knowledge that appears in the form of authoritative statements were once characterized by Foucault as having the quality of an “incorporeal materialism” (1972b, 231); not matter but not exactly ideational. Medicine and illness are examples. Medicine in Western cultures has a coercive facticity or incorporeal materialism in that it can produce and delimit outcomes. The existence of ongoing changes to medical procedures, treatment regimes, categories of illness, and types of patients are a testament to the coercive facticity of the discursive formation of medicine. A third example of coercive facticity comes from Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) notion of paradigm. According to Kuhn, a paradigm is a generally accepted metatheoretical model that characterizes the legitimacy of knowledge and practices of an entire scientific field. The accepted paradigm is a construct that governs how all “normal science” in a given scientific field is carried out (organized by sets of concepts that comprise the paradigm) and evaluated. In times of crisis, the paradigm is challenged and eventually displaced. The intention of this brief discussion of Durkheim, Foucault, and Kuhn is not to equate or conflate their respective contributions to social science. Rather, it is hoped that one or more of their ideas will be familiar to readers and that this familiarity will help illustrate that theoretical concepts and frameworks have a coercive facticity.8 Engagement with fictional realities is one useful way of promoting the craft enterprise of theoretical analysis and illustrating the coercive facticity of analytic concepts in the production of descriptions, explanations, and interpretations of objects and our experiences of them. By analyzing fictional realities, we can engage in a reflective and circumscribed process of application and perhaps modification and construction of concepts. Methodically producing one’s own descriptions and explanations by using a set of interconnected analytic concepts, as Ruggiero illustrates (discussed in Chapter 2), will promote an understanding of the objectlike nature of theoretical systems and concepts, systematic analysis, and how theories and concepts enable and constrain what can be reasonably and intelligently articulated about an object of inquiry (Pearce 1989). 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley



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This book offers criminologists and sociologists a fruitful and productive way of conceptualizing the nature, role, and operation of theory and theorizing. The text aims to demonstrate that fiction, especially film, is a useful empirical object that offers a “contained social reality,” which can be creatively theorized and deconstructed. It illustrates that criminological ideas or concepts are tools that are produced, refined, and operated by social scientists. Our thought—whether commonsense thinking or that of social science—is disciplined by the categories we use, and as such, these categories operate as tools that we think with. Our particular analytic concepts and languages allow us to imagine crime, criminality, crime control, power, justice, and social control, among other things, in a particular and systematic way. These concepts enable our production of “theoretical stories” or “analytical narratives.” This work of conceptualizing is the result of a consciously and purposely disciplined imagination and is necessary for social science. Reflexivity is central to the exercise of this “criminological imagination.” One way to frame the argument of this book, then, is to say that criminology would benefit from and greatly needs a developed criminological imagination.9 The book sets out what this imagination might look like. This book offers arguments about theory in Chapters 1 through 3, as well as illustrations of theoretic practice in Chapters 4 through 7. In doing so, it illustrates that works of fiction offer complex and layered social realities that can be deconstructed and creatively theorized through the analytic frameworks provided by criminology and sociology. This book presents an argument for the usefulness of fictional realities for criminological thinking and analysis and illustrates that creative and imaginative thinking is important to social science. The approach set out by this book will enable us to accomplish a number of things: Engaging with film allows us to explore aspects of our own culture as well as explore strengths and limitations in influential criminological and sociological ideas and concepts. By exploring analytic concepts in this way, we can gain clarification on these sometimes abstract ideas and can practice applying criminological ideas in a systematic yet creative way. This process illustrates the value of examining objects that are not traditionally taken up as objects of criminological analysis and examines the dynamic relationship between fictional realities and the criminological imagination. It allows us to explore different facets of social reality and, in doing so, to understand the complexity of the contexts, institutions, practices, and understandings of crime and deviance and how these contexts, 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Co nc lusion

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institutions, practices, and understandings are interconnected and support each other. The analyses of the fictional social realities offered in this book help to illustrate the complexity of the visible and that adequate analysis and circumspect use of criminology’s analytic languages enables us to produce richer, deeper, and more robust interpretations and explanations. Thus explicit consideration of our analytic languages is important. Each film is approached in the spirit of the craft-enterprise model. These explorations are guided by the conceptual system and methodological orientation outlined by Mills (1959) and adapted to the criminological imagination as outlined in Chapter 3. The film analyses can be read alone or be situated within the overall argument that they help convey: for all films, I hope to illustrate the value of the criminological imagination and the value of systematic, creative, and theoretic analysis. The choice of films and themes for exploration is in many ways arbitrary. I have excluded a great number of films due to space constraints. I have selected what I think are interesting and engaging films in their own right but also those that are criminologically and sociologically relevant. These films have been shown in many of my classes, some more than others, and have been used to help describe and explain abstract concepts and provide an object of contemplation for students. In this sense, they have been “tested” on student audiences and have never failed to spark interesting and engaging discussion. Because these films exemplify myriad criminological themes and issues, they are particularly useful for exemplifying a criminological imagination and the basic theoretical literacy this entails. Importantly, the films exemplify the connection between two important facets of our society: on one hand, the general and impersonal large-scale features of society, such as power relations, gender and class divisions, racial and ethnic conflict, economic organization, and widespread moral sentiments, as well as various social institutions such as the corporation, law and justice, education, the family, work, and subcultures of delinquency, among others; and on the other hand, the small-scale, immediate, and personal nature of how these contexts and institutional arrangements, conflicts, and divisions are experienced and how these shape subjectivity, identity, and face-to-face interpersonal interactions. In this way, the films exemplify both social relations and social relationships. We can utilize our conceptual tools (analytic languages) to demarcate and describe these domains as well as the relation between them. These “poles” sometimes manifest as multiple domains or levels of society and can be explored and clarified by analyzing the social realities depicted in the films. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley






4

Cr i minology and the Fi cti onal Social R eality

Academic social scientists will either learn how to think intelligently about using the genre of nonfiction novels [and other new literary forms] about murders or they will leave this part of our social life, and whatever these crimes might reveal about us more generally, to journalists, politicians and literary critics. —Jack Katz, Seductions of Crime

I ntro duc t i on

C

riminologists are increasingly exploring nontraditional objects, sources of information, methods of analyzing this information, and explanatory frameworks for helping guide analysis and interpretation. One such nontraditional object is the “fictional reality.” Fictional realities are fictional social realities, such as those found in novels and film. There is a precedent for the analytical and pedagogical use of “fictional realities” in criminology, but in general this has been limited to seeing fiction and film as a stock of readily accessible and useful examples rather than as complex objects to be deconstructed and theorized. This chapter will examine three approaches from criminology that offer a way of conceptualizing the role and place of the fictional reality in social science. These “imaginative” criminologies offer some valuable insights about the pedagogical and analytical place of fictional realties for criminology. Importantly, the emergence of these imaginative criminologies challenges orthodox criminology, specifically on theoretical and methodological grounds. This chapter draws 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Chapter 2

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Cr imino lo gy and I ts Rel ati on to t h e Fic tio nal Real it y : Three Vi ews There is a growing but fragmented body of literature within criminology and criminal justice studies that takes fiction as its object of inquiry. On the one hand, there is an exploration of representations of popular attitudes toward crime or how criminological themes and issues are reflected in film and literature (Fiddler 2007; Gehrke 2001; O’Brien et al. 2005; Pearce 1978; Rafter 2006, 2007; Ruggiero 2002, 2003; Tzanelli, Yar, and O’Brien 2005). On the other hand, literature has been explored for how it might be used to exemplify sociological and criminological concepts—that is, the major ideas criminologists and sociologists work with to describe and explain what they are studying (Engel 2003; Hagan and Benekos 2002; Laz 1996; West 2005). Both bodies of literature, although not unified, are concerned with the fictional reality. Broadly, the first body of literature explores the intersection of criminology and popular culture to push the boundaries of criminological theory, research and, understanding. The second approach explores how criminological research, theory, and understanding can be represented to students and scholars alike. These studies have helped to legitimate investigation of fictional realities as objects of criminological inquiry. The work by Jeff Ferrell and cultural criminologists has helped to explicitly identify popular culture, especially “everyday life,” as something of criminological interest. Traditional criminological objects of study include crime, criminality, official crime control, victimization, and to a lesser extent, the political process of criminalization (the production of categories of crime). A fundamental argument of cultural criminology is that these criminological objects can be made much more intelligible if approached as cultural practices or practices that in some way seek to produce or reproduce culture. Likewise, the realm of popular culture serves to reflect a particular understanding of these traditional objects, as Nicole Rafter shows, and therefore it can help us arrive at an understanding of the popular sensibility about these things. The images or representations themselves, then, come to be objects of criminological analysis rather than crime, victimization, crime control, or what have you. Cultural criminology provides us with one example of how the boundaries of criminology are routinely 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


out themes from these materials to suggest a way toward a fuller, more robust conception of the criminological imagination, which is developed in the next chapter.

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challenged and sometimes expanded. Given this, it is perhaps best to conceptualize these boundaries as amorphous or shifting rather than firm and established. Although literature and film are not explicitly taken by cultural criminologists as objects of analysis, because these media offer imaginings and operate as conduits of meaning they fall within the purview of cultural criminology. In this light, fictional realities are important because they offer a means by which we can challenge the boundaries of criminology, and, more importantly, challenge the scope of the “criminological imagination” as it is presently formulated and practiced. As we will see in the next chapter, the criminological imagination is woefully underdeveloped. This challenging and expanding of the boundaries of criminology includes rethinking what might be admitted to the criminological field as a legitimate object of inquiry. Engaging with fictional realities helps us rethink what it is that criminologists can or might scrutinize using criminological concepts and languages. The approach advocated by cultural criminology, Ruggiero’s (2003) groundbreaking sociological treatment of classic literature and its representations of crime and criminality and Rafter’s (2006, 2007) investigations of cinematic depictions of crime and the popular attitudes these reflect have done much to put fictional realities on the criminological map, so to speak. Although Ruggiero and Rafter examine objects from popular culture, they do not purport, as cultural criminology does, to bring the whole realm of “culture” into criminology or to have a transformative effect on cultural studies (Ferrell and Sanders 1995b, 302). Like Ruggiero and Rafter, however, cultural criminologists have made an invaluable contribution to criminological thought and analysis. Each in his or her own way facilitates a rethinking of the scope of the criminological enterprise and the range of objects to which criminological concepts might be applied. Unfortunately, as Ruggiero has noted (2003, 1), “While some sociologists and criminologists do have time to read fiction, few use it to clarify concepts to themselves, discuss them with colleagues and transmit them to students.” Likewise, Rafter has observed (2006, 4), “Even though film plays a central role in generating representations and understandings of crime, criminologists have traditionally ignored it, clinging to a narrow social science perspective that pays little attention to the interactions of crime and culture.” In other words, the scope of criminology in general is thought of as narrow despite the possibility, potential, or unrealized promise of boundary expansion to include a wider range of social phenomena relevant to understanding crime and crime control, while 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




at the same expanding the range of objects to which criminological ideas might be applied. The call by criminologists such as Ruggiero, Rafter, and Ferrell to investigate the intersection of crime and culture, especially popular culture, is not without precedent in criminology. However, the desire and tools to do so are much more developed in other social sciences such as cultural studies and sociology. This underdevelopment within criminology may be because of the very strong influence of classical rationalist thought (e.g., Bentham, Beccaria), biological determinism (e.g., Lombroso), and environmental determinism (e.g., the Chicago school, the crime prevention through environmental design [CPTED] movement). These tend to downplay or ignore the symbolic dimension of social reality. Classical rationalism acknowledges the symbolic through the idea of general deterrence, but there is no explicit focus on systems of signs. Elsewhere in criminology, Oscar Newman (1972), the progenitor of “environmental criminology” (of which CPTED is an outgrowth), acknowledged the importance of the symbolic division of private from public space for urban crime prevention. Before Newman, Erving Goffman (1961, 1963), Howard Becker (1963), and others devoted attention to the manipulation of signifiers through everyday routines, but their focus on the symbolic was left largely undeveloped within criminology. During the 1970s, the work of the Birmingham School for Contemporary Cultural Studies (influenced strongly by U.S. symbolic interactionism as well as the Marxism of Gramsci and Althusser) paid much more attention to the symbolic realm. However, although important for criminology and the sociology of deviance, this work is more concerned with pioneering the field of cultural studies than expanding the horizons of criminology. Although sociologies of deviance such as differential association, labeling theories, and theories of subculture did emphasize meaning, symbols, and the communicative aspects of social action, here culture is thought of simply as lived experience and perception—something to be distinguished from social structure or the more enduring and impersonal aspects of societal organization (including its institutions). The importance of the work of Rafter, Ruggiero, and cultural criminologists rests on a concern to see criminology explicitly engaged with symbolic and mediated forms of social reality. Film and fiction certainly qualify. However, one major weakness of cultural criminology and the work of Rafter lies in their inadequate development of the structural aspects of the conduits of meaning and the symbolic. Whereas cultural criminology and Rafter take a “representationalist” 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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approach, Ruggiero takes a broadly realist approach to fiction, which I will spend some time discussing. Generally, a representationlist approach, argued against by Garry Potter (1998), conflates “knowledge” of reality with “reality,” thus promoting a social science that has difficulty getting beyond the level of images and meaning. Four different and significant advances in “imaginative criminology” are discussed below. View One: Cultural Criminology—Symbolism, Meaning, and Cultural Enterprise The expansion of the boundaries of criminology to attend to the intersection of criminology, crime, and (high and low) popular culture has been most forcefully advanced by those working within the area known as “cultural criminology” (Ferrell 1999; Ferrell and Sanders 1995a; Ferrell et al. 2004; Hayward and Young 2004; Presdee 2000). Cultural criminology is a relatively new area of inquiry, an “emergent orientation” according to Ferrell (1999, 410). The category “cultural criminology” is meant to refer to an orientation within criminology toward study of the symbolic realm of cultural activities, including the study of meaning, representation, or more broadly, various forms of cultural media. According to Ferrell, “Cultural criminology widens criminology’s domain to include worlds conventionally considered exterior to it: gallery art, popular music, media operations and texts, style. In the same way, it introduces criminology into contemporary debates over these worlds, and defines criminological perspectives as essential to them. The specific relationships between culture and crime, and the broader relationship between criminology and contemporary social and cultural life, are both illuminated within cultural criminology” (1995a, 41). According to Hayward and Young, cultural criminology “is the placing of crime and its control in the context of culture; that is, viewing both crime and the agencies of control as cultural products—as creative constructs . . . Its focus is always upon the continuous generation of meaning around interaction; rules created, rules broken, a constant interplay of moral entrepreneurship, moral innovation and transgression” (2004, 259). A distinctly “cultural” criminology, it is argued, is necessary because of the permeation of crime and culture. According to Ferrell and Sanders, “shared symbolism and mediated meaning, subcultural style and collective imagery, define the nature of crime, criminality, and social control not only for criminals engaged in the daily enterprise of criminality but for everyone caught up in 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




the larger process of constructing and perceiving crime and control” (1995b, 298). According to Presdee, “it is clear that cultural forms and artifacts are an important element in our everyday lives and as such we quickly come into conflict, through the seeking of pleasure, with the dominant perspectives on life. It is here that we enter the realm of challenge, control, resistance and even carnival. It is here somewhere in the process of culture formation and identity formation that the criminalization process itself begins. The response by authority to the unfathomable is to outlaw and to criminalize” (2000, 6–7). Cultural criminology is advanced by proponents to address what is held to be an intimate connection between criminality, criminal acts, and the cultural production of meaning. Given the prominence and centrality of meaning and the symbolic element of social interaction, it is argued that to understand crime, criminality, and official and unofficial reactions to these, criminology must focus on the intersection of cultural and criminal activity: it must view criminal acts as products of creative labor while at the same time highlight that certain forms of “culture” and “expression” are criminalized for political, economic, or moral reasons. Ferrell’s work is foundational for cultural criminology, and we can find in his work several key foundational statements that underpin my and others’ previous statements about the nature, scope, and object of cultural criminology: Statement one suggests, “To account for the culture and subcultures of crime, the criminalization of cultural and subcultural activities, and the politics of these processes, then, we must move toward an integration of cultural and criminological analysis—that is, toward cultural criminology” (1995a, 25). Statement two stipulates, “To understand the reality of crime and criminalization, then, a cultural criminology must account not only for the dynamics of criminal subcultures, but for the dynamics of the mass media as well. Today, mediated images of crime and criminal violence wash over us in wave after wave, and in so doing help shape public perceptions and policies in regard to crime” (1995a, 28). And statement three reads, “The development of the sort of cultural criminology imagined here—a criminology which accounts for subcultural styles, media dynamics, aesthetic orientations, social and cultural inequalities, and more—will necessitate journeys beyond the conventional boundaries of contemporary criminology” (1995a, 36). These foundational statements lay a platform for moving criminology toward an engagement with popular culture and an assessment of how popular culture impacts criminalization. In turn, these statements advocate an investigation of a broader range of things (objects) 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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and exploration of the value of an array of analytic tools, mainly from cultural and literary analysis. Orthodox criminology is admonished for ignoring how criminal conduct is part of the wider range of cultural practices and a form of cultural expression. Cultural criminologists assert a need to move beyond conventional boundaries, locate crime within culture, view criminalization and subcultural delinquency as political processes, and attend to the mediated nature of our knowledge of crime and crime control. According to Ferrell and Sanders, “cultural criminology’s concern with exploring subcultural styles, media dynamics, and other symbolic dimensions of crime and crime control in turn manifests a concern with exploring the politics of crime and crime control and the cultural channels through which these politics are played out” (1995b, 301). Extrapolating from this work, cultural criminology shows a concern with four broad areas: the cultural nature of crime and its control, mediation, permeation, and methods. The cultural nature of crime and control refers to the representations of crime, criminality, and crime control offered by popular culture, especially mass media. News media, film, and other cultural outlets are of central interest (Ferrell 1999, 396; Hayward and Young 2004, 259). Mediation refers to how images, meanings, and experiences of criminality, criminal events, and control become reformulated or compounded, deconstructed and reconstructed within “the complex circuitry of mediated interaction” (Ferrell 1999, 398; Hayward and Young 2004, 259). Within this process of mediation, actors construct their own representations and experiences, and these experiences and presentations get taken up and represented by authorities, mass media, and so on.1 Permeation revolves around the intersection, interaction, and interplay between the practice of crime (and experience of criminality) and its official control (i.e., criminalization; Ferrell 1995b; Hayward and Young 2004, 259). The concern with methods is a call to make greater use of the procedures furnished by the discipline of cultural studies, namely ethnography and literary methods (e.g., discourse analysis), because these can more adequately capture or reveal meaning and the experiential element of everyday life (including their production; see also Stanley 1997) when compared to the traditional criminological methods of interviews, surveys, or content analysis. In many respects, cultural criminology is an updated version of the sociology of subculture and work conducted at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (notably that of Hall and Jefferson [1976] and Hebdige [1979]). It follows in the tradition of the interactionist sociologies of deviance, exemplified in the 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




work of Erving Goffman (1963), Howard Becker (1963), and most importantly the work of Jack Katz (1988), whose groundbreaking, controversial book, Seductions of Crime, became a lightning rod for both criticism and innovation within criminology. Katz sought to inaugurate a form of existentialist criminology drawing on symbolic interactionism (discussed in Chapter 4). Concerning phenomenology, which is an influential philosophy that in sociology and criminology has come to be represented by the interactionist tradition, Katz remarks, “What phenomenology uniquely has appreciated is not simply that a person’s lived work is his artifact but that by experiencing himself as an object controlled by transcendent forces, an individual can genuinely experience a new or different world . . . As unattractive morally as crime may be, we must appreciate that there is genuine experiential creativity in it as well” (1988, 8, emphasis added). The experiential, symbolic, and expressive aspects of the criminal act are central elements of examination within cultural criminology (see Presdee 2000, 4). The criminalization of culture—of creative labor—is also the criminalization, marginalization, and delegitimizing of cultural expression. We should note that Katz asserts that the moral issues surrounding crime are not at issue; that crime is one’s “lived work,” an “artifact,” a form of “creative expression” is at issue and situates crime and criminality within the cultural realm. Crime is approached as an artifact that is produced to express cultural values. From this standpoint, crime is regarded as an expression of creativity and value, something constructed or produced rather than as an act of destruction or simply a violation of the rules. Transgressive practices that may challenge or resist dominant values are linked to values that can be found in the wider culture, but which may not be dominant. Like criminal activities, criminalization and crime control are also thought to have an aesthetic or symbolic dimension (think of the “style” expressed through the comportment and apparel found within policing and courtroom procedure and the “moral architecture” of the prison). The domains of criminality, criminalization, and crime control are symbolic environments, distinct but intertwined. Expression, whether in the form of criminality or in the form of criminalization, is held to be a cultural enterprise: “Both the everyday collective practice of criminality and the criminalization of everyday life by the powerful are cultural enterprises and must be investigated as such” (Ferrell 1995a, 28). Expression in the form of the “everyday collective practice of criminality” is captured in the phrase crime as culture: “Much of what 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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we label criminal behavior,” Ferrell argues, “is at the same time subcultural behavior, collectively organized around networks of symbol, ritual, and shared meaning” (1999, 403). Subculture then is a major category of cultural criminological analysis, one important category in the “analytic language” that cultural criminology provides. The idea that crime is culture means “subcultures incorporate—indeed are defined by—elaborate conventions of argot, appearance, aesthetics, and stylized presentation of self and thus operate as repositories of collective meaning and representation for their members” (Ferrell 1999, 403). It is the symbolic element, the “symbolic codes,” the “style” if you will that characterizes the subculture, rather than faceto-face interaction or physical locale (Ferrell 1999, 403). Thus style is another central concept within cultural criminology. Style is held to be much more than an abstract idea. It is the concrete link between cultural (including crime control) and criminalized (subcultural) practices. According to Ferrell, “both past scholarship and contemporary controversies confirm that kids, criminals, and authorities engaged with the criminal process are at the same time engaged in matters of style. They further reveal that kids, criminals and authorities take style seriously; for all of them, style matters” (1995b, 174). Empirically, style is something powerful that is constitutive: it shapes and defines the practices, experiences, and boundaries that demarcate communities and everyday life, and it serves as a medium for communication, object of consumption, expression and marker of identity, class and status, as well as a form of resistance and innovation (Ferrell 1995b, 171, 173, 174, 178). Ferrell states, “This stylistic process goes on within criminal and noncriminal subcultures—thus creating various stylistic communities—and between subcultural members and those whom they encounter in their daily lives. And of all these stylistic encounters, certainly the most critical in shaping daily experience and determining crime and criminality are those with legal and political authorities” (1995b, 180). This symbolic element, this collective (community) expression of meaning and knowledge enables identification of members within a group (subculture) with one another but also is an important link— a common ground—between “activities organized around imagery, symbolism, and shared meaning, and those categorized by legal and political authorities as criminal” (Ferrell 1995b, 169). This binding or integrative aspect of symbolic elements was addressed by Albert Cohen in 1955 in the first elaboration of a theory of subculture formation, and finds its way, in modified form, into British cultural studies. This expression of collective meaning, this stylized 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




presentation of self, is also what elicits “societal reaction” (Lemert 1951) and “moral entrepreneurism” (Becker 1963). For moral, economic, or political reasons, certain forms of style, particular symbolic codes, and particular expressions of meaning and knowledge are subject to criminalization, which itself is a form of expression. Criminalization is the condemnation of a form of life, of a form of cultural expression as criminal. This criminalized form of cultural expression does not readily promote the values of the condemners (or what Hall et al. [1978] called “primary definers”). A good example of the collective symbolic expression of different “stylistic communities” (i.e., the criminalized and legal and political authorities) can be found in Ontario’s Safe Streets Act. Many jurisdictions have similar legislation, so this example will resonate widely. There are two forms of expression contained in this legislation: criminality (“crime as culture”) and that of criminalization (“culture as crime”).The main concern of the legislation is the practice of panhandling. Panhandling, as cultural criminologists would likely argue, is a collective expression of identity, class, and status, among other things. The act of criminalizing this collective expression is itself an expression of hegemonic values. The Safe Streets Act essentially criminalizes a collective practice (i.e., panhandling) that characterizes a “stylistic community” (e.g., homeless youth, “squeegee kids”). Panhandling is a practice imagined within a different stylistic community (that of legal and political authorities) to be “aggressive soliciting” (e.g., a persistence to solicit after one has said no, obstructing one’s path to do so, using abusive language during or after) of what are referred to as “captive audiences” (e.g., those waiting at traffic intersections, automated teller machines, public telephones, or transit stops; Adler et al. 2009, 192; Goff 2007, 56). Following the logic of cultural criminology, panhandling can be conceived as a cultural enterprise. The imagining of this as potentially “aggressive soliciting” and the subsequent criminalization of this is also a cultural enterprise. Dominant sensibilities and meanings that circulate within our culture are drawn on to interpret and understand—to imagine—what the activity of panhandling represents, how it should be responded to, and why. According to Goff (2007, 56), panhandling was imagined to be “disorder” requiring regulation through law, because in a culture of fear of crime such disorder represents a threat to personal safety. Another aspect of the cultural nature of panhandling is that it takes place in a public space, which is understood and experienced in a mediated way—through the realm of signs 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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and symbols (e.g., the realm of language) as well as the technological (e.g., mass media). The Safe Streets Act, as with all attempts to criminalize, exemplifies how some cultural forms of “expression,” if criminalized, will lead necessarily to engagement in crime. If some rely on the practice of panhandling and this is criminalized, the main means of subsistence and the activities through which some derive identity and collective being will be criminalized. Criminalization of panhandling does not mean that one will cease to panhandle; it simply means that “panhandling” becomes a category of criminal conduct made available for classifying collective conduct and expression. It is likely that this activity will continue and in fact has but not to the same degree or with the same degree of visibility. Our discussion of the Safe Streets Act helps exemplify the cultural and aesthetic dimensions of criminality and control. The legislation criminalizes what is arguably a subcultural activity that expresses collective meaning and values and the lived experiences of a poor and disenfranchised stylistic community (i.e., squeegee kids). The criminalizing is a political act, connected also to issues of economics and morality, perpetrated by the more powerful stylistic community of political and legal authorities. The dominant form of expression available to this less powerful community, in turn, is criminality. This example demonstrates how drawing on the analytic language of cultural criminology enables us to produce a plausible description and explanation of the nature and impact of this law. It illustrates how we might operate the concepts of cultural criminology and provides us with guidance for approaching other analytic languages. In thinking through the ideas of “crime as culture” and “culture as crime” and understanding subcultural activities, condemnation, and criminalization as cultural enterprises, cultural criminology seeks to bridge criminology to the creative and innovative undertakings found within cultural studies and the sociology of (sub)culture, and in doing so, it expands the boundaries of criminological inquiry, making it more relevant for understanding everyday life, not just those events or activities deemed criminal. According to Hayward and Young (2004, 259), cultural criminology “attempts to make sense of a world in which the street scripts the screen and the screen scripts the street.” It seeks to illuminate “the presence of power relations, and the emergence of social control, at the intersections of culture and crime” (Ferrell 1999, 408). However, as Rafter notes, cultural criminology also “promises to expand and reinvigorate the territory of traditional criminology; but it is not yet well developed, and its advocates have as yet paid little attention to film” (2006, 5). Although not explicitly concerned with 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley



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View Two: Rafter, Crime Narratives, and Filmic Reflections of Reality Nicole Rafter, like cultural criminologists, is engaged in testing the boundaries of criminology, moving beyond the traditional objects of the field and specifically focusing on “expressions” of value while exploring the intersection of crime and culture (Rafter 2006, 18). Rafter has perhaps done the most within criminology to demonstrate the utility of the study of popular culture and the imagination through her investigations of filmic narratives and their ideological (or symbolic) significance for criminology’s understanding of crime and its causes. Despite similarities with cultural criminology, Rafter’s main concern with filmic narratives is different from cultural criminology’s broad concern with the cultural enterprise of crime and criminalization. Because her work deals mainly with one particular cultural artifact, film, her focus is narrower in scope. Her focus on film is mainly concerned with how it represents popular sentiments or popular ideas about crime and how films, in turn, have taken up major or dominant criminological ideas and popularized them. Crime films are treated as representations of criminological themes and issues, and as such their main contribution to criminology is as “a source of cultural information” on widespread ideas about crime and criminals (Rafter 2006, ix, xi, 61). Although Rafter’s text offers a synthesis of themes from a large number of films in order to highlight criminological issues that have become popularized and reflected in film, it does not offer systematic applications of criminological or deviance theories to interpret the social reality depicted in these films. Nor does she attempt to formulate, revise, or extend criminological concepts. Rafter’s aims are more modest, as she seeks to illustrate popular sentiments about crime, criminality, and the justice system, taking these expressions as important sources of criminological knowledge that criminologists have ignored. Three main features of Rafter’s treatment of film will be discussed in this section: the social role ascribed to film by Rafter, explanations (or the criminological knowledge) identified within crime films, and the two types of crime films she identifies. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


film, cultural criminology fruitfully illustrates the study of culture as a valuable criminological pursuit and more generally the value of imaginative criminology.

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Five Social Roles for Film Part of the value of crime films, why they are popular and garner much attention, and why they are worthy of criminological analysis is because they play a number of important social roles. We can identify five social roles for film in the work of Rafter. Each role will be examined briefly. The first role of film is as a cultural resource. Film is a cultural resource that people make use of when thinking about causes of crime, criminals, and how to “be criminal” (Rafter 2006, 10). Films can be intellectually stimulating and force people to examine their own views and perhaps come to a new sensibility about crime. They also operate as a repository of valuable information about dominantly held views on crime in society. Film offers a stock of popular and popularized knowledge about crime, criminality, and criminology for both social scientists and lay persons. In other words, films provide discursive resources to help one conceptualize and articulate crime problems and related issues. The second social role for film lies in its offering popularized criminological explanations. Film disseminates its embedded explanations of crime to a wide population. These explanations mirror or “tend to parallel” (Rafter 2006, 62) trendy criminological explanations, those “in vogue” at the time the film is produced (Rafter 2006, 61, 62). In a related sense, films diffuse ideology. This is the third social role for film. Film is a mechanism for disseminating ideology along with criminological explanations. Rafter states, “Crime films help shape beliefs so fundamental that we are scarcely aware that we have them: the belief that crime can be explained, for instance, and opinions about who is qualified to explain it [i.e., experts]; our view of the world is basically benign or threatening; and unstated and unexamined stereotypes about who is likely to be dangerous. They tell us not only what to think but also how to feel about crime, criminals, and criminal justice” (2006, 61–62). For Rafter, ideology has two components: On the one hand, ideology includes perceptions, assumptions, myths, messages, ideas, beliefs, or meanings about crime and criminality that are taken for granted or unexamined (Rafter 2006, 8–11, 76–79) and are skewed or distorted (Rafter 2006, 77). On the other hand, Rafter’s use of the term invokes issues of power, as these myths, attitudes, and so forth “reflect and produce power” (Rafter 2006, 9, 10). Films relate to issues of power because they influence and direct how we might think about crime, its causes, explanations, and possible remedies. The ideologies disseminated by films also connect to issues of power because film narratives are selective representations of gender, race, class, among other 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




things, and as such are exclusionary (but necessarily so). Additionally, ideologies serve to determine what is and is not important or relevant. It should be noted that Rafter’s understanding of ideology is relatively unsophisticated, but at least some relation between film and ideology is acknowledged and discussed in her work. Within cultural criminology this is all but ignored. To expand on film’s ideological and symbolic element, we can discern eight further ideological “functions” of film (Rafter 2006, 76–78): 1. offer explanations for crime; 2. assure us that crime can indeed by explained; 3. identify criminological authorities, suggesting there are only certain “experts,” “specialists,” or “cultural authorities” who have the capacity to determine the causes of and remedies for crime; 4. depict experts as mainly white, middle-class males but more recently has depicted experts as sometimes being “nontraditional” (e.g., black, female); 5. define “the crime problem” narrowly as being about mainly violent crime, especially murder; 6. reinforce myths including that “of a close association between mental illness and crime”; 7. suggest proper emotional responses as they depict or attempt to elicit a particular feeling or reaction about crime; 8. offer specific content that reflects the moral, economic, political, and legal issues of the day (e.g., attitudes toward homosexuality, premarital sex; drug use, etc.). These eight points illustrate Rafter’s suggestion that films “never simply tell a story but, through the choices they make about character, setting, and theme, also convey ideological assumptions about what is and what is not important” (2006, 80). Thus film in offering popular explanations about crime and criminality through its narratives of exclusion operates ideologically to perpetuate subtle forms of domination. The fourth role for film is that it enables escapism. This is what gives crime films and their often wrong-headed views of crime and criminality their remarkable staying power: They allow us to experience pleasure in watching others suffer, in rooting for the bad guy. They allow us to “ponder moral choices without in fact having to make them” (Rafter 2006, 11). They allow us “to access places few of us visit in person” (Rafter 2006, 11). We can draw inspiration from them. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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They allow us to become voyeurs, to participate in solving mysteries, and they “provide unfamiliar and challenging material for ‘self-talk’” (Rafter 2006, 11–13). In providing escapism, film operates as a “tool” that provokes our imagination (Rafter 2006, 61).2 The fifth social role played by film, mentioned already, is as a tool (Rafter 2006, 61) for reflection: one that can be utilized to examine, explore, and debate the nature, causes, and circumstances of crime through film’s capacity to combine history (depictions of change and development) and social setting (the context of criminal events). This ability to combine these elements enables film to present complex facets of the conditions that underpin the visible aspects of crime in an integrated way to the viewing public. As a tool, film operates to provoke our imagination. “The best films,” Rafter suggests, “brim over with complexity, challenging viewers intellectually and imaginatively to participate in the act of interpretation” (2006, 63). They “form a bridge . . . between ‘the real world’ and our imaginations” (Rafter 2006, 84). Four Types of Knowledge in Film Examining filmic realities reveals at least four different types of knowledge and information that is embedded in film. This embedded knowledge, which is amenable to criminological examination situates fictional realities as important multidimensional discursive resources for thinking about issues of crime and crime control. First, there is knowledge of popular views on the nature and causes of crime and criminality. That is, widespread and dominant standpoints on the causes of crime and criminality are embedded in fictional realities and can be extracted to enable criminologists to better understand a lay or a populist perspective. Second, film embodies a popularized version of criminological knowledge that informs lay and populist views. Although distorted and presented at the ideological level, “films draw on popular criminological explanations and in turn embody these explanations, feeding them back to mass audiences” (Rafter 2006, 61). Examining this embedded popularized criminological knowledge can help criminologists better understand the public’s reception, understanding, and perhaps tolerance of criminology’s core ideas. Third, films contain knowledge of how ideology is connected to the power to shape and mould popular knowledge as well as criminological knowledge. In this way, film can help us visualize the dialectical interplay between forms of exclusion and the dominantly accepted ideas about crime, criminality, and control. Lastly, films offer speculative knowledge about the nature of crime in our society, in future and also past societies, the implications of this, and what might 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




be done about this. The public reception of this speculation might be examined for how it indicates the degree of general confidence in or support of state policies or criminology’s capacity to remain viable and relevant. We can further reflect on what sorts of explanations of crime and criminality can be found in films, what is missing and why. Rafter argues that there are four basic explanations to be found in all crime films. First there is a type of environmental determinism that stresses “bad environment.” Here people are compelled to engage in criminal activity by external forces and circumstances beyond their control. Characters are often depicted has having few choices or alternatives to deviance. I think it fair to suggest that this view promotes some very old and somewhat dated and certainly well critiqued ideas. This view resonates with Adolpe Quetelet’s nineteenth century work on “social mechanics,” Italian positivist Enrico Ferri’s blending of environmental and biological determinism, and especially the twentieth century “social disorganization” theory of the Chicago school of sociology. The Chicago school of sociology held that pathological communities were produced by the growing cultural diversity and new transportation and information technologies characteristic of the early twentieth century. Rafter suggests that subcultural, social control, and social learning theories emphasize environmental determinism (2006, 66). She suggests that this “bad environment” explanation was most prevalent in film about ten to fifteen years ago (having recently given way to rational choice theory, discussed later in this chapter; Rafter 2006, 69, 74). The second explanation to emerge from crime film, according to Rafter, revolves around mental illness or psychopathy. This is the second most utilized explanation for criminal activity. We know of this model in criminology as the “medical model” (different facets of this will be explored in Chapters 6 and 7). I think it is fair to suggest that this position is indebted to both classicism and positivism: classicism because the mentally ill would be considered to be “mad” or “irrational” (in either violating the rules of proper reasoning or choosing against the logical choice calculated) and Italian positivism because the mentally ill were classified as “defective.” Rafter includes behaviors such as nymphomania, epilepsy, greed, moral depravation, split personality, and voyeurism (which invoke strongly the “medicalization” thesis discussed in Chapter 6). Rafter breaks these types of films down into two genres: those that make use of what she calls the “cameo psycho” and those that revolve around an “explanatory psycho” (2006, 69). The former is included for “local color,” the latter to provide the account or explanation of why the crime occurred. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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The third common explanation found within crime films is that the deviant or criminal attempts to realize aspirations for a better life (and by implication is dissatisfied with one’s current situation). Rafter reduces such aspirations to the motives of “need and greed” but with more choice than allowed by other positions (2006, 72). This explanation most resembles the rational choice model (derived from the eighteenth-century utilitarianism of Bentham and Beccaria), which is prominent in criminology today and underlies the criminal law. Aspects of this explanation resonate with “relative deprivation” theory, control theory (i.e., lack of internal controls), as well as Merton’s “strain theory.” The fourth explanation, biological determinism or bad biology, resembles the “mental illness” thesis. However, where mental illness is a psychiatric designation and can be corrected, bad biology is less likely to be corrected because it has to do with heredity. This genetic explanation is the least favored explanation (Rafter 2006, 64) and one that will be examined at length in Chapter 7. Here criminals are compelled to engage in criminal activity by internal forces beyond their control. They are thought to be intellectually inferior and possess a “primitive morality” (Rafter 2006, 64). These films, according to Rafter, embrace a variation of Caesar Lombroso’s nineteenth-century atavistic “born criminal” (genetic throwback). However, as we will see in Chapter 7, Lombroso was certainly not the only or most sophisticated proponent of the idea that criminality can be explained by both evolutionary and biological factors. In all of these four explanations, we can detect a debate between the free will of classicism and the determinism of criminological positivism. Implicitly Rafter has argued that all “trendy” criminological explanations have been indebted to one of these two views and that it is only these two that have found their way into what we can term the “popular criminology” depicted in film. Whether or not this is true is something worth considering. What we can take from Rafter for our immediate purpose is that the popular imagination is constrained, limited, or “disciplined” by a narrow range of criminological theories (ideologically rendered in the films). If this is the case, then it is especially important to draw out and act on the implications of cultural criminology, Rafter and others to promote a “criminological imagination” that can inform a more sophisticated popular criminology. Two Types of Crime Film: Conventional and Alternative According to Rafter, these four explanations are expressed mainly in two types of crime film: the traditional or conventional crime film 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




and the alternative or countertraditional crime film. Traditional crime films are concerned with specific causes of crime and thus make use of at least one of the discussed explanations. They are traditional because they make use of the most conventional of criminological explanations. The countertraditional genre, on the other hand, is relatively uninterested in particular causes of crime or criminality and is critical of traditional depictions of crime and justice. The dominant trend prior to 1970 was to offer “safe critique and sanitized rebellion,” according to Rafter (2006, 14). These pre-1970s films are conventionalist in their depiction of crime and criminality. They offer criticism of the status quo but allow us to ultimately reaffirm our commitment to a dominant set of cultural values about our social and moral order, the values that underpin our justice system and legal system. In this way, “most mainstream crime films reassure us that our society and system of criminal justice are salvageable despite their many failings” (Rafter 2006, 1). Thus this genre of crime film, according to Rafter (2006, 3), offers us criticism of injustices through depictions of what she calls a “good” bad guy who “challenges authority and exposes injustice,” and at the same time these films “enable us to identify with a character who restores order at the end.” In this way, crime films are morality plays replete with characters and normative proscriptions. In the end these conventional films reflect what we can call “disciplined conflict.” That is, they allow people to vent vicariously about what they might think is wrong with the society in which they live and root for the “underdog” without themselves challenging or deviating from the cultural values and norms that may in part be responsible for the production of such injustices. The films American History X and K-PAX, discussed later in this book, fall into this conventionalist camp. A small portion of films after 1970 redraw these boundaries and challenge our ultimate complacency about dominant, collective sensibilities or ideological understandings of right and wrong, justice and injustice, the nature of the crime problem, our ability to solve crime problems, and so forth. In these films, “righteousness and salvation are impossible” (Rafter 2006, 75). These films are cynical and “the atmosphere is saturated with menace and depravity” (Rafter 2006, 74). Rafter states, “While mainstream crime films continue to offer the pleasure of rebellion within safe constraints, this subgroup insists on the impossibility of heroism and the certainty of injustice” (2006, 17). This trend comprises a “subset of critical counter-traditional movies” (Rafter 2006, 11), some of which are discussed in this book. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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American Psycho, Falling Down, and GATTACA fall into the countertraditional camp. In sum, film offers us a discourse on contemporary social problems and allows us to engage in a limited and structured debate on these problems and on the criminological issues raised (Rafter 2006, vii, xi). Films offers “narratives for thinking about the nature, causes, and consequences of crime” (Rafter 2006, 83). In this sense, we can engage in debates about real issues as they are reflected or represented by films. Films offer what we have termed a “popular criminology”: a source of cultural knowledge about the causes of and perhaps solutions to crime and crime related problems; a fund of information about how more specialized ideas have been democratized, if you will. Film offers us knowledge about crime and criminal justice that might be taken up as an object of study. Movies for Rafter, following cultural criminology, appear as “cultural artifacts,” as expressions of cultural values that “reflect” as well as “mould” popular sentiments and beliefs about the causes of crime and nature of criminality. In doing so, films circulate and naturalize dominant ideas and perpetuate myths about the nature, causes, and remedies of crime, criminals, and crime control. They offer us insight on widespread beliefs about crime, criminality, as well as what are perceived to be legitimate responses to each. Crime films can sometimes initiate a “challenge” to dominant attitudes about crime, criminality, and societal responses and offer commentary on the relation between crime and society, shaping understandings of that relationship. They both reflect and help generate general sentiments about crime and justice, good and evil, and the need for a particular form of moral and social order, politics, and so forth. In this way they can be conceived as a condensation of collective sentiments. A basic point illustrated by Rafter is that the ideas and concepts of criminology are paramount for shaping popular imaginings of crime, criminality, criminals, criminal or deviant subcultures, as well as views of law enforcement, courtroom procedure, and punishment. We also know that such popularized and populist views of the crime problem, among other things, are very important for shaping criminal justice policy today (Garland 2001; Haggerty 2004). This suggests at the very least that popular culture is a worthy and relevant object for criminological study, that “fictional realities” can make for very good pedagogical and analytical tools, and that there should be an academic or criminological counterpart to this popular imagination. In other words, criminologists need to develop a criminological imagination. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




However, as Rafter laments, criminologists have traditionally ignored film (2006, 4). She suggests that criminologists have not taken this popular knowledge or popular criminology as a legitimate knowledge useful for social-science inquiry. In this sense, this popular knowledge remains “subjugated” or subordinated to the disciplinary knowledge of criminology (Foucault 1980d). Despite the nontraditional nature of film as an object of examination and source of criminological knowledge, it does offer a useful means of formulating or refashioning analytic concepts (when used as an analytic tool) and for illustrating and making the sometimes abstract ideas of criminology more concrete or “real” (when utilized as a pedagogical tool). The advances made by those working within cultural criminology on the criminalization of expression and expression of the criminalized has been strengthened by Rafter’s efforts to situate crime films as important sources of knowledge and outlet of expression of cultural values, popular sentiments about matters of crime and justice, and popularized criminological knowledge. Ruggiero’s (2003) text, Crime in Literature, offers a third view of fictional realities different from Rafter and cultural criminology and closer to the approach developed in this book. View Three: Ruggiero’s Reflexive Realism I have been discouraged by many people from writing this book, mainly colleagues and acquaintances who thought that, once one is safely working in a disciplinary field and is lucky enough to have achieved a career of sorts in it, one had better pretend that the knowledge offered by that field is all a curious human being can aspire to. People who, instead, thought that disciplinary boundaries have to be challenged and expertise in one field tested by broader intellectual curiosity are those who discussed with me the rationale and contents of this book. —Vincenzo Ruggiero, Crime in Literature

This comment illustrates where, at least in Ruggiero’s experience, popular culture, film, and fiction fall within criminology. He suggests, not unlike cultural criminologists, that these objects fall at the margins of the discipline. It is at the margins of criminology that we can find the placing of cultural artifacts. Ruggiero’s rumination suggests that perhaps curiosity, creativity, and imagination are not held in high esteem within criminology or perhaps are not valued as objects or motivations for scholarship. Certainly cultural criminologists would 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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argue this when they assert a need to engage with and enlist the analytical techniques of cultural studies and literary criticism. We can detect three important themes in Ruggiero that help move us closer to defining and constructing a criminological imagination. These are the dual role of fiction, Ruggiero’s realism, and his explicit focus on producing criminological narratives through analyzing literature. These themes are explored in the sections that follow. The Dual Role of Fiction Ruggiero explicitly situates fiction as both a pedagogical and analytic tool. This “dual role” is captured in the opening lines of the book: “While some sociologists and criminologists do have time to read fiction, few use it to clarify concepts to themselves, discuss them with colleagues and transmit them to students” (Ruggiero 2003, 1). In Rafter’s work, we also find a similar argument for the use of film as an analytic tool to examine, challenge, or reformulate beliefs. However, Ruggiero’s approach differs because he is explicitly concerned with utilizing some analytic languages from criminology to deconstruct and reformulate literary narratives to bring out hidden, obfuscated, or only partially developed themes (and in turn produce his own analytic narrative). As a pedagogical or teaching tool, fiction is thought to be useful for exploring and clarifying the building blocks of what we have been calling the “criminological imagination.” There are two components to this: First, fiction is used to illustrate, clarify, and explore key criminological ideas or concepts (Ruggiero 2003, 1, 3) and to make these sometimes abstract ideas more concrete. Secondly, apart from illustrating or clarifying concepts, Ruggiero demonstrates that fiction can be used as “raw material” or “data” that can be analyzed and thus can be employed to demonstrate the process of analysis. That is, Ruggiero illustrates in exemplary form that fiction is useful for demonstrating how analysis is undertaken and how concepts are used or operated to identify things of significance in the “data” or narrative. Fiction also helps us construct a plausible and full description of significant items, describe how they are related, and produce explanations of why such events are possible or how these significant factors were generated. This is fiction’s pedagogical role. This brings us to the analytic role of fiction. By exploring abstract ideas and putting these to work by crafting an analytical narrative, we can diagnose the strengths, limitations, and possible ways of reformulating and strengthening our criminological concepts (the conceptual tools criminologists must use to “do” social science). 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




That is, we can use fiction to refine and increase the range or scope of familiar concepts that criminologists employ in their studies of crime, delinquency, violence, and criminal justice, among other things. In some cases criminologists, rather than study the practices that make up criminal events, acts of violence, or the criminal justice system, will study concepts themselves to explore their range or scope in order to better define (refine) their use in social science inquiry. Fiction proves a useful tool for this conceptual work, which is done to make one’s concepts more powerful and illuminating. Looking at fiction can help us understand more about our own social reality, as works of fiction are anchored, moored, or rooted in reality and deal with real issues such as racism, violence, or marginalization, albeit in a fictionalized setting. Both the analytic and pedagogical roles of fiction serve to promote clarification of sociological and criminological concepts. They promote “storytelling” in a social science tradition and bring together imagination and social science, bridging the fact versus fiction divide. This dual role of fiction as conceived by Ruggiero is an advancement beyond Rafter’s conceptualization of the roles of film as essentially a tool for sparking discussion or as a mechanism for diffusing ideologies. Ruggiero’s formulation also goes beyond the treatment of cultural artifacts as expressions of personal and collective values as espoused by cultural criminology. Ruggiero asserts a broader and more active role for fiction than Rafter for film or cultural criminologists for cultural artifacts. Furthermore, Ruggiero’s treatment of fictional worlds can be characterized as broadly realist, whereas Rafter’s and cultural criminologists’ treatment is largely empiricist and constructionist. Thus to discuss Ruggiero is to discuss a realist orientation wherein meaning and significance can be found within texts or social reality. Within this realist orientation concepts are made by social scientists to make reference to this meaning and significance and to aid in revealing significant features of the text or of social reality. This process of reference (rather than correspondence) maintains a strict division between the analytic concept and the sociality referred to so as not to conflate the two. The constructionist view suggests that actors create meaning through their interactions and use of concepts and therefore collapse the “distance” between concepts and their referents. Moreover, where Rafter and cultural criminologists are concerned with images, Ruggiero is concerned with producing imaginings or what I have been calling “analytical narratives.” Although cultural criminologists produce innovative, imaginative, and creative interpretations of what images 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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mean or represent, the main level of engagement is at the level of the image and secondarily with the systems of mediation or with the mechanisms at work that generate the image. Alternatively, Ruggiero is concerned with how texts “authorize” interpretations and with how the analytic languages of criminology can be utilized to produce interpretations. Thus this focuses on the generation of meaning and extraction of significance from the text (which is no different than extracting significance from social reality). Ruggiero’s major concern is to produce new knowledge through the analytical reading of texts in order to distil, extract, reconstruct, or reformulate the insights of the text’s author about reality that may be embedded in the text. This sets his approach apart from both Rafter and cultural criminology, although they are certainly related. As the realist aspect of Ruggiero’s work and his focus on the concept-dependent generation of analytical narratives set his approach apart from other criminological engagements with cultural artifacts, they will be explored further. Implication One: Realism and Truth in Fiction The first of two key features distinguishing Ruggiero’s orientation from Rafter and cultural criminology is that he is not simply concerned with narratives as representations of criminological knowledge (popular or academic), as expressions of meaning, or even as reflections of reality that operate ideologically to perpetuate myths about crime, criminals, and criminal justice. His approach is broadly “realist” in orientation. Garry Potter’s (1998) discussion of “truth in fiction” and a realist approach to fictional realities will be drawn on to explore this underdeveloped aspect of Ruggiero’s work. One way of exploring the differences between Ruggiero and Rafter and cultural criminology is to situate his work within three general criminological approaches routinely outlined in many criminology and criminal justice method and theory textbooks (e.g., Neuman, Wiegand, and Winterdyk 2004). These three general criminological approaches contrast what are commonly thought to be three different criminological orientations to the study of crime and crime control. The two dominant criminological orientations are positivism and interpretivism. Positivism is often depicted (and oversimplified) as objective and quantitative, a theory-testing approach that heavily relies on surveys to collect data and relies little if at all on theory for generating descriptions. Interpretivism is often depicted as intuitive and qualitative, and as a theory-producing approach that heavily relies on observation to collect data and intuition to generate description 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




and explanation. The third criminological orientation, critical criminology, is often depicted by textbooks as the critical orientation within criminology—one that is more theoretical and expressly interested in issues of politics and social justice, critical description, and explanation. This third approach is sometimes said to cover relatively newer criminological orientations such as discourse analysis, postmodernist, and feminist approaches. It was originally initiated in the 1970s to distinguish a mainly Marxist criminology from both an antitheoreticalpositivism as well as an apolitical interactionist-conflict orientation. This is a highly schematic presentation of three orientations that are commonly presented to students of criminology as distinct and uniform. It is important to realize that textbook depictions are aimed at ridding author and reader alike of complex and messy conceptual ambiguities by simply ignoring them rather than attempting to work through them. We cannot work through these here but fortunately do not need to; brevity is a necessary convenience. For our immediate purpose, we only need to know that Ruggiero, given that he is materialist and broadly realist, falls into the critical criminology camp rather than the positivist or interpretivist camp. The claim, then, is that this somewhat standard and highly schematic presentation of criminology—one that is likely familiar to readers—can be drawn on at least initially to help us conceptualize differences between Ruggiero, Rafter, and cultural criminology. Rafter and cultural criminology can be located in the interpretivist camp. This does not mean that Ruggiero’s approach is devoid of any interpretive element. It is not. It is clear that his work is about interpretation and meaning and is qualitative in nature. However, beyond these similarities there are differences that prevent his work from being categorized simply as interpretivist. For instance, he is interested in showing how meaning with criminological value can be extracted from the text by the operator of analytic languages rather than with only how narratives “reflect” or correspond to criminological realities. The meaning that is extracted is produced by the structure of the text itself rather than solely by the author (or reader); the text “authorizes” any interpretation produced. This interest in generating particular kinds of interpretations (i.e., analytical narratives or in his terms “criminological stories”) leads him to focus not only on how the text authorizes the plausibility of particular interpretations but also on how criminological languages enable generation of particular interpretations. Additionally, his view that fiction can shed light on real life problems and issues beyond the text (i.e., help diagnose limitations and strengthen criminological analysis) suggests that he 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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focuses on fiction because it can help illuminate “some central, specific topics in the study of crime and social control” (Ruggiero 2003, 6). These “specific topics” (such as political violence, structural strain, poverty, criminogenic market structures, etc.) exist independently of the text as objects that can be contemplated in terms of the text. They are real social problems despite their presentation in a fictionalized setting and context. The point here is that Ruggiero’s focus moves beyond the level of the “textual image” if you will—beyond the notion that the meaning expressed by cultural artifacts corresponds to the author of a rebellious act (e.g., the youth delinquent) or the director of the crime film. He focuses more on the things that direct and shape (or govern) not only the meaning embedded in the text but also the process of illumination (emergence) of this meaning and the generation of analytical narratives. In Rafter’s work, by contrast, films are seemingly designed by directors to express particular meanings (i.e., the explanations she outlines); they do also impart ideological notions, but it is not clear from Rafter whether or not this is accidental or intentional. In any event, Rafter constructs film as a rather unproblematic device or conduit for personal expression. In cultural criminology, cultural artifacts are held to be outcomes of collective expression. For Rafter, film is an expression of the director’s ideas and ideological assumptions. In cultural criminology, cultural artifacts are also expressions of an individual’s and collectivity’s identity and values (subterranean or dominant values); the cultural expression for both originates in individual action. In this sense, meaning in film corresponds to the intention and meaning held by the author or director. Neither Rafter nor cultural criminology forecloses the possibility that different meanings can be derived from the same objects, but it is mainly believed by Rafter and cultural criminologists that there is a correspondence between the meaning to be found and the intended meaning held in the mind of the author, director, or group manipulating the images, symbols, text, or what have you. Ruggiero does not dismiss the intention of the author but shifts the focus to how meaning is generated by the structure of the text and its interaction with aspects of the world beyond that text (e.g., the analytic languages necessary to extract meaning from the text). As Potter (1998) argues, meaning is there to be found and is tied to the structure of the narrative—not the intention of the author. Moreover, meaning can only be revealed or discovered (and in some sense created) through the use of analytic languages. Thus meaning needs to be extracted, if you will, from the text through an analytical reading that makes use of one or more 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




structured sets of criminological concepts (i.e., an analytic language). As this extraction of meaning happens to be the central issue of concern for Garry Potter (1998), this more sophisticated approach that is tacit in Ruggiero can be drawn out by referring to the theoretical resources offered by Potter. Broadly, we can detect within Ruggiero three elements that characterize his realist orientation. In brief, these elements of realism are the independence of meaning, the position that the text rather than the author authorizes (and constrains) meaning, and that an important element in extracting criminological meaning from texts (or any data for that matter) lies in the external reality and independence of both the structure of language and criminology’s analytic languages (both of which make possible the extracting and production of something of criminological significance). The Independence of Meaning. Ruggiero emphasizes that criminological meaning exists in fiction in an objective way: that is, as object to be found or revealed. This meaning or multiple meanings are possibly unbeknownst to the text’s author rather than expressly intended. Thus meaning has an independent (or at least relatively independent) reality. On the one hand while reading a text, according to Garry Potter, “The words on the page are in one sense the raw material of the production of meaning that reading entails” (1998, 181). As the raw material, it must be shaped, interpreted, and manipulated in some way. Criminological languages can be used to shape, interpret, and manipulate this raw material. “In the process [of reading a work of fiction],” argues Potter (1998, 181), “she creates for herself a succession of mental images, which in their totality (and in their partiality as well) combine to form a fictional universe.” In this sense, the reader is producing meaning from the raw material. This meaning is constrained by the raw material (how it is ordered into a narrative) as well as our use of criminological or other analytic languages. However, in another sense the reader is simply reproducing the meaning already present in the text. As Potter further elaborates, “in another sense they [the words on the page] are not at all ‘raw’ but pre-packaged, endowed with pre-existing meaning” (1998, 181). In both cases, whether we view the work of fiction as raw material or endowed with prepackaged meaning, there is something in the text to be extracted. Potter (1998, 180) has demonstrated in his discussion of “truth in fiction” that although the meanings we attach to things are human creations, once created they exist independently of us. For instance, a chair might be interpreted to be a table, but common sense tells us that chairs are things on which we sit. This is a simplified example, but 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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it nevertheless demonstrates what was discussed in Chapter 1 as the “coercive facticity” of social constructs: they exist whether we want them to or not, are generalized throughout our culture, and shape our perceptions (in this case our reading of fiction). The independent reality of meaning within fictional worlds is illustrated by Ruggiero’s discussion of Herman Melville’s classic tale of obsession, Moby Dick. Ruggiero reviews some contrasting popular interpretations of the novel. One, as Ruggiero relays, suggests that “in Moby Dick one could see two if not three books rolled into one. First, readers find detailed information on whales and whaling, and, in particular on the great sperm whale. Second, the novel analyses the relationships between the different characters sharing the fate of their ship. Third, the book is a mixture of moralizing essay and rhapsody in which ‘quaint conceit and extravagant daring speculation’ are interwoven” (2003, 137). Ruggiero’s criminological variation of the narrative illuminates what is hidden within this text: “different notions of crime and enterprise,” especially “three different concepts of crimes of the economy” (Ruggiero 2003, 141). In other words, he reconstructs Moby Dick as an allegory of economic crime, a treatment of industry under the guise of a tale of obsession, and whaling (discussed later on in this chapter). Unlike popular interpretations of Moby Dick, Ruggiero finds criminological meaning and significance within it. What we have called “criminological variations” on dominant interpretations reveal criminological themes and issues within fiction. This is because of the use of analytic languages found within criminology. This criminological meaning is in the text and it is not simply or only the product or expression of an author. The value of engaging with literary works, according to Ruggiero, is that they “teach us freedom of interpretation, because the very ambiguity of language spawns multiple readings of texts” (2003, 5). Authorization is the second element of Ruggiero’s realism. Ruggiero (2003, 5) states that texts “authorize” the meaning that is to be found in them. Hence, the text constrains our reading and disciplines our imagination; that is, the text authorizes what we can imagine as a plausible interpretation (Potter 1998, 190; Pearce 1989). Potter provides clarification on this process of authorization: “While the text enables individual meaning production . . . it also limits this reader creativity” (1998, 181). This has already been mentioned, but what is worth stressing is that “if the reader interpretatively stretches too far . . . then the bond between text and interpretation is broken” (Potter 1998, 181–82). In other words, if we go too far with our interpretation it loses plausibility because it cannot be supported by 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




the text. Just as the text constrains the plausibility of our interpretations, our analytic tools shape interpretation and discipline, govern, constrain, and enable what meaning we can derive from the text (in the same way that our methodological and interpretive tools allow us to derive significance from data). Potter asserts that what is at issue here is not the “realistic” nature of the narrative itself but rather consistency and logic within the narrative (1998, 183–84). Thus, even the most nonnaturalistic or unconventional texts authorize “truths”— that is, whether an interpretation can be deemed a true or plausible interpretation. Thus the text authorizes claims about the fictional reality as true or false (or it at least authorizes degrees of plausibility). Any interpretation of Moby Dick, although produced using an analytic language, is grounded in and constrained in the last instance by our fictional reality. The internal structure of the fictional reality—the language of the text—determines the meaning to be found there. The third element of Ruggiero’s realism is found in his tacit assertion of the external reality and independence of both the structure of language and criminology’s analytic languages. Meaning and authorization have been described by Ruggiero as internal to the text. This echoes Potter’s view that meaning exists in the text whether “interpretatively realized or not, in the same way geological strata lie buried beneath the earth’s surface, whether excavated and discovered or not” (Potter 1998, 184). However, there are important elements “beyond the text,” as it were, that must be considered to fully appreciate the realist element of Ruggiero’s approach. It may seem an oxymoron to suggest that the there is an extratextual element within the narrative, but upon closer scrutiny we see that this is what Ruggiero and certainly Potter are arguing: there is always a necessary or “internal” relation between “fiction” and “reality;” reality does not simply bound fiction. Potter claims that “the meaning of this text is not bounded by my intention nor by any reader’s interpretation. It exists in the text itself. Or rather, it exists in the relation between text and reality including the reality of meaning and the reality of linguistic structure” (1998, 182). The meaning to be found in the text does not solely rest on the author’s or reader’s imagination. The meaning in the text, the discerning of criminological significance in the text, and extraction of meaning from the text is connected to this extratextual reality in at least four ways. First, the structure of language and rules for use (i.e., rules for the crafting of fictional realities) are external to the text. This is explicitly discussed by Potter and implied by Ruggiero. The existence of “linguistic structure” refers to the basic elements of our system of 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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language (Potter 1998; Saussure 1983). The idea here is that there is some basic structure of elements that we utilize to form speech and written signs. In turn, these are associated with abstract ideas that refer to material referents. This system of basic units and unwritten rules as to how to assemble these elements enables production of written texts. One way of thinking about this system of language is to think of the keys on a keyboard as the basic elements of language. We all utilize the same system, but we do not all produce the same written texts. This is one important extratextual element that is found within fiction at a deep level. A great many scholars have articulated the social role and power of language, and it is not my intention to review this here. I mention this only to suggest that this understanding of a process of reference (and not a simple notion of correspondence) is part of Ruggiero’s position. The analytic languages of criminology and sociology are particular languages or formations indebted to this general linguistic structure. Thus these particular analytic languages have an independent existence quite apart from any narratives we might construct through their use. This is the second extratextual element. These are sometimes referred to as “discourses” and must be utilized to derive significance (meaning) from our object. Their use requires that we actively engage with them and “operate” them (and in doing so, sometimes reformulate or extend them) through a practice of reading, a third extratextual element. When we read, we do not simply receive an understanding or meaning intended by the author; both Potter and Ruggiero argue that we extract meaning by operating or putting to use linguistic categories. For Ruggiero, fiction has depth; it has “layers of meaning” (2003, 154). An analytical reading practice (the operating of a set of categories) enables access to one or more of these layers to extract meaning. Thus to read is to also extract meaning, and the level or depth one can reach is largely determined by the quality or power of the analytic concepts operated. Thus the plausibility and creative aspect of any “analytical narrative” produced will in part rest on the quality of the analytic language utilized. This extraction of meaning amounts to a re-creation or reproduction of the meaning embedded in the text in a form different from its original presentation. Potter argues that an analytical reading, the extraction of meaning, is a process of producing a “translation” or a “transformation” of “a pre-existent knowledge . . . a work of production” (1998, 185). The preexistent knowledge “in the language of literature is self-contained and requiring of no commentary. When 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




the translation from the language of literature occurs, however, a new knowledge is produced, even if that is only . . . taking the literary textual knowledge and expressing it in the language of analysis” (Potter 1998, 185).3 In this reformulation, “The original texts will be displaced by the theoretical work expended upon them producing conceptual systems with significantly different substantive implications” (Pearce 1989, 8). Although meaning is extracted from the text, this analytical work is transformative and in some cases yields a theoretical displacement (this is the work of theorizing: consciously systematic and much more than simply searching for content or the author’s intention). The derivation of meaning, then, is not a “spontaneous creative act of imagination . . . It was interactively created through my engagement with the text . . . Reading is bound by the reality of the text and the objective social realities of meaning which ground further meaning generation” (Potter 1998, 181, emphasis added; see also Pearce 1989). Thus the text must authorize the plausibility of our interpretation and guide our production and extraction of meaning; linguistic structure and the operation of the specific analytic languages of criminology are conditions for the production, embedding, and extraction of meaning. Furthermore, the meaning we derive is not simply meaningful only in the context of the story. This leads us to consider a fourth, important extratextual element: there is knowledge or insights in the fiction about knowledge of reality (of real extratextual problems or issues such as racism, crime, or oppression). The purpose of an analytical reading, according to Potter, “is to find the knowledge that is contained in the literary text . . . This does not mean merely a knowledge of the text [content]. Rather it means a knowledge of the knowledge . . . of reality that is contained within the text. In short, the text itself is not the object of knowledge. Rather the literary text is the medium in which the knowledge is initially expressed; the text’s ‘literariness’ is merely the form, the special sort of language in which the knowledge is presented” (1998, 184). The value of fictional realities lies in part in the knowledge or insights that can be extracted and refined using the analytic languages of criminology and sociology. Both Potter and Ruggiero demonstrate that fictional worlds constructed by authors contain knowledge or insights of actual problems or issues: “If it is the case that the realities of fiction bear a relation to reality; then the knowledge of the text are really knowledges of the world as well” (Potter 1998, 184). This is overlooked by cultural criminologists and not fully developed in the work of Rafter. Beneath one level of meaning, at a deeper level, 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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there is knowledge of reality embedded in the text that operates as a constraint in the production of the fictional reality, which can be illuminated through analysis. Through this analysis, one can illuminate the existing knowledge of social reality that operates to constrain and shape the author’s imagination and construction of the narrative. Thus fictional realities are more than expressions of meaning and contain within them knowledge of social reality that can be explored through analysis. In the case of criminology, we can explore more than just popular attitudes about crime, criminality, and crime control (as in the work of Rafter) and delve into the embedded knowledge of reality that served to constrain and shape the narrative, regardless of the author’s conscious awareness of this. This “depth” of meaning—the knowledge of reality that is expressed through meaning—is overlooked within cultural criminology and the work of Rafter. Apart from knowledge of social problems, we may also gain knowledge about the insights of the author into these problems: For example, on one level, perhaps a fictional work provides a description of management practices, which also happen to exist in the extratextual reality in which the author is positioned. This depiction of such practices is not simply a fictionalized account but an implicit statement of the author’s position on these management practices. One might also think of the works of Charles Dickens and how his observations about the ravages of industrialism, plight of the poor, and bureaucracy fill the pages of his novels. In sum, Ruggiero illuminates why and how fiction can play a powerful role as an analytic tool, a pedagogical tool, and an object of criminological and sociological analysis. Ruggiero’s realist approach draws our attention to issues pertaining to the independence of meaning, the process of authorization, and the extratextual elements that make fictional worlds possible. Ruggiero does not devote explicit discussion to the extratextual conditions for the existence of fictional realities but it is clear that these figure prominently in his approach. These features of his analysis situate his approach as realist (and not what may appear to some as social constructionist). Implication Two: Concern for Analytical Narratives/Imaginings and their Production As Ruggiero makes clear, he is not simply reading and commenting on fiction. He is reading sociologically and analytically to identify, explicate, and refine criminological ideas in the context of the fictional reality. By doing this, he is crafting “criminological stories.” Thus a major theme that emerges from Ruggiero’s work is that our analytic 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




languages do not simply help us to extract meaning that is criminologically significant but that these analytic languages discipline and shape our production of possible interpretations. This notion applies equally well to reading social science “data.” Thus there is an explicit concern with imagination and the crafting of narratives, specifically with the process of imagining in which social scientists engage. This work of analysis (i.e., the extraction of meaning) is creative work and enables the production of analytical narratives or “disciplined imaginings.” In his discussion of Moby Dick, for instance, Ruggiero stipulates “let us try to untangle the different notions of crime and enterprise which are hidden in Moby Dick” (2003, 141). This analytical reading will be discussed in relation to allegory in the following section. For now, I would like to focus on the character of such a reading. It is important to highlight that Ruggiero (2003, 8) explicitly suggests that analytical reading and creative and imaginative conceptualizing is done for pleasure. He characterizes his work as “storytelling” (2003, 3). Drawing on Lara, he stipulates, “Storytelling and literary imagining . . . can provide essential ingredients in rational arguments” (2003, 3). Reading fiction “sociologically” (2003, 1) offers a means to revisit “some sociological and criminological discourses and concepts” (2003, 3). Ruggiero is concerned with explicit contemplation and operation of criminological and sociological concepts and as a result is able to produce analytical narratives of a selection of literary works. Importantly, his focus on analysis demonstrates that social science and fiction are complementary and not antithetical: analysis of fiction is social science analysis (as Potter also argues). The crafting of fiction narratives is not different from crafting criminological narratives, and reading analytically is no more or less pleasurable or entertaining than an undisciplined reading. Although this relation between analysis and the imagination is explored by Rafter and to some extent by cultural criminologists, it is most thoroughly and explicitly explored by Ruggiero. Viewing his reading and writing as an active process of producing analytical accounts of literary narratives and the meaning contained therein illustrates some connection to cultural criminology’s view that all cultural practices (and this would include analysis) are enterprises concerned with constructing and expressing meaning. The pleasurable, creative, and cultural enterprise of reading is expressly conceptualized by Ruggiero as an analytical practice. This analytical practice of utilizing criminological knowledge yields analytical narratives constructed with criminological concepts. Thus the narrative produced is not a “crime story” but a “criminological story.” Potter 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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helps bring out some latent themes in Ruggiero, some of which have already been discussed. Potter argues that fiction makes reference to reality. This has been discussed previously. Anthony Woodiwiss has argued that we ought to attend to the difference between a process of “reference” and one of “correspondence.” The value here is in the argument that social scientists operate analytic categories so that they can make reference to some facets of reality. In this idea of social scientists operating categories the idea that social science categories correspond to or are somehow descriptive of reality is rejected. Thus, it is held that there is a distinction between categories and their material referents: Thus the question that should be addressed is not, “How does one achieve certainty?” . . . but, “How does one consciously achieve reference and maintain its corrigibility?” The answer proposed here is that corrigible reference may only be achieved if one makes reference as explicit and transparent as possible. Thus it may be agreed with Pearce that one very important indicator of “quality” as regards social theory is the degree to which it is “re-readable” and reusable in different historical and cultural contexts. In sum, social theorists . . . should aim to provide not pictures of social reality but rigorously interrelated ensembles of signs that have been made to refer to extra-theoretical reality. (Woodiwiss 1990, 9)

If we think of fiction along these lines, we can plausibly assert that what authors do apart from the obvious is construct interrelated ensembles of signs that necessarily make reference to something outside the text. Ruggiero, using criminological languages, is able to read fiction as making reference to the reality of crime, criminology, and criminal justice. In both fiction and social science the process of reference works the same way and by concentrating on this process of reference we can narrow the gap that is thought to exist between science and fiction. This is especially important when thinking about the value of the fictional reality for social science. It is much more than a stock of examples of abstract concepts and thus important and fruitful for not simply its content but also for how it makes reference to reality and its insights about that reality. Allegory and Moby Dick: An Illustration of Ruggiero’s Realism and the Analytical Narrative Returning to Moby Dick and the allegorical nature of this text helps us illustrate the dual role of fiction (i.e., analytical and pedagogical 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




tool), the realist elements of Ruggiero’s orientation (i.e., the independence of meaning, authorization, and extratextual element within fiction), Ruggiero’s emphasis on the creation of analytical narratives, and generally, the interrelation of the fictional and scientific narrative. Moby Dick is chosen here because both Potter and Ruggiero utilize it in their work. The following passage illustrates reading as a practice of interpretation, the independence of meaning, and external linguistic structure: The reader comes across a word—W H A L E—in a novel, Moby Dick for example. He creates his own fictional universe of whalers and obsession; attaches or fails to attach, various levels of symbolism and significance to the words on the page and the images in his mind. But on a certain minimal level a whale is a whale, a large aquatic creature. Now the reader does not have to attach such meaning to the word W H A L E. He may, for example, be a lunatic. He may for example have an inadequate and mistaken grasp of the English language. For him W H A L E may be something quite different from a whale. However, the reality of the signified meaning of it, and the other words in the text of Moby Dick, are such that their relation to reality, the reality of large aquatic mammals for a start, is fundamental to the possibility of reading. Our “readings” of Moby Dick may be highly individualised but nonetheless are bound by reality, the reality of the meanings inscribed in the text . . . The meaning of this text is not bounded by my intention nor by any reader’s interpretation. It exists in the text itself. Or rather it exists in the relation between text and reality, including the reality of meaning and the reality of linguistic structure. It thus makes sense to ask what is the meaning of a piece of text, and mean by that question, far more than merely the author’s intended meaning; or worse to interpret it simply as asking what does it mean to me. Its meaning is there to be found as well as created. (Potter 1998, 182)

Multiple meanings (i.e., polysemy) exist in any given fictional reality and can be unlocked, revealed, extracted, or imagined by the use of different analytic tools. The key to analytical reading is to explore what sorts of meaning can be extracted (or authorized by the text). Ruggiero illustrates this with his own analytical reading of Moby Dick and in so doing provides an illustration of an analytical narrative and the process of extracting meaning: “Moby Dick is indeed a story of the whaling industry, of the skills and heroism of those who make such industry powerful. It contains precise characterisations of free enterprise, workers and managers; wages, profits, occupational hazards and absentee owners are all there. However, the novel is also a tormented 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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search for the limit beyond which freedom, democracy, enterprise and industry amount to criminal conduct” (2003, 139). As mentioned, Ruggiero is able to provide an alternative to popular interpretations—a criminological variation, if you will—viewing Moby Dick through the analytic lenses furnished by criminology and interpreting it as an allegory of economic crime: “an economic epic containing contradictory claims about the legitimacy of accumulation, the exploitation of nature, power and hierarchy” (Ruggiero 2002, abstract). As an allegory of industry—a tale of obsession and whaling, which is symbolic of crimes of the economy—Moby Dick describes work conditions and makes reference to wages, while simultaneously praising and condemning profit and management (Ruggiero 2003, 7): In brief, the hunt for the whale, which alludes to the dichotomy between proper and perverted economic enterprise, is as tangled as the [“whale] line,” and the crew and captain end up compounding the ideological uncertainty which they try to dispel. The captain crosses the “boundary,” because he usurps the system for his own private mission of vengeance. In turn, the crew decline to choose between acceptable and unacceptable economic practices, and choose to adopt both. With this in mind, let us try to untangle the different notions of crime and enterprise which are hidden in Moby Dick. I would like to suggest that the novel presents us with three different concepts of the crimes of the economy, and I would respectively term them: an intrinsic, an extrinsic, and an organisational concept. (Ruggiero 2003, 141)

With the help of criminological concepts, Ruggiero identifies and extracts three sets of concerns that relate to acceptable and unacceptable economic practices. These parallel concerns found in criminological literature. These are “three different concepts of the crimes of the economy: intrinsic, extrinsic and organizational” (Ruggiero 2003, 141; 2002, 106). The details of these three concepts are not important. What is important is that these have been extracted from the text of Moby Dick in the process of creating an analytical narrative. What is important is that the production of this analytical narrative about crimes of the economy illustrates what we have been discussing thus far. Ruggiero’s work is exemplary: he does not simply assert or construct a normative value position but illustrates the value of fiction for criminology by constructing an criminological narrative of Moby Dick and a number of other works of classic fiction. His criminological narrative exemplifies the three elements of realism discussed above: the independence of meaning within the text, the process of authorization 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




by the internal structure of the text (its logical consistency) of the plausibility of his criminological reading (rather than pointing to the intention of the author), and the existence of extratextual elements (i.e., insights about external social problems or issues, the structure of language, and criminological ideas). Additionally his criminological narrative illustrates the interrelation of the fictional and the scientific narrative and that criminological concepts or ideas can be used to analyze a broader range of things than simply crime, criminals, or crime control. Finally he demonstrates that fictional realities are a good tool for clarifying or thinking differently criminological themes and issues as well as clarifying the process of operating concepts (i.e., analytical reading practice and the extraction of meaning). Thus although Ruggiero states that he is merely concerned with producing criminological stories, he accomplishes much more than this. Within Moby Dick, Ruggiero finds “a wealth of illuminating points and controversial issues” that are of interest to social scientists (2002, 106). As Ruggiero suggests, Herman Melville was not an “unwitting criminologist” but an “excellent novelist” interested in issues of “the limit beyond which economic initiative, individualism, hierarchy and industry bring social and human disaster” (2003, 154). Although Melville probably did not explicitly intend to advance criminological ideas, these can be found in his work. Through the use of criminological concepts, Ruggiero is able to access layers of meaning not yet accessed by others. Thus his analytical narrative demonstrates that when we read a text through the analytic languages made available within criminology we draw out or extract criminological meaning and significance from the text. As Potter argues, “Writers, good writers, as well as possessing a creative facility with language, have insights into the human condition, insights into the dynamics of social grouping, [etc.] . . . the sort of knowledges achieved through other, through actually sometimes very similar, means, by psychologists, sociologists, historians, philosophers . . . when crafting a work of fiction they do not attempt these insights in a formalised analytical form. Rather they utilise their insight in their creation of fictional universes” (1998, 185). In producing an analytical narrative, Ruggiero “untangles the different notions of crime and enterprise which are hidden in Moby Dick” (2003, 141). Thus in Moby Dick we find knowledge of “knowledge of reality”: knowledge of some of the insights about the nature of industry and economic crime. We find both an entertaining narrative as well as an exploration of criminological insights. Ruggiero’s study demonstrates Potter’s argument that there is “truth in fiction”—that 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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fiction is always connected to reality and that through fiction we can discern valuable knowledge about our social world: “Art, literature, celebrates, consoles and entertains. It pleases us with its beauty. It haunts us with its emotional force. It does produce knowledges. But these knowledges are in a different form and were produced (mainly) through different means than scientific knowledges. However, once produced in literary form, such knowledges can later be accessed by different means—the particular methodologies of literary criticism” (Potter 1998, 187). Importantly, the analytical process of producing an analytical narrative and extracting meaning from texts (just as with finding significance in data) is not that different from writing fiction: if we use our criminological imaginations our analyses can be creative, imaginative, engaging, and pleasurable. Anthony Woodiwiss (1990) and Garry Potter (1998, 187–88) are especially instructive here. They argue that what makes social science different from fiction is that social scientists purposely attempt to delimit or constrain the possibility of multiple readings or interpretations in the texts they produce. However, this does not mean that the difference between the two is that social science aims to impart insights, new knowledge, or arguments and that fiction does not. Fiction too can impart insights about real problems and force us to contemplate important analytical and pedagogical issues. Thus it has a number of valuable roles to play within criminology and the social sciences more generally.

Conclusion: Reflexive Practice a nd th e Cr imino logi c al Fi eld What is particularly valuable about the fictional reality is that it can be utilized as an empirical referent that can provide a “hands-on” approach to theorizing and analysis. Because this process entails the manipulation and operation of concepts (as object-like tools or technologies) and thinking broadly and abstractly, it is well suited for promoting a critical and analytical criminology of public reason. A comparative approach to applying and evaluating concepts is also made possible. As an object that is distinctly social in nature, the fictional reality does not only offer examples of concepts but also a complex web of relations to be analytically delineated through social science craftwork. Layered and complex, these relations lend themselves to being deconstructed and creatively theorized. This provides a vehicle to facilitate an active learning approach to criminological and sociological theorizing: clarifying, discussing, and transmitting concepts. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




Although the fictional reality is just that—fictional—this does not mean that the objects that are defined and constructed will also be fictional. Issues of gender, race, class, and power or processes such as criminalization, juridification, and racialization may be explored criminologically. Although bounded by a fictional context, these issues and processes are certainly far from fictional. As Potter has persuasively argued, “even the most non-naturalistic fictional forms and ‘unrealistic’ fictional universes are reality-dependent in terms of meaning” (1998, 184). Thus, far from watching films or reading novels for entertainment or using these as only examples of criminological concepts, the embedded reality and relational aspect of social objects can be illuminated through sociological and criminological theorizing. In turn, the analytic process is highlighted serving to clarify concepts and their operation. Within the imaginative criminologies of cultural criminology, Rafter and Ruggiero we find, in rudimentary and underdeveloped form, some semblance of a criminological imagination. In light of our discussion thus far, if we are to wonder as to whether or not the term “fictional reality” is an oxymoron, the answer would be an unqualified “no.” What cultural criminology, Rafter, and Ruggiero illustrate is not simply that the realm of popular culture and nontraditional objects such as fictional realities are relevant to and valuable for criminology. The imaginative criminologies of cultural criminology, Rafter, and Ruggiero can be drawn on to expand the “imaginings” of criminology and to highlight the importance of the criminological imagination. The growth of imaginative criminologies has done much to expand the domain of “legitimate” criminological objects. This expansion has helped to legitimate and entrench imagination and creative theorizing as important features of criminological practice and demonstrate the usefulness of fiction as both a tool for analysis and object of investigation. These works illustrate a criminological potential. They direct our focus in a creative and imaginative way and in doing so advocate reflexivity as a “topic for criminology as well as a way of doing criminology” (Nelken 1994, 16). Engaging analytically with fictional realities promotes a reflexive practice that enables us to look specifically at the process of operating concepts to produce descriptions and understandings of things; it provides a way for us to identify and compare the limits of our conceptual frameworks and to appreciate that social inquiry involves engaging in the production of narratives that make reference to social reality. As Ruggiero argues, fiction as an object of analysis offers the possibility 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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of contemplating and refining criminology as a reflexive practice. This “reflexivity” is central to the criminological imagination. Garland (1990, 8–9) argues that a reflexive criminological practice is one that is self-reflective and capable of adapting to new challenges. It is a form of practice that can account for its origins: one that takes serious contemplation of its own nature or existence and one that does not simply or only focus on practical questions of efficiency within the context of the justice system. Nelken (1994) has argued that reflexivity is a necessarily critical practice of self-reflection—of questioning and challenging received wisdom and dominant ideas that inform one’s practice. A reflexive criminological practice is one wherein criminological inquiry itself becomes an object for critical scrutiny. “Criminology has been attacked,” Nelken stipulates, “both for having too narrow limits and for not knowing what its limits are” (1994, 10). A reflexive criminology would critically account for its own limitations, especially in the concepts used and produced as well as the implications of their use in the study of crime and crime control. As Nelken further states, “if criminology does not try to understand itself and its own conditions of existence [that is, what makes criminology possible—including the institutional field, its particular configuration, its theories, its methods, its objects of investigation, etc.] it is unlikely to offer much insight into crime either” (1994, 10). Reflexivity, then, describes a type of practice that entails considered and critical reflection on a discipline’s capacity to produce knowledge, its limitations, and points of development. The importance of this has been discussed by increasing numbers of scholars (e.g., Alvesson and Sköldberg 2009; Bourdieu 1992; Nelken 1994; Phillips 1988) as an important procedure that can and should be routine within the social sciences. A reflexive practice would include examining the use and abuse of criminological concepts to move toward a deeper appreciation and understanding of what criminologists actually do when they engage in analytical readings and how their discipline’s analytic languages “authorize” some analytical narratives while excluding the possibility of others. López (2003, 138) has remarked that sociologists spend relatively little time conceptualizing or imagining what the practice of an analytical reading actually entails. This is, I think, much more of an acute problem within criminology since, unlike other social sciences, there is no area dedicated to the study of conceptualizing or the creative and imaginative use or reformulation of the discipline’s analytic tools (i.e., its principal concepts). Additionally, the widespread view of criminology as an applied field casts such analytical reflection as unnecessary 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




in the same way that reading might be seen as a straightforward practice hardly worthy of discussion. Although many criminologists may not dedicate time to reflect on or analyze the practices of conceptualizing and reading analytically (i.e., the operation of concepts and production of analytical narratives), it is much more likely that this would happen if the criminological field contained a space dedicated to such an activity, such as the subfields of other disciplines including the “sociology of knowledge,” “political thought,” or even “methodology,” broadly construed. Because criminology lacks a space that is dedicated to questions of knowledge production, the nature of knowledge, or broader concerns that transcend crime, criminality, and criminal justice, it makes it all the more unlikely that such a reflexive practice will become widespread or even recognized as a legitimate criminological pursuit. The lack of formalized space within criminology for engaging with nontraditional criminological objects, for exploring the production of analytical narratives, and for discovering how it is that criminological meaning can be extracted from alternative sources of data such as film or literature, is illuminated by revisiting the following passage from Ruggiero: “I have been discouraged by many people from writing this book, mainly colleagues and acquaintances who that that, once one is safely working in a disciplinary field and is lucky enough to have achieved a career of sorts in it, one had better pretend that the knowledge offered by that field is all a curious human being can aspire to. People who, instead, thought that disciplinary boundaries have to be challenged and expertise in one field tested by broader intellectual curiosity are those who discussed with me the rationale and contents of this book” (Ruggiero 2003, vii). Ruggiero’s statement hits on a number of things. It exemplifies the peripheral place of imaginative criminologies and also indicates that many criminologists find foreign the exploration of the criminological imagination. It suggests a resistance to engaging with fiction (whether literature or film) as a source of criminological knowledge and that there is hesitation to specify that robust analytical narratives are the outcomes of a creative, imaginative practice of operating concepts. It indicates that many believe it necessary to exclude everyday life, especially fictional realities, from criminological examination—implicitly, that a rigid boundary between fiction and social science must be defended. There is also an indication here that perhaps some believe that criminological knowledge is of no value for grappling with problems and issues that go beyond those of criminal justice administration or beyond the traditional objects of criminological inquiry. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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As Ruggiero stipulates, a low value is attached by many to his imaginative, reflexive, criminological engagement with literature. A failure to recognize the value of fictional realities for criminology, however, is not an individual failing but a structural one. This failure to recognize points to criminology as a field of organized practices and knowledge and how its rather impersonal features impact and shape the individual criminologist’s thinking about what might be possible and what might constitute worthwhile avenues of engagement, the capacity for assessment and judgment, as well as the content of this assessment and judgment (see Frauley 2010). One very important issue here has to do with the structure and internal organization of criminology as an intellectual field. This illuminates an important aspect of why many criminologists are unable to accept or recognize nontraditional pursuits as valid and worthwhile (see the discussion in Chapter 1 of the craft-enterprise model for theorizing). The shaping and subsequent impact of the organizational elements of criminology—the impersonal structural aspects that operate to exclude some pursuits and objects—by economic and political transformation within capitalist societies has been discussed by many (Braithwaite 2000; Garland 2001; Garland and Sparks 2000; Haggerty 2004; Loader and Sparks 2002; Stenning 1999; Taylor 1999; Tombs and Whyte 2003; White 2001; Wood and Shearing 1999). These reflections, especially on how such changes impact criminology and the criminologist, resonate with arguments that criminology is a fragmented (Ericson and Carriere 1994), hybrid (Fattah 1997), and interinstitutional field (Ericson 1996; Garland and Sparks 2000). These reflexive inquiries, coupled with the emerging imaginative criminologies discussed in this chapter, issue a formidable challenge to orthodox and traditional criminology: one that demands a rethinking and explicit questioning of the object that defines criminological investigation (e.g., crime, risk, or governance—defined internally and as a “scientific” problem or externally as a “social” problem). It also requires us to contemplate the purpose, role, and relevance in modern societies of criminology and criminological knowledge, as well as the criminologist especially in terms of criminal justice policy. Additionally we are lead to ponder the dominant approaches to the study of objects including the types and uses of theory and techniques of data collection, sources of information utilized, degree of engagement with other fields, and scope of inquiry. Moreover, criminology’s disciplinary status can no longer be taken for granted. For instance, we are faced with explicit consideration of whether or not criminology is an autonomous field, a subfield, an interdiscipline, a multidiscipline, or 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




an interinstitutional field. This ties into criminology’s scientific status: whether it is a social science, applied or normative science, behavioral science, or protective service field. Although much contemplation of these issues is pessimistic about the future of criminology, the value of this work is that it forces debate on the taken-for-granted issues raised in the previous paragraph, which can lead to the potential for new developments, growth, and expansion in empirical research as well as theory. Importantly, this demonstrates that criminology’s boundaries have undergone movement and continue to be reshaped. This work demonstrates that there is no one role that the criminologist must play, nor is there only one pragmatic use for criminological knowledge. One advantage criminology has over other fields is that it is marred by conflict over the issues mentioned previously. It is not fully formed as a discipline and holds potential for innovation. This is beneficial because it means that there is no reason that imaginative criminologies cannot have a place alongside accepted but unimaginative and technocratic criminologies. Additionally, there is no logical justification for devaluing pursuits to develop a criminological imagination as if this is opposed to seeking solutions for social or technical problems. There is no good reason, in other words, why engagements with popular culture, especially fictional realities, should not become a major part of criminology, especially given that many have already demonstrated that criminology is a cultural enterprise. Imaginative criminologies challenge us to think about how imagination and creativity are conceived and situated within criminology and how fiction and social science are complementary rather than antithetical. As some criminologists are openly challenging and traversing the traditional boundaries of criminology it might be argued that criminology, as it is presently conceived or formulated, can and does facilitate creative and imaginative inquiry. Criminology, it seems, requires something additional if it is to satisfy intellectual curiosity and promote itself as an imaginative and creative enterprise. That criminologists are taking up popular culture, fiction, and film, and rethinking the relation between criminology and the wider domain of culture, suggests that criminology does offer the promise of intellectual exploration and imaginative and creative inquiry. But perhaps this promise has yet to be realized. The work of cultural criminologists, Rafter, and Ruggiero (and many others) can be viewed as an attempt to push criminology toward the realization of its promise to be a creative, innovative, and intellectually satisfying endeavor. It is to this promise that we now turn. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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The Cr i mi nological Imagination

For most of us, the use of our imagination seems to contradict everything we have been taught about neutrality, rational thought, and objective, dispassionate observation. To many, rational, scientific inquiry and imagination are diametrically opposed. Scientific inquiry produces true knowledge of events and things, while imagination results in fantasy and fiction. —Karen Anderson, Sociology: A Critical Introduction

I ntro duc t i on

T

hus far I have presented arguments about the place and role of imaginative criminologies and fictional social realities within the criminological field. It has been argued that fiction offers much more than a fund of examples of criminological ideas. Fictional realities allow us to reflect critically on the process of producing criminological knowledge through engaging in analysis. Fictional realities are objects that we can investigate and explore through the systematic use of the concepts central to criminology. The criminological imagination, the focus of this chapter, is the practice of a disciplined imagination. This disciplined creativity—the considered and systematic operation of the analytic languages we have at our disposal—enables the production of holistic and robust accounts of social phenomena and the extraction of criminological insights from traditional and nontraditional sources of data. The imaginative criminology of cultural criminologists, Rafter, and to a far greater degree Ruggiero illustrates that fictional realities have an important role to play within criminology. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Chapter 3


This chapter explores and advances a concept of “criminological imagination.” My goal is to explore what this term refers to. Many criminologists have employed this term but there has yet to be an explicit formulation of what this actually means. Prior to any explication we must first specify what has been meant by criminologists when they have used this term. A schematic overview of the uses of “criminological imagination” is offered to point out its underdevelopment within criminology and the limiting effects of this underdevelopment. Secondly, through a detailed examination of Mills’s (1959) notion of the “sociological imagination” (from which “criminological imagination” is derived), I will indicate what criminologists have overlooked and what a developed concept of the criminological imagination could look like. By “concept” I mean a rigorously and systematically worked-out specification of the analytical aspect of the term: identification of what the term makes reference to or how it directs our thinking. I do not mean that we should see “criminological imagination” as a descriptive term that is simply ill defined. I also do not take concepts to be descriptive terms that stand in for their referents; nor am I suggesting that criminological imagination is an abstraction in need of operationalizing. Taking “criminological imagination” itself as an object and specifying its value requires that we recognize it to be an underdeveloped concept rather than simply a descriptive term. We must also recognize that its content must be theorized and not simply defined. Drawing on the work of Mills and others, I argue that the term “criminological imagination” must at least be conceived as making reference to three things: an ontology of society (i.e., a social morphology), a sophisticated conceptual system (i.e., an analytic), and an approach to the study of social problems and phenomena (i.e., a methodology). We need to explore and develop these three aspects of Mills’s sociological imagination in order to develop a nuanced and sophisticated concept of the criminological imagination. This will allow us to surpass previous criminological contributions.

Th e Cr imino lo gic al Imag i nati on: E ar ly Wr iti ngs It is important to get a sense of how criminologists have worked with and understood the criminological imagination over the years. In thinking specifically about what this is and what it means to advocate this, we can begin with Frank Williams. Over 25 years ago, Williams coined the term “criminological imagination.” In his 1984 paper, 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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he lamented the demise of this “quality of mind.” His paper made use of American radical sociologist C Wright Mills’s groundbreaking 1959 book, The Sociological Imagination, which I discuss in detail later in this chapter. To provide some context for Williams’s remarks, we can note that Mills unequivocally rejected the idea that social science was simply a compilation of “a set of bureaucratic techniques” (1959, 20). He viewed social scientists not as technicians who “split their work from their lives” but as “intellectual craftsmen” (1959, 195, 196, 211). Social science was held to be “the practice of a craft” (Mills 1959, 195), and like any craft, its practice was subject to refinement and improvement. Much contemporary criminology would not be recognized by Mills as social science, a viewpoint shared by Williams. For Mills, social science is a creative cultural enterprise: one that entails conscious, systematic, and explicit self-reflection. Situating criminology as a craft practice or broadly as a cultural enterprise of public reason gives us a way to think about the contemporary practice of criminology and how we might work to improve, reformulate, extend, or simply broaden what this might entail. In other words, an inquisitive and critical quality of mind is not central to contemporary criminology and we would do well to retrieve or foster such a quality of mind. Thus any use of a criminological imagination would require criminologists to engage creatively, imaginatively, and holistically (in a disciplined fashion) with their subject matter. A criminological imagination would also entail the rethinking of the conventional wisdom on what constitutes the legitimate domains, subject matter, and approaches of criminology. Mills thought that sociology was dominated by two equally inadequate and unsatisfactory “intellectual styles”1 of social science: abstract and ungrounded “grand theory,” specifically the structuralfunctionalist tradition exemplified by the work of Talcott Parsons, and what he called “abstracted empiricism,” exemplified by the early social statistics and ethnographic, journalistic studies of the Chicago school of sociology (Mills 1959, 25–75). Grand theory is what we can call “big picture” social science. Mills (1959, 48, 50) referred to this as a “fetishism of the concept,” as it entailed too much speculation ungrounded in societal issues or problems. It had become a pursuit in and of itself without regard for empirical observation. Abstracted empiricism, for Mills, represented a narrow focus and the exclusion of imaginative and speculative thinking. This we can call a fetishism of method where procedures were more important than consideration of the thing analyzed. This intellectual style, according to Mills, was 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




indicative of bureaucratic administration performed by technicians, not social scientists (see Blaikie 2000, 152). Lost in both of these intellectual styles was the idea that the social scientist was an “intellectual craftsman” as well as the importance of the imaginative “quality of mind” that Mills thought would come to characterize all social sciences. Such a quality of mind engages with substantive social problems in creative and imaginative ways, articulates the relations between social structure and social action, and also utilizes empirical investigation as a vehicle for developing and furthering our understanding of problems and issues of general theory and methodology (i.e., knowledge production). This quality of mind or “sociological imagination,” Mills argues, holds promise for all social sciences, including criminology: A quality of mind that seems most dramatically to promise an understanding of the intimate realities of ourselves in connection with larger social realities . . . [It] enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society . . . [and] to use it with sensibility is to be capable of tracing such linkages among a great variety of milieu . . . [It] enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meanings for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals. It enables him to take into account how individuals, in the welter of their daily experience, often become falsely conscious of their social positions [and allows the possessor to] continually work out and revise views of the problems of history, the problems of biography, and the problems of social structure in which biography and history intersect. (Mills in Barton, Corteen, and Whyte 2007a, 3)

Mills argues that this quality of mind is necessary for an adequate explanatory and creative social science—one that could account for the interactions of individuals by situating this interaction within the context of social structure and social change (i.e., history). Mills was concerned with the two poles of the relatively personal realm of interactional relationships and the rather impersonal realm of social relations. The latter includes connections between positions within organizational structures as well as the relations between organizational structures (i.e., between social institutions such as law, family, work, religion, and education). For Mills, a consideration of these two poles and the relation between the two are necessary for any adequate description or explanation of social phenomena. Following this, any adequate description and explanation of crime, crime control, even criminology itself requires a number of things: description 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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of the realm of personal experience (one’s “milieu”), the setting (e.g., community, institution) and larger context (e.g., ethnic relations, economic relations, cultural values) in which interactions are situated, including explicit focus on how all are related and impact one another. Consideration of these two poles and their interrelation, then, must be holistic and reflexive. Importantly, Mills argues, “No social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, history and of their intersections within a society has completed its intellectual journey” (1959, 6). The many criminologists who have called for a reflexive criminology or for the use of the criminological imagination are arguing, perhaps unknowingly, that criminology has not completed its intellectual journey. I think this is especially true of Rafter, Ferrell, and Ruggiero. Williams’s lamenting of the demise of this quality of mind within criminology was precisely a call to reinvigorate criminology and move it away from a technocratic orientation so that it and criminologists could continue with an intellectual journey. Williams argues that “useful and insightful theories are products of imagination and speculation” (1984, 91), but that such work was rarely valued within criminology. This point is made by Ruggiero (2003, vii) as he remarks about the low value that many of his colleagues attached to his efforts to bring fiction to criminology and criminology to fiction. The erosion of the value of imagination and speculation within criminology, according to Williams, left it to become theoretically bereft and gradually to become characterized by low-quality conceptualizing. As a consequence criminology became stunted; it was no longer expanding its knowledge base or growing as a social science. Instead, it moved in the direction of applied study, adopting what I have described elsewhere as a “protective service” orientation (Frauley 2005). Criminology became too “empiricist” for two reasons: First, because of the rise of “scientism,” which is the appearance or mimicking of science through the reliance on a positivist epistemology, use of statistical techniques, and production of so-called hard data. This was made all the more attractive by the convenience of computer-assisted data processing. Secondly, criminology began to adopt as its own those bureaucratic problems that plagued the criminal justice system and concerned justice professionals. Arguably, criminology has always in part taken a cue from the state, but Williams suggests that criminology became increasingly narrow in scope, driven by external interests. Williams argues that criminology became concerned with the application of knowledge without explicit concern for the process of knowledge production. He argues that this resulted in a preoccupation 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




with mimicking a natural science approach without generating new knowledge (see Bryman [1988] on this more generally). “Major breakthroughs,” he argued, “have resulted from changing perceptions of data, not from the accumulation of evidence which then commands a new form of understanding” (1984, 96). It is the quality of our concepts, the continual development and refinement of criminological ideas, and improvement of the craft of social science that enables the extraction of new meaning and allows us to visualize new criminological significance within our data. By implication, Williams argues that the dominant but quite erroneous idea that new knowledge is created incrementally through accumulating more and more data was due to a turn within criminology toward quantification, statistical measurement, and applied science: “We have followed the ‘hard’ sciences into an alley where we are more concerned with measurement itself than with speculation about the substance being measured” (1984, 96–97). This is the fetishism of method described by Mills (discussed above). The result was the removal of the qualitative “essence of social life” from the field, which amounted to a “reification of scientism” (Williams 1984, 7). Where Mills identified the problem as the polarity of grand theory (ungrounded speculation) and abstracted empiricism (narrow empirical observation without conceptualizing), Williams identified it as an absence of grand theory and speculation and the dominance of narrow, antitheoretical empirical observation. Although criminologists might be very good at applying ideas that have already been produced, producing information in the context of very narrow problems, or manipulating and processing numerical data, this according to Mills and Williams is not social science at all but rather technical, bureaucratic work. Simply put, Williams, following Mills, argues that criminology had become technocratic. This slide toward the technocratic was largely the result of uncritically accepting the problems of the justice system as the problems of criminology and the belief that social science should look like natural science. This resulted in a devaluing of creative and speculative conceptualizing. By contrast, the quality of mind Mills outlined was inquisitive and critical: “It is this imagination, of course, that sets off the social scientist from the mere technician. Adequate technicians can be trained in a few years. The sociological imagination can also be cultivated . . . [but there] is a playfulness of mind . . . which the technician as such usually lacks” (Mills 1959, 211). It is the ability to play with ideas, to move between the abstract and concrete, and to move between general “public issues” and the localized “personal troubles” that characterizes this quality of mind. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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The important issue for us is that although imagination and speculation are necessary for the social-scientific production of knowledge, these are regarded by many social scientists to be external to science in the same way that reading and writing fiction might be conceived to be external or even antithetical to criminology and sociology. The problems of where imagination and science meet, of what constitutes the proper domain of objects for criminologists and sociologists, and of how speculation and observation intersect can also be found within cultural criminology, the work of Rafter, and that of Ruggiero, along with other attempts to produce imaginative criminologies and sociologies. Williams points out that the great and foundational works of criminology and sociology were not devoid of imagination and speculation: “The great works of criminology, such as those of Emile Durkheim, Edwin Sutherland, and Robert Merton, have great value to us because they are an exemplary display of intuition and speculative logic. These works are still useful today because they have this explanatory power” (1984, 102). Influential “intellectual universes” bequeathed by Durkheim, Sutherland, Merton, Newton, Darwin, and others have been taken up widely and have left traces on the social sciences (Mills 1959, 13). The value of these works does not rest on their deriving of truths from facts but on their powerful analytic concepts that were produced from an engagement with an empirical puzzle. Because these widely regarded (social) scientists attempted to think about broader, more general problems and issues through their particular object, their work addressed both specific and general issues. In turn because of this scope their work is still useful for thinking about a broad range of things today. Explanatory power and longevity stem from exploring empirical phenomena in order to not only produce knowledge of that particular problem (e.g., gangs, youth delinquency, domestic violence) but also to craft or refine analytic lenses that can be used in the formulation of general and somewhat speculative theory (see Layder 1993). For example, Robert Merton (1938) took youth delinquency as a vehicle to study a more general social process, which he termed “strain.” Merton was interested in how youth delinquency offered a way to think more broadly about the structural contradiction between widely diffused “culture goals” that many youth aspire to achieve and the relative lack of “legitimate means” that enable the realization of these aspirations. This mismatch of goals and legitimate means caused individuals, particularly youth, to experience frustration and “adapt” in various ways. Rather than view this as only an individual problem, Merton formulated his concept of “strain” to denote not 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




simply individual frustration but “structural strain.” “Strain” enables us to visualize two opposing forces that could pull the individual in different directions. With youth caught in the middle, in many cases this strain resulted in delinquent behavior (as one possible mode of adaptation to this strain). It is important to note that any explanatory power or longevity of our conceptual tools does not derive from whether or not they offer true descriptions but how well they help us produce plausible, defensible, robust, and holistic descriptions and explanations. These “intellectual universes” have staying power because of the strength of the analytic categories offered. That is, they enable us to formulate and visualize the problem at hand in different ways. “In terms of them, or in terms derived from them,” Mills stipulates, “unknown scholars as well as fashionable commentators came to re-focus their observations and re-formulate their concerns” (1959, 13–14). These “terms”—the concepts and analytic languages of the social sciences— have proven to be transformative for thought and action. Concepts enable sharper and sometimes blurry imaginings to be produced. It is through these terms that we can grasp, understand, and act on the world. It is by operating and refining these lenses that we can produce analytical narratives of the sort discussed in the previous chapter (i.e., systematic and rigorous descriptions, explanations, understandings, and interpretations). And this is why we need to attend to the “criminological imagination”; at the moment, it does not let us see with clarity. Williams’s (1984) seminal paper, then, implies that criminologists and criminal justice scholars have not realized, developed, or capitalized on the potential of the social scientific quality of mind set out by Mills, to the detriment of the discipline. In a brief follow up, Whitehead (1985) concurred with Williams’s diagnosis of the malaise of criminology. He argued that some of the foci of criminologists, such as “journal prestige” and justice personnel in the workplace, were bureaucratic not scholarly. The problem for Whitehead was that much scholarship simply did not further the explanatory objectives of criminology, was too focused on the individual at the expense of examining the structured or organizational aspects of social action, and employed convenient but hardly adequate methods. For Whitehead, these three things are instances of a lack of criminological imagination (1985, 23). Building on Williams, Whitehead ended his paper with the important caveat that his remarks assumed “that criminologists want to pursue the criminological adaptation of Mills’ sociological imagination” (1985, 25). For Williams and Whitehead, the promise 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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of the sociological imagination for criminology and the quality of mind set out by Mills, had gone largely unrealized. We might wonder, however, about more recent endeavors and whether or not criminologists have shown an interest in pursuing a criminological adaptation of Mills. For this, we now turn to some recent usage of “criminological imagination.”

Th e C r imino lo gic al Imagi nati on: R ec ent Wr iti ngs What we find in recent usage of “criminological imagination” is that few if any have gone beyond the mention of Mills’s famous edict for social scientists to “grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society” (in Barton, Corteen, and Whyte 2007a, 3) or his specification that “private troubles” (i.e., personal or individual problems) should be viewed as a component of larger, more general “public issues” (i.e., social problems). It is puzzling that criminology, as a social science highly influenced by sociology, has not made much of Mills’s sociological imagination. This is surprising not only because of the close association criminology has to sociology but also because there have been many references to a criminological imagination found within criminological literature. Yet although there have been calls for the use of a criminological imagination, criminologists have done a very poor job of explicating, clarifying, or extending Mills’s analytic and have failed to capitalize on or realize its promise. Generally, references to the criminological imagination denote thinking imaginatively about crime problems, shifting the focus away from correctionalist or administrative approaches toward a “critical” focus or developing new ways of rethinking old problems (i.e., thinking about old problems in new ways). In order to illustrate the above points more fully, we can turn to a recent book by Barton, Corteen, and Whyte called Expanding the Criminological Imagination. Here it is suggested that the first step toward reawakening, reviving, and expanding the criminological imagination is to reflect critically on the “utility of the discipline” for enabling criminologists to “imagine new ways” to approach and challenge both “the agendas of the powerful” as well as the “unimaginative” and apolitical form of much existing criminological scholarship (2007a, 2). I do not disagree with this. However, there is no specification or formulation of what the criminological imagination is, and thus it remains a descriptive category rather than a useful analytic tool. The criminological imagination is likened to an “interpretive 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




lens” that can facilitate a “form of interpretation”; it is likened to the criminologist’s cognitive process of imagining and is also held to be an outcome of the development of critical criminology (Barton, Corteen, and Whyte 2007a, 3–5). Reawakening or reviving such an imaginative and critical form of criminology requires that there must be something to be revived. However, we have never had a developed concept of the criminological imagination, and therefore it cannot be reawakened! “Criminological imagination” is simply used by Barton, Corteen, and Whyte as a substitute for “critical criminology.” Thus their work seems like a call to expand critical criminology. However Barton, Corteen, and Whyte suggest, “there is no shortage of work within criminology that is critical of the state and of criminal justice agencies” (2007a, 2). If there is no shortage of critical criminological work, and “criminological imagination” is used to simply mean “critical criminology,” why then are they calling for criminologists to employ their “criminological imaginations”? Perhaps we require a return to a criminological imagination because existing critical criminology is not imaginative? Without a developed understanding of what “criminological imagination” is to make reference to, it becomes simply a variety of, or worse, a pseudonym for “critical criminology” rather than a methodology, conceptual system, and model of a social morphology that can serve as a platform for a criminology of public reason (as outlined in Chapter 1). Another example of the underdevelopment of “criminological imagination” can be found in McLaughlin, Muncie, and Hughes (2003). They state, “What we do not have—at least at the moment—is a criminological imagination that provides us with a more nuanced, attuned understanding of the open-textured, multi-dimensional ‘remaking of the social’ currently in play” (2003, 8). Again, I concur with the spirit of this statement. However, criminological imagination is used here metaphorically to help describe a void in the field, and there is no specification of what this term makes reference to. This is similar to Lilly, Cullen, and Ball who hold “criminological imagination” to be descriptive of “perspectives,” theories, or the field of thought or thinking (2001, 232, 262). In other words, it is used to denote a space of imagination. Moyer (2001) makes even less of “criminological imagination.” Her statement, “While the impact of the historical setting and the biography can be seen in the works of most theorists,” limits its potential as a concept because it is used descriptively to indicate that personal experience and historical periods shapes the thinking of criminologists (2001, xi). Walklate (2005), however, is the most curious, as she devotes an entire chapter to “developing your 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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criminological imagination” without ever even discussing the criminological imagination! Instead, she discusses criminology’s capacity to help us produce intelligent and critical statements about crime and criminal justice in contemporary society. But how is this to be done? In addition to the very limited development and analytical use of the concept, criminological imagination, these usages also ignore the seminal work of Williams and Whitehead. By doing this, they offer no critique or development of Williams and Whitehead’s ideas and fail to present some of the problems of this early work. It is simply dismissed. This in itself suggests that contemporary usages are not concerned with systematically developing or elaborating an understanding of “criminological imagination” to make it a useful and robust analytic concept. This leaves “criminological imagination” without any explanatory power and thus it cannot be operated as an analytic concept. So although we have imaginative criminologies being produced, we do not have a clearly articulated idea of what it means to exercise one’s criminological imagination. The point of this overview is not to suggest any of the aforementioned works are not interesting or useful. It is to point out that although many criminologists have explicitly proposed that we employ our criminological imagination, few criminologists have engaged in any systematic way with what Mills was attempting to elaborate; nor have they assessed how the sociological imagination might form the basis for a criminological imagination and how in turn the criminological imagination can operate as a platform that will facilitate a particular type of criminological inquiry. Uses of “criminological imagination” are not consistent, even within the same texts, and no effort has been made to specify what it refers to, aside from stipulating that it refers to Mills’s sociological imagination, that it means “think critically,” or simply that we should employ imaginative thinking. These examples suggest that criminologists have not spent much time debating, deliberating, elaborating, or capitalizing on the implications of Mills’s work and have done little to develop (or even challenge) Williams’s diagnosis. These recent engagements are limited and inadequate and do not move us closer to realizing the promise of the sociological imagination, or by implication, a criminological imagination.




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Today, of course, many people who are disengaged from prevailing allegiances have not acquired new ones and so are inattentive to political concerns of any kind. They are neither radical nor reactionary. They are inactionary. If we accept the Greek’s definition of the idiot as an altogether private man, then we must conclude that many citizens of many societies are indeed idiots. (Mills 1959, 41)

Social science as conceived by Mills requires the exercise of what Kant called “public reason” (discussed in Chapter 1). It requires one to engage, to become involved, and to recognize that our practice entails political and ethical commitments. It seems to me that Mills and Williams both argue for social scientists to become aware and conscious of the political and ethical commitments that they promote (or exclude) through their endeavors and how a technocratic enterprise differs from one informed by an imaginative, speculative, and passionate engagement. To employ one’s criminological imagination necessitates passionate, imaginative, and speculative inquiry—a disciplined creativity—one that is engaged and politically minded. This does not mean one must be activist or radical, but simply aware of the implications of one’s practice and that this practice and implications ought to be defensible. It seems to me that if one is to argue for a criminological imagination, one ought to have worked out what exactly this means, how this is to be done, and what might be accomplished by this. One cannot make a decision about which categories to deploy (and which ones to exclude) without also reproducing or affirming particular ethical and political commitments (as discussed in Chapter 1). Given that there is a growing interest in an imaginative criminology and many recent references to the criminological imagination, it seems fitting to explore here what a developed conception of the criminological imagination might look like. In the following sections, I will provide an overview of some of the major features of Mills’s sociological imagination. The point of this exercise is to show that much more can and should be made of this for the difference it can make for criminology. After I outline the sociological imagination, I outline how we might reconceptualize and extend Mills by drawing on the work Derek Layder (1993). Layder’s work on realist methodology bears striking resemblance to that of Mills and therefore can be used to tease out some of the underdeveloped aspects of Mills’s work. This reformulation will provide 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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Sociological Imagination: A Complex Category Mills’s text, The Sociological Imagination (1959), was ranked in 1997 by members of the International Sociological Association as the second most influential book of the twentieth century.2 Because it has not been systematically explored for criminology, the quality of mind explicated in his text is a rich resource for conceptualizing crime and crime control, guiding empirical exploration of the practices and rationalities that characterize the criminal justice system, and reflecting on criminology’s analytical strengths, weaknesses, and its underlying conditions of existence. It provides an “umbrella,” if you will, for situating and evaluating criminological work as well as for producing new criminological insights. Likewise it can be utilized as a general or “meta” framework for guiding the operating of criminology’s analytic languages. It can guide and direct us to pose penetrating questions and systematically explore and illuminate aspects of our objects of study from the realm of interpersonal interaction up to the realm of the impersonal relations between institutions and positions within institutions. It is crucial that we understand “sociological imagination” to be a complex category. That is, it does not have a simple definition but refers to a number of other concepts or ideas, and some of these in turn refer to other concepts. Therefore any analytic use of this term will make reference to these other “simpler” categories, and therefore it is important that these be specified. Marx (1978) argued that one must first specify the “simple categories” in order to raise what he called a “complex category” from that of a “chaotic conception” to that of a meaningful “concrete category.” “Criminological imagination” remains a “chaotic conception.” Importantly, and in contrast, a “concrete category” is an analytic concept. As criminological imagination continues to be chaotically conceived and used descriptively, it requires formulation as an analytic concept rather than merely as a descriptive category. This is done by specifying its “simpler categories.” If we want “criminological imagination” to have any analytic value and meaning, we need to at least attempt to specify all the components or various ideas that such a broad category might make reference to. Mapping out its components will help transform it from an underdeveloped descriptive category (a 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


for an extension of some of Mills’s arguments, which will be useful for developing a fuller, more robust conception of “criminological imagination.”


“chaotic conception”) to an analytic category (“concrete category”) with some explanatory power. As a complex category, sociological imagination does not describe but makes reference to a complex range of ideas (concepts), including a “speculative” mode of thought; a particular “quality of mind”; a “common denominator” for all critical and analytical thought; an “intellectual style”; a process of intellectual engagement or “intellectual craftsmanship”; a skepticism toward both “grand theorizing” and “abstracted empiricism” (and a way in between these); a considered, reflexive mode of inquiry; and the conceptualizing of “personal troubles” (private problems) by way of pondering “public issues” (social problems). This conceptualizing of private problems by way of social problems is an explicit call to link social action and experience to the broader realm of social structure and politics. The Five “Simpler” Categories of Sociological Imagination Mills’s “sociological imagination” comprises five major categories. History refers to ongoing structural and personal change as well as the particular historical epoch that is constitutive of the structure of society (and by implication the categories of person that are prevalent). Biography refers to what Mills calls one’s “inner subjective life.” This inner subjective life is composed of experience of one’s “personal milieu” plus one’s “external career.” Biography includes one’s experience of “public issues” as “personal troubles.” Personal milieu is the domain of direct experience and offers resources (e.g., discursive and material) for conceptualizing personal troubles and formulating practical attempts to resolve these. Needless to say, the resources of one’s personal milieu are limited and inadequate for conceptually situating personal troubles in terms of social problems (public issues) or for their resolution. Society for Mills is a network of social institutions such as family, work, religion, and education, among others. It is a historical formation and includes political and economic organization and a network of personal milieux. Public issues as social problems are framed at this broad level. Included within “society” is “biography” or one’s experiences of their milieu and how it has been shaped by broader social forces. Personal troubles are problems that appear as private or local problems of “personal milieu,” which are “public issues” experienced in individualized ways. It may be tempting to see poverty, for instance, as one person’s plight but as Mills argues, it is a societal problem that cannot be resolved in terms of the individual. Public issues are those problems that have come to be characterized as 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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social problems because they threaten some deeply held historically contingent beliefs or challenge taken for granted normative positions or practices. These five key concepts enable the social scientist to carry out his or her “foremost political and intellectual task . . . to make clear the elements of contemporary uneasiness and indifference” (Mills 1959, 13). That is, to make clear which “values” are cherished, threatened, and supported in the formulation of public issues and personal troubles. Figure 3.1 offers one possible way to visualize the sociological imagination. According to Mills, the sociological imagination is an already existing but neglected “intellectual style” that follows in the tradition of classical sociological thinkers such as Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx. It enables the social scientist to think between problems of milieu and problems of social structure, between small and large, between personal relationships and social relations. The quality of mind characteristic of the sociological imagination, Mills insists, “seems most dramatically to promise an understanding of the intimate realities of ourselves in connection with larger social realities. It is not merely one quality of mind among the contemporary range of cultural sensibilities—it is the quality whose wider and more adroit use offers the promise that all such sensibilities—and in fact, human reason itself—will come to play a greater role in human affairs” (Mills 1959, 15). Public Issues (unemployment) Society

Biography

H I S T O R Y

Personal Troubles (unemployed)

Personal Milieu

conditioning Social Structure has ontological primacy

Figure 3.1 The sociological imagination.





Importantly, we need to delineate between what Mills called “the personal troubles of milieu” and “the public issues of social structure” (1959, 8). He stipulates that such a distinction is an “essential tool of the sociological imagination” (1959, 8). Personal troubles of milieu are private matters that affect both the “inner life” and “external career” of individuals. “Milieu” indicates “those limited areas of social life of which [an individual] is directly and personally aware” (Mills 1959, 8). Milieu is the context of personal troubles. How one expresses or articulates these troubles and attempts their resolution depends on the types of resources that are immediately accessible— language, material means, and so on—in their personal milieu. Some people will have greater capacities to articulate in a more or less sophisticated manner these troubles and their resolution. Public issues, on the other hand, go well beyond the individual and his or her immediate environment and local knowledge. The issue is a public or societal rather than private matter. As personal troubles are individualized experiences of public issues, they may be experienced by a wide range of persons. Thus Mills was keen to advocate that we connect the personal troubles and public issues of modern society, as one cannot exist without the other. However, this connection is often not made for various reasons. People may not have the capacity to make these connections. Social scientists, likewise, may not have the capacity to make these connections, especially if they are oriented to either abstracted empiricism or grand theory: Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both. Yet men do not usually define the troubles they endure in terms of historical change and institutional contradiction. The well-being they enjoy, they do not usually impute to the big ups and downs of the societies in which they live. Seldom aware of the intricate connection between the patterns of their own lives and the course of world history, ordinary men do not usually know what this connection means for the kinds of men they are becoming and for the kinds of history-making in which they might take part. They do not posses the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self and world. They cannot cope with their personal troubles in such ways as to control the structural transformations that usually lie behind them. (Mills 1959, 3–4)

Societal transformation and politics are formative forces for individuals, communities, and societies. Additionally, individuals are not autonomous selves but inherently social beings connected to one 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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another in often unrecognized perhaps unfathomable ways. Troubles endured might include unemployment, poverty, victimization, or perhaps accessing legitimate means for achieving what Merton (1938, discussed above) called “culture goals” (i.e., widely disseminated and held cultural values and aspirations). Such troubles are not simply the product of individual failings or resolvable by individuals. Institutional contradiction, societal change, and economic and political trends are important conditions from which social issues emerge and shape personal troubles. How these will be understood and experienced is largely a product of personal milieu. For criminologists attempting to employ a criminological imagination, for instance, an understanding of criminality or crime control without considering “historical change and institutional contradiction” is one-dimensional and inadequate. Explanations such as “x chose to commit crime” or “x is biologically predisposed to violence” are not social or holistic explanations and are simplistic. Taking into consideration the dynamic entwining of the domain of social action and that of social structure, as well as the crucial role of societal transformation and politics, compels an understanding of individual or group behavior in terms of the larger context of the political, economic, and moral elements or features of social life as embodied in institutions such as the legal system, family, work, education, religion, and so on. Particular institutional arrangements and the organization of one’s community will affect the character of the public issue in the experiential realm. In attempting to understand personal troubles by way of public issues, as Mills advocates, we would explicitly connect the level or domain of biography with the currents of societal change (i.e., history) and societal organization (i.e., social structure). According to Mills, we need to attempt to connect these large and general features of societies to the very specific actions and experiences under consideration. In thinking about social welfare, for instance, we might think of the “institutional contradiction” of privatized public services: public services offered for the benefit of all citizens but operated by a for-profit corporation that is only concerned with generating profits for shareholders. Here benefits may be distributed according to a one’s ability to pay rather than according to need, meaning that public services such as policing if offered in this way are offered in an expressly antidemocratic fashion through the market (Bayley and Shearing 1996; Christie 2000; Loader 1999; Rigakos 2002). The contradiction comes from having social entitlements such as safety and security distributed according to market sensibilities that must discriminate on the basis 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




of income or ability to pay. Privatization within the prison system in the United States, for instance, has enabled a booming industry that requires crime and mass incarceration in order that profits be produced for shareholders as well as to ensure employment for very large numbers of largely unskilled workers (Bowditch and Everett 1987; Feeley 2002; Sheldon and Brown 2000; Shichor 1993). Mills cites the example of unemployment (among others) to help us grasp the difference that the sociological imagination makes: When, in a city of 100,000, only one man is unemployed, that is his personal trouble, and for its relief we properly look to the character of the man, his skills, and his immediate opportunities. But when in a nation of 50 million employees, 15 million men are unemployed, that is an issue, and we may not hope to find its solution within the range of opportunities open to any one individual. The very structure of opportunities has collapsed. Both the correct statement of the problem and the range of possible solutions require us to consider economic and political institutions of the society, and not merely the personal situation and character of a scatter of individuals. (1959, 9)

This example works equally well for crime. With mass incarceration in the United States, for instance, it simply is not plausible or feasible to think of the crime problem in terms of the individual. It is a public issue. Because a public issue “cannot very well be defined in terms of the immediate and everyday environments of ordinary men” (Mills 1959, 9), one’s personal experience and local knowledge acts as a constraint on conceptualizing the problem and its resolution. This means that if we are to adequately conceptualize a public issue such as unemployment or crime, or adequately conceptualize the personal trouble of being unemployed, engaging in criminal conduct, or being victimized, we have to go beyond our immediate experiences and common sense knowledge to think about “the ways in which various milieux overlap and interpenetrate to form the larger structure of social and historical life” (Mills 1959, 8). How, for instance, does the for-profit corporation overlap with the prison, and how does the space of incapacitation overlap with that of the commodity? We need to conceptualize the conditions that may generate and help to reproduce the outcome of crime or unemployment. Mills states the following: What we experience in various and specific milieux, I have noted, is often caused by structural changes. Accordingly, to understand the 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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changes of many personal milieux we are required to look beyond them. And the number and variety of such structural changes increase as the institutions within which we live become more embracing and more intricately connected with one another. To be aware of the idea of social structure and to use it with sensibility is to be capable of tracing such linkages among a great variety of milieux. To be able to do that is to possess the sociological imagination. (Mills 1959, 10–11)

It is precisely because we may not directly experience or perceive our personal troubles as a manifestation of larger, distant public issues that Mills’s sociological imagination is valuable, especially for criminology. For instance, the individual police officer may not see a relationship between the economic and political changes that Western capitalist states have experienced over the previous three decades and the transformation of policing from public order maintenance and deterrence to social service provision and the management of crime, but such macro level forces have been shown by Garland (2001) and others to be significant for transformation in policing. Criminology suffers from a rationalist underpinning that paints offenders and nonoffenders alike as rational calculators. Even where criminologists reject this understanding, such an understanding continues to inform the criminal law and administration of justice, so one can never escape this. Thus crime problems tend to be overrepresented as individual problems. A well-developed criminological imagination could not only help reframe this rationalism and force it to account for social structure and the sociality of crime, criminality, and crime control but also offer a means to reconceptualize the criminological enterprise, its procedures and domain of objects. Likewise it will enable us to visualize how it is that the justice system as a social and political institution and the practices of its personnel are articulated and imbricated with the operation of other social institutions and practices. This would be quite useful for disabusing many of the notions that the justice system is a “system” rather than an amalgam of a number of agencies, practices, and agents bound together in conflict and tension as well as the idea that the justice system is somehow autonomous or significantly different from other hierarchically organized and differentiated institutions. The simpler categories of Mills’s sociological imagination enable us to make reference to and visualize aspects of social life. They are tools that can be operated to produce robust and holistic descriptions of personal troubles and public issues and the interrelation between the two. The sociological imagination is not only an analytic language 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




but also a model of the nature of society (a social morphology) as well as a methodology for guiding inquiry. It guides us not only in terms of what to look for but also in terms of how to articulate what we observe and how to conceptualize or visualize aspects of sociality that are not readily apparent (such as the connection between personal troubles and social issues). The sociological imagination enables systematic articulation and contemplation of the relation or connection between personal experience and action, social processes such as institutional transformation and the formation of social problems, and the organization of fields and institutions. Facets of the Sociological Imagination Having outlined the major concepts that “sociological imagination” refers to, we are now in a position to contemplate what Mills has been able to accomplish and its value for criminology. The sociological imagination provides us with a promise to be realized. This quality of mind promises a number of things: a holistic exploration of social phenomena, the means to refine or expand specific criminological languages, a way to produce robust analytical narratives, a way to locate and extract criminological meaning from a wide variety of data sources, including fictional realities, and a reflexive procedure that can direct us to visualize the interconnectedness of empirical elements that might often be held to be distinct. It addresses some conceptual gaps or divisions that are thought to exist within the social sciences. These “gaps” are those that are thought to exist between social action and social structure (often referred to in sociology as the “agency-structure” problem or “micro-macro” gap), theory and practice (including theory and research), theory and method, science and the imagination, and abstracted empiricism and grand theory (the two differing intellectual styles that most concerned Mills). We must ask ourselves, If this is what this quality of mind promises, how then can this promise be realized? There are three components of the sociological imagination that can be drawn from the work of Mills and these will help us articulate just how the promise of the sociological imagination can be realized, and in turn, what a “criminological imagination” might look like. The sociological imagination (and by implication the criminological imagination) is a quality of mind animated and underpinned by three interrelated facets. These broad elements comprise a “meta” or “general” framework that can be used in conjunction with the specific analytic languages of criminology to produce analytical narratives. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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First, the sociological imagination is a means of identifying and outlining connections and the interdependency of the psychological and the social-organizational realms of society. That is, it directs our attention to the aspects of objects that require explanation, such as interactional and structural aspects, and directs us to map out relations between these. Thus it is an approach or methodology for the study of personal problems, social problems and phenomena, and criminology itself, as it addresses “how” we ought to go about analyzing our problem and how to organize and extract meaning or significance from a wide range of “data.” In this way, it sets out what we must do in order to offer a holistic description and explanation of something, including directing us to pose certain types of questions that will require us to this produce fuller, more robust description and explanation. This also concerns explicit attention to the limitations of our field’s analytic categories. In order to follow the protocols on how to produce robust and holistic descriptions and explanations, we need to know something about our object of investigation and its larger context. This is the next broad element of the sociological imagination. The second facet of the sociological imagination is its provision of a holistic typology or model of what “society” and social reality look like. That is, the sociological imagination advances an ontology of society and offers a social morphology. Elements or components of society are identified, and their relation to each other specified. Thus the sociological imagination offers us a schematic for identifying and situating our particular problem and its components (the “what” that we need to analyze and its scope). This model of social morphology offers a “map” for social scientists to use. It can help them conceptualize the nature and scope of their problem, situate the problem among a complex of elements, and determine how our analytic categories can be arranged to give us a better conceptual understanding of how empirical elements are related to one another. This essentially addresses the questions, what is society? and what are its elements? It can also be used to contemplate questions such as, what is crime? and what is the criminal justice system? Mills’s model forces us to make connections between things that we might take for granted or otherwise ignore. However, this methodology and social morphology are only useful if we have a set of categories that can be used to identify and specify the nature and scope of our problem, as well as for describing and ordering the things we want to know more about. For example, our methodological component might tell us to move between different aspects of social reality (as set out by our ontological scheme) so that 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




we can produce adequate descriptions and explanations. However, we require a language in order to offer descriptions and explanations and to categorize and conceptualize the various important elements of social reality and of our object. This then requires an analytic language. The sociological imagination has a third facet, a sophisticated conceptual system. It provides us with an interconnected set of categories that can be used to specify societal elements and their points of intersection. Thus it offers specific analytic tools (i.e., analytic concepts) to be operated to extract meaning and significance from “data” and conceptualize, describe, and explain social and personal problems. The concepts provide us with the lenses through which we can visualize our problem; the method gives us a way to do this systematically; and the ontological model shows us what we are dealing with. The sociological imagination offers a metaframework: a way to systematically structure the use and integration of analytic languages from criminology, the sociology of deviance, criminal justice studies and other fields. It can also help us reflect on the strengths and limitations of these analytic languages and their synthesis. Thus calls to exercise a criminological imagination, if this is to be analytically meaningful, are calls to engage with the three facets outlined toward realizing its promise. This exercise would have criminologists think through these issues as they relate to their particular problem. This is one way to ensure a reflexive and critical criminology of public reason. A criminological imagination, then, is much more than simply “thinking critically” or imagining old problems in new ways. It is an underexplored concept that offers criminology a platform from which to produce robust and multidimensional accounts as well as deepen our understanding of crime, crime control, and social control more generally. Extending the Sociological Imagination Another, perhaps more fruitful way to visualize Mills is to turn to the realist methodological work of Layder (1993). The result of Layder’s attempt to fashion a revised and extended grounded theory approach for social research—one indebted to a realist epistemology—is represented by Figure 3.2. This is a model for social research that is congruent with Mills’s sociological imagination. It sets out domains or “levels of social organization which are closely interrelated, but which for analytic and research purposes can be scrutinized separately” (Layder 1993, 71). Although he does not make use of the work of Mills, Layder’s approach expands on the domains of “biography” 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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and “social structure” and their articulation, as well as history and politics. Biography is indicated by Layder’s concepts of “self” and “situated activity.” Here “self” refers to “biographical experience and social involvements” while “situated activity” makes reference to the “dynamics of face-to-face interaction” (Layder 1993, 8). Social structure is set out in Layder as “setting” and “context.” “Context” refers to things such as class, gender, and ethnic relations (which he terms “macro social forms”); “Setting” refers to the “immediate environment of social activity” such as schools, the family, factory, prison (Layder 1993, 8). It is easy to see the relevance of Layder’s model for criminology. For Layder, both the interactional and structural are equally important. He locates their intersection at the level of situated activity: it is through this structured face-to-face interaction that social structure meets biography. Layder offers a more complex ontological model than Mills, thoroughly specifying the content of each domain and their connection to one another. This more sophisticated ontology does not displace but rather extends Mills. In this way it helps us to clarify Mills ontological model (or social morphology). Layder, by implication of offering a realist-based and reformulated grounded theory, offers a methodological framework. His research map is representative of the domains that must be considered in social research, even if the researcher “selectively focuses” only on a few (Layder 1993, 74). The domains

Figure 3.2 The criminological imagination. Source: Modified version of Layder 1993, 72





can be used to situate one’s object of study and guide the research to more nuanced and holistic accounts of that object’s characteristics. Thus the research map represents a “research strategy.” As a research strategy, it sensitizes the researcher not only to these four domains and their interrelation but also to history, power, and general theory. The research map is indicative also of a “general theory.” Layder’s model addresses some general problems within social science methodology, as does Mills (e.g., the gap between theory and practice, the micro-macro problem, etc.). Both offer an “in between” approach. For example, Layder crafts an approach that enjoins theory testing and theory generation, makes use of quantitative and qualitative data and methods (where appropriate), and bridges interactional and structural approaches to both social research and conceptions of power. Layder, much like Mills, is also conscious of the importance of history (personal transformation as well as the dynamic exogenous forces that promote societal change). As with Mills, the experiential and interactional domain as well as the structural domain are bounded by the dynamics of change and the peculiarities and particulars of an historical period. Both are concerned with the presence and operation of power relations. Mills is concerned with politics and political transformation. Layder offers a more sophisticated view of power, one that combines interactional and structural understandings. This view of power is “embedded” in the research framework to sensitize researchers to this no matter what the topic or level of focus. As with Mills, Layder emphasizes the importance of attending to the structural forces that constrain and enable a subject’s capacities for action. Thus as a general theory or “metatheory,” Layder’s approach offers an explicit engagement with history and power within the domains outlined in the research map. “Power” and “history” are two important concepts along with context, setting, situated activity, and self. These can be drawn on to expand Mills’s sociological imagination and to fashion one possible model of the criminological imagination.

Co nc lusion Layder’s resource map is much more than a chart. It represents the development of a research strategy, general theory, and ontology. These are the three facets of Mills’s sociological imagination and can be drawn upon to clarify and extend Mills and in so doing clarify and specify a developed concept of the criminological imagination. Layder’s work can be drawn on to visualize neglected aspects of the criminological imagination: a sophisticated ontology of society and the 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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social, a developed set of analytic concepts, and a strategy for operating these concepts. To follow Mills and Layder, exercising a criminological imagination requires one to engage in imaginative and speculative conceptualizing in the context of an empirical puzzle. Mills and Layder help us visualize the content of “criminological imagination” and the sort of practice it makes possible: one that is reflexive and aware of the interactional and structural features of crime and crime control and sensitive to the constitutive nature of social change and power relations. Exercising one’s criminological imagination is not a simple matter of being critical or imaginative. We must contemplate how we can be critical and imaginative and how it is we might realize the promise of this quality of mind. The work of Mills and the extension offered in the work of Layder help us visualize that imagination and speculation are not divorced from systematic, rigorous, and critical scientific inquiry. A disciplined imagination and speculative conceptualizing are conditions for robust criminological analyses.







4

Moral Transcendence and Sy mbolic Interaction i n F A L L I N G D OW N

I’m the bad guy? How’d that happen? —Bill to Sergeant Prendergast in Falling Down

I ntro duc t i on

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ill Foster (Michael Douglas) finds himself deadlocked in traffic on a crowded, noisy, very hot freeway on-ramp somewhere in Los Angeles. This opening scene provides us with some emotional or existential context for what Bill is feeling; it subjects us to the noises and gestures that fill Bill’s milieu. Through intensive focus on these sights and sounds that inundate—indeed overstimulate—we are lead to not simply observe the character but imagine what it must be like to be Bill at that moment (and in the subsequent series of moments that comprise what is a protracted process of symbolic transformation). The final scene of the motion picture depicts a confrontation between the retiring, mild-mannered Sergeant Prendergast (Robert Duvall) and the recently unemployed, disgruntled, and divorced father, Bill. Bill is surprised to learn that because of the things he has done he is considered by police to be the bad guy. Bill has a difficult time making sense of this because he believes he has worked his whole life for family and country, upholding good, old-fashioned American values. Bill is holding onto the idea that he is a good father and provider. This belief informs his master identity and understanding of his social role, 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Chapter 4


and is key to his motivation to get home and eliminate all obstacles in his path and to the process of becoming the bad guy. This chapter aims to answer Bill’s question through exploration and application of the groundbreaking work of Jack Katz. Because Katz’s work is indebted to symbolic interactionism (SI), a discussion of the important work of George Herbert Mead (1934) and Edwin Lemert (1951) helps contextualize the discussion of Katz. In addressing the issue of how Bill becomes the bad guy, I provide a discussion of SI, drawing some parallels with Lemert, and then explicate Katz’s framework before applying it to craft an analytical narrative of Falling Down.

S o me I ntel l ec tual C ontext: S I a nd S o c ietal Reac ti on Joel Schumacher’s film can be “read” as a narrative exemplifying the existential process of symbolic transformation. This process is depicted as an ongoing series of encounters that propel change within Bill, which in turn is expressed through Bill’s actions. The film depicts Bill’s internal struggle and turmoil and its public manifestation. In the language of Mills, the film attempts to situate one man’s personal troubles within larger public issues. Bill’s personal troubles are a particularized experience of broader social problems. Through intensive focus on the Bill character the film illuminates how public issues get taken up and articulated by what in symbolic interactionism is termed the “social self.” A central aspect of the film is that of biography (the experience of personal milieu). Thus, in its focus on the self the film depicts the connection between biography, history (social change), and social structure (e.g., work, markets, family, banks, and community). G. H. Mead and Self-Interaction The process of the transformation of Bill Foster depicted in Falling Down resonates strongly with elements of SI, especially those outlined by Mead, Lemert, and Jack Katz. Katz is the major focus of this chapter, as his groundbreaking text, Seductions of Crime, takes the experience of criminality as the central object of inquiry and offers an explanatory scheme that can account for the production of different “qualities” of criminality. SI and Katz emphasize process (interactional dynamics) and thinking in terms of process helps us make sense of the logic that underlies the motivation to engage in deviance 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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as well as its sensual dimension. As Sampson (2000, 711) has argued, “The most important thing about crime that we do not know . . . concerns its causal social processes.” This film is a protracted illustration of the process of symbolic transformation and interaction, exemplifying Mead’s understanding of the self as a dialectical process between what he called the “I” and the “me” (1934). It exemplifies the interactionist understanding of society as a collection of meaningful social objects that are contemplated and manipulated. It enables us to discuss Lemert’s application of Mead specifically to deviation, and in turn, offers as a richly textured social reality that provides multiple cases of crime and deviance for analysis. SI originated in the early twentieth century with the pragmatist philosophical psychology of George Herbert Mead and proved highly influential for Chicago sociology. Because of the dominance of Chicago sociology until around the 1940s (and then again in the 1960s), SI was (and continues to be) a dominant explanatory framework utilized in sociology and criminology. The SI tradition emphasizes the role of process in the construction of meaning, the construction of roles and identities, and production of meaningful social objects. The nature of things is defined by their symbolic dimension. According to Visano, “The social world is constructed out of shared symbolic universes. Within this world, human beings have the capacity to represent themselves symbolically because of their unique ability to use words and language. Interactionism emphasizes the way(s) in which individuals share symbols and the significance of these symbols in shaping interactions. The meaning of symbols, learned through interaction, is very important in appreciating behaviour” (Visano 1998, 84). In Mills’s terms, interactionists are most concerned with how the meanings of symbols are learned, created, manipulated, and experienced within the domains of personal milieu. Downes and Rock describe these personal milieus as “little social worlds that constitute a society. Schools, gangs, families, pubs and hospitals . . . bounded by social situations, created by people who experience them as sets of changing resources, opportunities, contexts and constraints. Any social situation will be a blend of activity history and material props which achieves its definition and coherence from shared symbols” (2003, 179). It is these “little worlds”—domains of shared symbols and immediate and direct experience—that are emphasized by the term “symbolic interactionism.” SI is not merely concerned with social interaction but with the creation and learning of collective meaning and the manipulation of symbols as expressions of this meaning in particular social 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Moral Transcendence and Interaction in FALLING DOWN


settings. “Interactionism,” according to Downes and Rock, “was held to be an existential sociology” offering a “politics of experience” (2003, 178). In many ways this brings us back to the domain of cultural criminologists and the world of style: meaning and its expression through the collective symbols and gestures found in apparel and argot, among other things. Because expressions of meaning and experience are so important, what Mills has termed biography is another important aspect of SI. The great value of Mead’s work is his insistence on imagination as the central mechanism of social action (Mead 1934, 180), which brings us to both social action and the social self. The mind is the incorporation of external social stimuli (what Mead called a “conversation of gestures” or simply community “goings on”), the examination of these “significant gestures,” and the formulation of a response. According to Downes and Rock, “An imagination of others’ replies is the vital prerequisite of social action” (2003, 182). All social acts, to elicit a desired response, “must be tailored to the anticipated reply which others might make. Anticipation requires one to take the role of another, to envisage how he or she views one’s display and predicts one’s intentions. It forces one to mould one’s gestures so that their significance is properly and efficiently conveyed . . . Imaginations thus become intertwined, mingled in a common social undertaking” (Downes and Rock 2003, 183).Social action can be described as the externalizing of this formulation of response to bring new problems and solutions to the community and in so doing effect the possibility of personal and social transformation (Mead 1934, 187–88). According to Blumer (1966, 536), a former student and highly regarded interlocutor of Mead, social actors are engaged in a process of “self-interaction.” This “requires him to meet and handle his world through a defining process instead of merely responding to it, and forces him to construct his action instead of merely releasing it” (Blumer 1966, 536). The significance of this is that human beings undergo a continual process of engaging with themselves (as if they were objects) and engaging with the world around them. This is an ongoing active, interpretive, and reflexive process whereby selves must note and determine the significance of gestures and events and construct for themselves a “line of action” that will facilitate a desired response from others (but also initiate changes within). This process is transformative; thus the self is always undergoing change and through the construction of lines of action always acting on the world. According to Visano, Blumer’s sensitivity to the active and creative nature of humans led him to argue “that no comprehension of human 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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behaviour and social life can be obtained without taking account of the process of forming and transforming the self” (Visano 1998, 86). Therefore, action is not a response to stimuli but a response to an interpretation of what Mead called “significant gestures” (1934, 43) of which the social world is composed. “Self” then is a term that makes reference to an ongoing internal dialectic process between what is called the “I” and the “me” (which will be discussed in further detail later on in this chapter). This internal dialectic is not simply psychological but draws in the collective attitudes from the milieu (and forms the “me”). For Mead, this process—an interaction with the symbolic world of collective meaning—describes the active creation of mind. The “self” or “mind” (self-interaction) is a “mechanism” (Blumer 1966, 535, 536) and basis for action: “By making indications to himself and by interpreting what he indicates, the human being has to forge or piece together a line of action. In order to act the individual has to identify what he wants, establish an objective or goal, map out a prospective line of behavior, note and interpret the actions of others, size up his situation, check himself at this or that point, figure out what to do at other points, and frequently spur himself on in the face of dragging dispositions or discouraging settings” (Blumer 1966, 536–37). This understanding of interaction is one that entails engagement organized around the meaningful objects that populate one’s milieu. It is a “symbolic” rather than “nonsymbolic” interaction. As Blumer explains, with nonsymbolic interaction (that of animals and sometimes humans), we will find “unwitting responses” to gestures or events. On the other hand, the “witting” responses that humans are alone capable of presumably involve the use of one’s wits, as it were, where one is aware and self-conscious. Symbolic interaction involves both interpretation of an act and definition. The former has to do with the “ascertaining of the meaning of the actions or remarks of the other person,” while the latter is awareness of indications from others as to how one ought to act (Blumer 1966, 537). This budding interactionist tradition was eclipsed in the 1940s and 1950s by structural functionalism, termed “grand theory” by Mills. Because of the dominance of grand theory, work in the interactionist tradition went largely unrecognized during this period. This includes the groundbreaking work of Edwin Lemert, who in 1951 published Social Pathology. This book, as the title suggests, argued for and developed a nonpsychological, nonindividualist conception of pathology and deviance utilizing concepts proffered by Mead. According to Downes and Rock, this highly influential contribution to the study 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




of deviance positioned Lemert as a “vital forerunner of interactionist sociology of deviance” (Downes and Rock 2003, 178). His concept of “societal reaction” underpins what today is called “labeling theory” (see also Visano 1998, 88–92) and was pivotal for the development of the work of Howard Becker, Erving Goffman, and Jack Katz. Lemert and Introjection Unlike Mead, the express focus of Lemert was not general social behavior but deviant behavior. Much of Lemert’s work has been taken up and extended by others such as Howard Becker and Irving Goffman. What is valuable here are his concepts of “primary” and “secondary deviation.” These help us explain Bill’s epiphany at the end of the film. Lemert is in broad agreement that “many normal persons carry potentialities for abnormal behaviour, which, given proper conditions, can easily be called into play” (1951,74). I believe that what Katz offers us, despite his seeming rejection of materialist explanations of deviance, is an outline of these conditions (both material and symbolic) for the emergence of “different qualities of experience that distinguish different forms of criminality” (Katz 1988, 4). There are many parallels between Mead, Lemert, and Katz. For example, Lemert states, “The importance of the person’s conscious symbolic reactions to his or her own behavior cannot be overstressed in explaining the shift from normal to abnormal behavior” (1951, 74). Lemert also claims, “the individual’s self-definition is closely connected with such things as self-acceptance, the subordination of minor to major roles, and with the motivation involved in learning the skills, techniques, and values of a new role” (1951, 74). Self-definition and realization are “conditions” to the emergence of deviance as this role “symbolizes” this awareness (Lemert 1951, 74). This speaks to the reflexive self-interaction and interaction of selves described by SI (Blumer 1966). What is significant for Lemert is how subjective interpretations may be organized in action. They are not significant until the point that they become externalized. As with Mead, social action is key. Deviant social action for Lemert can be broken down into two categories: primary and secondary. With what Lemert calls primary deviation, deviant behaviors are not only rationalized as necessary but also incorporated into legitimate social roles, thus legitimating deviant conduct by association with legitimate social roles: “The deviations remain primary deviations or symptomatic and situational as long as they are rationalized or otherwise dealt with as functions of a socially 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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acceptable role” (Lemert 1951, 75). Describing these as situational suggests that they are adaptations to immediate problems, not recurring or ritualized behaviors. This form of deviance is referred to as “segmental” and “partially integrated,” as “troublesome adjuncts of normally conceived roles” (1951, 75), and as “rationalized as part of a role more acceptable to . . . authorities” (1951, 77). Police officer deviance in the course of his or her duties is an example. Too much force might be purposively utilized to restrain a suspect given situational factors and not as a routine course of action. Undercover police work is another example. Police officers might engage in illegal conduct, but this is justified as part of the situation and as legitimate police work. Primary deviation denotes a situation in which deviance is undertaken as part of a legitimate role and is intermittent or fleeting. Because of this intermittence and because the behavior is carried out through a legitimate social role, it does not garner severe societal reaction. According to Lemert, “If the deviant acts are repetitive and have a high visibility and if there is a severe societal reaction, which, through a process of identification is incorporated as part of the ‘me’ of the individual, the probability is greatly increased that the integration of existing roles will be disrupted and that reorganization based upon a new role or roles will occur. (The ‘me’ in this context is simply the subjective aspect of the societal reaction.)” (Lemert 1951, 76). This formulation follows Mead. It is the “organized attitudes” of others (i.e., the condemnation of certain behaviors) that the individual imports into the process of “self-interaction.” “This process can be characterized in a certain sense in terms of the ‘I’ and the ‘me,’ the ‘me’ being that group of organized attitudes to which the individual responds as an ‘I’” (Mead 1934, 186). Mead and Lemert slightly differ on the point of subjectivity (which is a fairly insignificant difference). Mead does not see this importing of “organized attitudes” or “conversation of gestures” as a process whereby social elements are made subjective (1934, 188). They remain “objects” and thus can be contemplated, manipulated, and so forth in the process of self-interaction. One way of putting this is to say that they may be taken up by the mind, but they are not products of the mind. Change occurs as the organized attitudes of others (brought into the self as the “me”) confront the organized attitudes of the individual (the “I”). Visano states: The “me” represents experiences in which the individual is an object to himself or herself, the generalised other. The social product or “socialness” of being an individual in society [this “me”] controls the “I”. The “I” is the unpredictable and uncertain element of freedom and 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




initiatives of immediate impulses. The “I” responds to the attitudes of others, the impulsive manifestations of the human natural needs. The “me” for Mead is the organised set of attitudes of others which one assumes. These are the internalised norms and values. The attitudes of others make up the organized “me” while reactions to the situation frame the “I.” (Visano 1998, 86)

Mead provides an example of the interaction of the “I” and the “me” in a discussion about politicians: [The politician] has a set of organized attitudes [the “me”] which are those of the community. His own contribution, the “I” in this case, is a project of reorganization, a project which he brings forward to the community as it is reflected in himself. He himself changes, of course, in so far as he brings this project forward and makes it a political issue. There has now arisen a new social situation as a result of the project which he is presenting. The whole procedure takes place in his own experience as well as in the general experience of the community. (Mead 1934, 187)

Mead’s discussion also illustrates Lemert’s position but must be put in the context of deviance: The set of organized attitudes would be those attitudes existing in a society about particular forms or types of deviant conduct. According to Mead, these organized attitudes are “parts of the social reaction” and could only exist in the “interplay of gestures” that Mead calls a “conversation of gestures” (i.e., social life; Mead 1934, 189). Lemert adopts this understanding of social reaction and the interplay of gestures, calling it “societal reaction.” However unlike Mead for Lemert this specifically denotes the level of “stigmatizing” of the deviant through “name calling, labeling, or stereotyping” (Lemert 1951, 77). Conduct that is stigmatized is symbolic of both societal tolerance and the self’s understanding of this tolerance. Through this process of symbolic interaction, change occurs. This change is termed “reorganization” by Lemert (1951, 76), following Mead. Lemert suggests there are three options here: First, “adoption of another normal role in which the tendencies previously defined as ‘pathological’ are given a more acceptable social expression”; Second, one will assume a deviant role; Third, “a person may organize an aberrant sect or group [subculture] in which he creates a special role of his own” (1951, 76). The first option describes primary deviation, where one identifies with the “normal” role and subsumes deviant behavior within this role. The second and third options discussed here describe secondary deviation. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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Lemert argues that when one employs deviance or embraces a deviant role as a response to societal reaction (as a means of defense, attack, or adjustment), deviation becomes secondary. In this case societal reaction is strong and there is enough societal reinforcement to, in a sense, convince the actor of his or her deviant status. With secondary deviation, one comes to “identify himself with a pathological role” (Lemert 1951, 76) and accept a deviant social status. This shift from primary to secondary deviation is the symbolic transformation of identity and status and is accompanied by changes in things such as apparel, speech, posture, and mannerisms (Lemert 1951, 76). This is what cultural criminologists call “style.” Lemert is suggesting that “symbols” change to express the new role and the new role is organized around these “objects.” This is normally an incremental and “progressive” process. This sequential process or “sequence of interaction” is essentially what Becker (1963) conceptualizes as the “deviant career.” This concept of career (i.e., a sequential process) is very close to the process outlined by Katz for the emergence of the experience of criminality, except that Katz is clear that he is not advocating a stage theory of deviance but rather describing “qualities of experience” within a process.

K atz a nd Mo r al Tr ans c endence In the opening paragraph of Seductions of Crime, Katz alludes to the sensual aspects of crime, explaining why it is necessary to focus on the “seductive qualities of crimes: those aspects in the foreground of criminality that make its various forms sensible, even sensually compelling, ways of being” (1988, 3). Evil doing, Katz stipulates, is brought on by an overpowering desire to transcend one’s social situation. Killing, theft, and assault, among others acts commonly held to portray an essential, immoral, or deviant nature of an actor, are explored by Katz. Instances of “moral frenzy,” contributing to the moral and sensual attractions of doing evil, are generated by the interplay of existential moments. Katz believes these moments cannot be apprehended solely through traditional criminological and sociological focus on “background” factors such as class and gender. As a supplement to a traditional “materialist” approach, Katz attempts an exploration of the immediate and transitory conditions that enable an emergent “impulse” or attraction to suffering. Attempting to understand criminal behavior by focusing on how particular actions are experienced by the offender, Katz crafts an analytical narrative about crime and deviance and presents us with 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




the social selves of “deviant” and “victim.” These figures are outcomes of processes that interact. Katz clearly situates himself in the interactionist tradition when he suggests that we should separate ourselves from taken-for-granted understandings and assumptions to grasp the subjective, foreground experience of actors to get at how they understand their situation. The social actions of killing, theft, and vandalism are viewed along the lines of Lemert’s “primary deviation.” Katz stipulates that social selves (e.g., the “righteous killer” or the “badass” gang banger) undergo a complex process: a “dialectic process through which a person empowers the world to seduce him to criminality” (1988, 7). Action is produced and understood by the social self through various frames of reference. Katz is interested in the different “qualities of experience that distinguish different forms of criminality” (1988, 4) as well as the process of the “emergence” of criminality (1988, 9). The experience of the emergence of criminality is complex and ultimately ends with what is either a successful or failed attempt by an offender to avoid— or void—an experience of humiliation. Attempting to understand the experience of criminality requires that one recognize its mystical, pseudoreligious, and erotic aspects— its symbolism. The following elements in the experience of criminality are culled from Katz (1988), who relates the experience of criminality to that of “evil doing,” which consists of eroticized exaltation wherein the profane appears sacred: • Rituals are central. Killings, incantations (in the form of swearing at the victim), recurring theft, and even bludgeoning are examples of ritualism.1 • Omens are predominant: cursing often foreshadows the event. • Spells or incantations occur in the form of cursing or “hexing” the victim in an attempt to symbolically transform him or her and to reaffirm him or her as an offence against goodness and purity. • Prayer is predominant. At the beginning of righteous violence as killers prepare to shed blood Katz cites instances of gesturing (shouting, shoving, swearing) as overt signs (what Mead called “significant gestures”) of a “still-engaged moral inclination for peace” (1988, 42). • A battle between good and evil often characterizes the killing scene. The compulsion to do evil is cast as the killer compelled to defend a universal Good through a sacrifice to what amounts to a secular or profane god. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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• Sacrificial violence is performed to eradicate the presence of evil, not just the vessel of the corporeal body; this positions the killer as a “priest representing the collective moral being” (Katz 1988, 37) in what appears as a spiritual act or exorcism. • Idolatry occurs through the respecting and serving of some reification of good or evil. For example, Katz discusses the “seduction” experienced by the young “sneak thief,” whereby a seemingly magical object or totem compels them to steal (e.g., “I must have that!”). • Sacrifice is illustrated by killing, stealing, beating, or simply by giving up certain things to achieve what might be considered a higher form of being (e.g., a transgression of moral boundaries or the disregard of concern for oneself, as in the case of the thief who feels compelled to have the seductive object at all costs). • Humiliation and rage are experienced as overpowering emotion and the lust for goods connotes the power of the Holy Spirit that envelopes, empowers, and even cleanses. • Godly judgment is exercised. The killer perceives that he or she is constantly scrutinized and so must constantly conform to an image of an ideal self, always wondering: Am I conforming? Am I acting normal? Do I appear tough? The killer, thief, and “badass” judge the actions of others and adjust their behavior accordingly, asking, Does their action now require that they be killed, robbed, or beaten? • A call to achieve a higher form of being is experienced. The killer is seduced to “transcend” his or her immediate corporeal experience. The killer or badass becomes a succubus or incubus who can “penetrate the other in his most vulnerable, sensitive centre, in his moral and spiritual essence” and in so doing “mind-fucks” the victim (Katz 1988, 107). • Fate and faith are often portrayed. The actor knows not the outcome but has faith in his or her idol. The righteous killer, for example, idolizes what many view as a perverse notion of the Good, and the thief idolizes the seductive, forbidden object. Both have faith that they are doing the right thing. “These criminal killings are the results of leaps into blind faith,” states Katz (1988, 43). The victim may also place their future in fate or faith in God. Sacrificial violence and righteous slaughter, according to Katz, are the symbolic excising of moral aberration. The victim is visualized by the perpetrator as a “polluting profane material” that positions the ensuing violence as a sacred right or obligation and also as a sacred rite 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




or sacrament. The victim, dehumanized as a piece of “moral garbage” (Katz 1988, 37), is transfigured into something that is offensive to what the killer holds as sacred. The victim-as-offender is held to be foul and vile human excrement, an incommensurable excess in need of eradication or cleansing. This transformative process in which the killer aims to create a different “now” is not simply a process involving the excising of the victim-as-pollutant. Because of the reciprocal relations that tether the two social selves, the killer, in effect, symbolically excises himself. This is because the killer experiences him or herself from a position of exteriority through the reaction of the victim. The killer must remove the aspect of the victim that has been incorporated into the killer (through what Mead called the “me”) as well as remove that unfavorable understanding of the killer that has been incorporated into the victim (via the “me”). In this sense, one is not merely sacrificing the other as a moral pollutant but also an aspect of oneself. A “deviant aesthetic” (Katz 1988, 89) is very important to the experience of criminality. For instance, the “badass” gang member works very hard to cultivate an image that conveys a nature different from “normal people.” Embracing a deviant aesthetic is a clear example of secondary deviation. Examples provided by Katz include east Los Angeles graffiti artists who use a style called “point,” which is impenetrable to outsiders but nevertheless conveys “badassness” or disrespect for conventional norms of conduct. These Chicano youth ironically utilize Old-English style lettering not only to “achieve a strange, alien appearance” (Katz 1988, 82–83) to others but also to craft a meaningful relationship with this alien “badassness.” The point is that a space is created that facilitates a reorganizing of the self not only through the differential reactions elicited in spectators but also through incorporating these reactions into the self to reproduce oneself as an alien badass gang member. By “using symbols and practical devices” (Katz 1988, 81)—ritualistic behaviors such as adopting a particular gate (e.g., a strut), a way of speaking (e.g., the use of argot) or adorning the body with markings such as tattoos, ornaments like safety pins or religious icons, strange hairstyles, dyed hair, or peculiar styles of dress—a resemblance between outward appearance and a seemingly inherent deviant or “badass” nature is suggested. This process is one whereby an “impenetrable” self is constituted so that the badass gang member can believe he or she is not susceptible to the influence of others, while at the same time symbolizing that others will inevitably be penetrated by the “badass” charm. Despite this sense of impenetrability, the self is always susceptible to the influence of others as Mead and Lemert have argued. Thus Katz (1988, 82) 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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suggests that the “badass” engages with what is considered taboo in order to direct and shape the gaze of others and in turn to interiorize that gaze of his or her own badass nature. Thus Katz argues that this “badassness” is not inherent but an outcome of symbolic interaction. In short, Katz suggests that intersecting social and mental processes constitute the conditions for realizing or impugning an experience of criminality. To clarify, Katz sets out a structure—a theoretical framework arrived at through analytic induction (Katz 1988, 11)—that explains the emergence and experience of criminality. The three conditions that follow are necessary for “raising the spirit of criminality” (i.e., for one to experience criminality; Katz 1988, 9). With this, the process is shown to be a differentiated one in which the emergence of criminality may be enabled or impugned. “For each type of crime,” Katz argues, “[there is] a different set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions, each set containing: (1) a path of action— the distinctive practical requirements for successfully committing the crime [practical attention to a mode of executing action], (2) a line of interpretation—unique ways of understanding how one is and will be seen by others [symbolic creativity in defining the situation] and, (3) an emotional process—seductions and compulsions that have special dynamics [aesthetic finesse in recognizing and elaborating on the sensual possibilities]” (1988, 9, emphasis added). Katz’s text is not simply a protracted effort to illustrate that the intersection of these three conditions is necessary for the emergence of various types and experiences of deviance: the text itself is the outcome of a process (of analytic induction). Thus the text is exemplary of process, which is central to interactionist methodology. In his analysis of violence and killing (Chapter 1), the process of symbolic transformation discussed earlier in this chapter is composed of a number of articulated existential moments that rest upon Katz’s three conditions. These moments include instances of humiliation, righteousness, rage, sacrificial violence (sometimes appearing as “righteous slaughter”), and moral transcendence (the transcendence of humiliation). This should not be interpreted as a stage theory of violence but rather as an articulation of the moments necessary for the emergence of physical violence and transcendence of symbolic violence. Physical violence may emerge and with this the symbolic violence perceived by the offender can be overcome. It should be noted, however, that there is a necessary sequence of experiences, but this does not mean actualization of the full sequence. The moments of experience commingle and may or may not culminate 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




in physical violence and moral transcendence (overcoming of the symbolic violence of humiliation). Although there is explicit concern for the experiential, Katz has constructed an explanatory framework that requires us to think about the social and not merely the psychological. For example, in identifying lines of action an offender will contemplate the social. Much of what Mead and Lemert argued can be identified in Katz. Lines of interpretation and paths of action are both social, not psychological, and depend on more than simply “meaning.” Resources must be mobilized to actualize one’s interpretation of the situation. Mead had a rudimentary notion of these resources. For instance, language can be seen in Mead as a resource for indicating significance. Thus for Mead one is locked into a dialectic process not only with oneself but also with other selves and the social world of objects, including discourse objects. Thus Katz’s statement (1988, 9), “The challenge for explanation is to specify the steps of the dialectic process through which a person empowers the world to seduce him to criminality,” is Meadian. Because for Katz the moral domain is central to understanding criminality, and the moral domain is highly symbolic, the symbolic realm is identified by Katz as having primacy (see Katz 1988, 9). And although we can detect in Katz what seem to be outcomes of nonsymbolic interaction (killing as reaction rather than contemplative action), Katz is clear that all moments are experiential moments and not simply stimuli to which human beings react. This is in keeping with Mead’s notion of reflexive action and with his notion that “society” is little more than meaning (it is a collection of meaningful objects and an ongoing “conversation of gestures” wherein what is significant is the expression and apprehending of meaning). According to Blumer, “This world is socially produced in that the meanings are fabricated through the process of social interaction. Thus, different groups come to develop different worlds—and these worlds change as the objects that compose them change in meaning” (1966, 540). All social life is organized around these meaningful objects, which are nothing more than human constructs (Blumer 1966, 539). The physical nature of social objects is thus not germane; what is important is the symbolic nature: the “nature of an object is constituted by the meaning it has for the person or persons for whom it is an object” (Blumer 1966, 539). Katz’s claim that “Overall, the practical project—the concern that organized the bloody, righteous behavior—is the manifestation of respect for the sacred” (Katz 1988, 35) is underpinned by a 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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social-constructionist, Mead-inspired understanding of social action as organized around symbolic objects. The film Falling Down offers a richly textured fictionalized social reality that depicts symbolic interaction and moral transcendence. It provides multiple cases of crime and deviance for analysis. Due to space restrictions, I will focus specifically on two scenes of the film. In this section I construct a Katzian interpretation of the film and contrast this with existing interpretations. This is done to demonstrate how we might construct an analytical narrative of the film by operating Katz’s analytic concepts.

Falling Down The description of the film offered by the studio stipulates that Falling Down is “a tale of urban reality.” According to the DVD case, the main character, Bill Foster (Michael Douglas), is an “ordinary man at war with the everyday world.” Nicole Rafter holds Falling Down to be a “vigilante film” in which the protagonist, a “middle-aged failure,” becomes “unglued and lashes out against all the forces that seem to be conspiring to make men like himself miserable” (2006, 157). Jude Davies notes that Falling Down is a “transformation film” mainly concerned with gender, specifically “a crisis of lost masculinity” (1995, 147). The transformation of the Bill character, it is suggested, is “from everyman to madman” (Davies 1995, 147). Bill’s transformation is said to be the outcome of his response to “a series of encounters with different city-dwellers . . . with ever-increasing violence” (Davies 1995, 147). Through this process, “D-FENS [a.k.a. Bill] is thus established as an archetypal, universal figure challenging power in the name of reason and natural justice, a white male standing up for the rights of whites and blacks, men and women” (Davies 1995, 149). Rafter (2006, 194) suggests it is revenge that motivates Bill’s actions. Davies suggests that Bill uses violence as a solution to his problems. Davies’s conclusion that we are dealing with a madman borne of frustration and suffering a crisis of lost masculinity is not one that can be arrived at if we theorize the film through the work of Jack Katz. Nor will we arrive at the description offered by the studio that Bill is an “ordinary man at war with the everyday world.” Nor will we arrive at the position advanced by Rafter that Bill is a vigilante and failure fighting against what he perceives is an unjust world. The suggestion here is not that these interpretations are completely incompatible with Katz or one another or that they are wrong. Rather, these 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




interpretations serve to illustrate that choosing and operating one set of concepts over another will necessarily produce a different analytical narrative of the events depicted in the film (or in social life). The film, Falling Down, can be theorized as a protracted effort to illustrate the process of symbolic transformation in which Bill Foster participates. This is not something that simply happens to Bill; it is something that is actively constructed by Bill through the intersection of social and cognitive processes. Paying attention to process in Falling Down and treating the film as an empirical referent to which Katz’s concepts can be applied helps us to examine and clarify Katz’s theoretical position and particular mode of theorizing, just as Katz’s theoretical concepts can help us examine Falling Down. To draw on Katz means we must also draw on the tenets of SI and to a lesser extent the work of Lemert who applies them to rethink deviant conduct. Bill is not a character or individual but a “social self” who can experience different forms of criminality and humiliation and who attempts to nullify experiences of humiliation. Utilizing the conditions theorized by Katz to produce the emergence of criminality and moral transcendence, we can arrive at the following interpretation of the first important scene of Falling Down. In this scene, a middle-aged Caucasian man, Bill, enters a variety store in a poor, working-class neighborhood in Los Angeles, having left his vehicle on a freeway on-ramp only a short distance away. In the previous opening scene, director Joel Schumacher attempts to provide us with some existential context, drawing the viewer into the sights and sounds that overwhelm Bill and effect his experience of and reaction to a traffic jam during a heat wave. Bill enters Mr. Lee’s store to acquire coins to use a pay phone, only to be told by the Korean owner that he must purchase something. This is the first of many things that Bill perceives as an obstacle preventing him from “going home” to see his daughter on her birthday. This theme of going home is connected to Bill’s selfconception as a family man, good father, and provider, despite being unemployed and divorced. Bill’s choice of a cold can of Coke is motivated by his attempt not only to spend as little money as possible but also to obtain some relief from the heat. He is informed that the can of soda (his relief from the heat and means to utilize the pay phone to call his ex-wife) will cost 85 cents, not leaving him enough for the pay phone. An unfriendly exchange of words ensues leading to a physical altercation in which, among other things, a glass jar of American flags is dislodged from the counter, forcefully crashing to pieces on the floor, desecrating the flag and everything it represents. This functions as an analogy for the 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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conflict between Lee and Bill: the call to defend “American” values, with the desecration of the American flag symbolizing the humiliation that Bill experiences at the hands of Lee, a Korean. It is surely no coincidence that the Bill character displays “D-FENS” on his vehicle license plate and is constantly challenged throughout the film, in the words of Katz, to defend a value commitment (a moral good) against social selves harboring supposedly un-American values. According to Katz, a line of interpretation is required to enable the would-be perpetrator to interpret the victim’s actions and the context in a particular way. This facilitates the belief that the victim is somehow attacking or offending the offender’s sense of self, social identity, and what are believed to be commonly shared values. This is often framed in moral terms. Bill understands himself to be an upstanding citizen, a “good guy,” and is deeply offended by what he perceives as Mr. Lee’s price gouging, which he finds offensive because of his belief that hard-working Americans ought not be “ripped off” especially by “foreigners.” This offends Bill’s sense of decency and morality and is compounded by Lee’s ethnicity. Bill views this price gouging and Lee’s “un-American” values as obstacles that hinder him from making a phone call to his (former) wife and daughter on her birthday. Lee’s actions also prevent Bill from reproducing his social identity and sense of self as a hard-working family man and a good, loving, and caring father. When Mr. Lee attempts to club Bill with a baseball bat, thinking he is defending himself against a “crazy,” Bill’s sense of how decent, civilized people ought to properly resolve their differences is offended, casting Lee as uncivilized and reinforcing his status as “unAmerican.” This value conflict is described by Katz when he stipulates that the would-be attacker “must understand not only that the victim is attacking what he, the killer, regards as an eternal human value, but that the situation requires a last stand in defense of his basic worth” (1988, 18–19). In other words, Bill interprets that Mr. Lee is issuing a “challenge” (Katz 1988, 20) to him to defend his sense of self, social identity, and what he perceives as distinctly American values. According to Katz, there must also be an emotional process involved with the emergence and experience of criminality. Katz argues that the would-be killer undergoes “a particular emotional process” (1988, 19) where the humiliation or indignation perceived must be transformed or changed into rage. Rage usually builds after an altercation begins, not before (Katz 1988, 39, 40). This is where the would-be attacker, in that moment, feels compelled to respond to a “fundamental challenge to his worth” (1988, 20): to act in the name of right or even justice to defend a sense of morality, which for Bill is shaped by a 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




collective sensibility about civility and American values. Bill views Mr. Lee’s actions (i.e., trying to club him with a bat) as disrespectful. Mr. Lee thinks Bill wants to rob him and tells him to “Take the money.” This deeply offends Bill, who states, “I’m not the thief; you’re the thief.” This begins the transformation of Bill’s indignation into rage. Bill’s interpretation and experience lead him to destroy Lee’s stock, using the same bat that moments earlier was an instrument of offence. The bat has been transformed into an instrument of “D-FENS,” not only as an instrument of righteousness with which to defend the moral challenge, but also as a tool wielded by Bill, whom we find out in the film credits is also named “D-FENS,” no doubt an indication of his transformation. The bat is used as an instrument to defend “the Good” and also to restore the “goodness” to Bill’s social identity. He has perceived Lee as gouging or “ripping off” customers and takes what he perceives as a necessary stand (1988, 19–22) against this by “trashing” Lee’s store. Katz’s stipulation about the transformation of humiliation into rage is important to note here: “Righteousness is not the product of rage; it is the essential stepping stone from humiliation to rage” (1988, 23). “The attack,” writes Katz (1988, 24), “is not a ‘statement’ of moral superiority. It is the outcome” of Bill’s belief that he has taken a righteous position: that he must make a stand in the name of common decency for himself and others who have suffered humiliation by being “ripped off.” This is not vandalism. Rather, it is a defense of what Katz defines as “the Good.” Taking this righteous position (that it is wrong to rip people off; that Bill is a good person, not a thief; that Bill is a good provider, father, and husband; that Lee is bad) helps Bill resolve the deep and penetrating identity-altering humiliation that he has experienced seemingly through no fault of his own (Katz 1988, 30). Here we have a process of symbolic transformation whereby victim (Lee) and offender (Bill) are transposed. Lee becomes the offender and Bill the victim. Alongside this is a perception and experience of an offence against “the Good” or “common decency,” which, if it is to be preserved or restored, requires D-FENS. Katz also claims that there must be a path of action associated with the emergence and experience of criminality. The would-be attacker (sometimes ending up becoming a killer) must act to “wipe out” or erase the source of what he or she has experienced as a deeply internalized humiliation (Katz 1988, 33). “Death may or may not result, but when it does, it comes as a sacrificial slaughter” (Katz 1988, 19, 33–39). This is an important point: Bill does not need to sacrifice Mr. Lee—only Lee’s capacity to offend. Bill destroys Mr. Lee symbolically by sacrificing Lee’s social identity of shopkeeper and his ability to 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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offend the good. He does this by destroying Lee’s stock and therefore his capacity for price gouging. Bill also destroys any interpretation of himself as a thief by paying for the can of soda he was compelled to purchase in the first place. The struggle over the soda represents an emotional conflict, with Bill defending and Mr. Lee offending. Offence and defense are central themes in the film. Although Bill has engaged in violence and what might typically be regarded as vandalism, he does not perceive this to be a destructive act: “the impassioned attacker is destroying his victim only to create something for himself” (Katz 1988, 32). For Bill, this is a creative and productive act. This is what Katz calls “sacrificial violence” (1988, 33, 41): a pseudoreligious or mystical ritual performed for “wiping out” or obliterating a source of moral indignation while moving the offended and defending social self toward a moral transcendence of the humiliation experienced. Concomitantly, the negative representation of Bill is destroyed and moral order restored. Through an ongoing process over the course of the film, Bill becomes what we could call a folk hero for taking a stand against other “sources of moral offence,” eventually amounting to what many would consider a vigilante. However, through the Katz framework, Bill is not a vigilante but rather a righteous killer engaged in sacrificial violence. There are other aspects to this process of transformation, such as those listed previously in this chapter. Omens are prevalent: the crashing down of the American flags at the convenience store foreshadows conflict to come over (perceived) offences to American values, freedom, and liberty. Escalating violence is foreshadowed as Bill moves from baseball bat to knife to bag of guns to rocket launcher. Spells and incantations appear frequently. This is what Katz calls “marking the offense” (Katz 1988, 34) in order to symbolically transform the victim into a “morally lower, polluted, corrupted, profanized form of life” (Katz 1988, 36). Katz argues that cursing or swearing is a method of “casting a spell”: an incantation to accomplish this magical transformation. “Cursing sets up violence to be a sacrifice to honor the attacker as a priest representing the collective moral being” (Katz 1988, 37). Bill engages in this by berating Lee with remarks pertaining to how Lee ought to “learn how to speak English,” by suggesting that Korea is financially subservient to the United States, and by calling Lee a thief. Cursing accompanies many of Bill’s other altercations. A strong, indignant tone is usually taken by Bill as he talks down to his victims. This transformation of the victim into “moral garbage” and the attacker into a defender of all that is good and moral aids in rationalizing the attack and maintaining primary deviation: “If the 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




other is shit,” Katz stipulates, “attacking him becomes a community service—a form of moral garbage collection performed on behalf of all decent people” (1988, 37). Thus Bill, rather than being a violent attacker or killer, is a social self firmly rooted in the belief that he is performing a public service and defending the good. This blurs the division between the sacred and the profane that allows Bill to engage not simply in violence but sacrificial violence—the outcome of not only his righteousness but also his Godly judgment as to who deserves punishment for sins against the moral good—the most egregious of which occurs midway through the film during an encounter with a neo-Nazi army surplus store owner. This scene is important because it indicates Bill’s transformation to “bad guy.” It is here that Bill shows signs of secondary deviation (embracing his deviant role). Bill enters an army surplus store run by a homophobic, misogynist neo-Nazi bigot. It is here that Bill first confronts how others might perceive his actions. The shopkeeper hides Bill from the police. When Bill asks, “Why’d you do that?” the store owner responds, “Because we’re the same, you and me,” perceiving Bill to be a vigilante. Bill is mortified by this and quips, “We’re not the same. You’re a sick asshole; I’m an American.” This infuriates the shopkeeper because in his mind he too is an American, standing for American values. In Mead’s terms, the statement of equivalence issued by the shopkeeper is a “significant gesture” that Bill incorporates as part of the “me.” In doing this, Bill is able to imagine what is meant by this statement and how he might respond in a way that will elicit a desired response. This reflexive process of self-interaction is transformative not only for Bill but also for the world of symbolic objects on which Bill acts. Bill goes from being admired by the store owner to loathed—so much that the store owner believes it necessary to teach Bill a lesson. In the process, the shopkeeper mocks and destroys a snow globe that Bill has purchased for his daughter. This snow globe represents idolatry. It is the reification of good—of Bill’s role and perception of self as loving father. Insulting and smashing this idol causes Bill to suffer a deep humiliation. His Godly judgment necessitates a righteous position and rage grows. This growing rage is illustrated in a close-up of Bill slumped forward in a subordinate position, struggling while the storeowner attempts to handcuff him. Bill will be turned over to the police to be defiled in profane ways by his larger, black cellmates, the storeowner chides in racist form. The storeowner wants to cuff Bill’s other hand and chants monastically, “give it to me” in the background until Bill explodes, pulling out the knife acquired previously from two badass barrio bangers, thrusting it into 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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the source of moral offence. This very intense scene depicts two social selves interacting with meaningful social objects—the snow globe being prominent. This object lies at the heart of the emergence of “sacrificial violence” and “moral transcendence,” ending in not simply a violent attack against the shopkeeper (arguably self-defense) but his righteous slaughter as Bill cleanses the world of this profane pollutant. The shopkeeper is so offensive to Bill’s core values and his core identity that his presence forces a “last stand” to defend the Good. It is only through total obliteration of the source of the offence that the humiliation can be transcended. It is through these series of moments that Bill moves closer to what Lemert has outlined as secondary deviation. Bill undergoes a “reorganization” of self and embraces the vigilante role; he embraces the use of violence as a tool to “stamp out” the pettiest injustices (such as not being able to get breakfast at 10:59 AM at a fast food restaurant, even though breakfast is supposed to be available until 11:00 AM). Bill’s words, “I’m the bad guy?” in the final scene suggest confusion and indicate that secondary deviation has not been fully accomplished. Lemert suggests that secondary deviation requires one to embrace a deviant identity, which Bill has done, but it is unclear if this role must be conceived as deviant by the actor or if it is simply one that must be stigmatized by others (via “societal reaction”). In Bill’s case, he embraces the vigilante role, which generally speaking is not condoned and is thought of as illegitimate. However, Bill is constructed through the course of the film as something of a folk hero and although “vigilante” is not a legitimate role generally speaking, Bill might embrace this without conceiving it as deviant, knowing only that he has adopted a righteous attitude and in this finds humiliation everywhere. In secondary deviation a “reorganization” takes place where one adopts another role. Bill hangs on to his role of father, and this perhaps is why he does not advance to secondary deviation until the final moments of the final scene when he becomes fully aware that he has done more harm than good to his daughter and family. Lemert holds that as long as deviant behaviors are “rationalized” (1951, 75) and one has not self-identified with a deviant role (1951, 76), one has not moved from primary to secondary deviation: “The importance of the person’s conscious symbolic reactions to his or her own behavior cannot be overstressed in explaining the shift from normal to abnormal behavior or from one type of pathological behavior to another, particularly where behavior variations become systematized or structured into pathological roles. This is not to say that conscious choice is a determining factor in the differentiating process. Nor does 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




it mean that the awareness of the self is a purely conscious perception” (Lemert 1951, 74). What Lemert calls “self-defining junctures” and what Katz defines as the experiential moments in the process of moral transcendence are “critical points of personality genesis” (Lemert 1951, 75). The army surplus store scene is a crucial self-defining juncture, as is the final scene of the film. Lemert (1951, 76) asserts that a new role and “objective evidences of this change” can signal a shift from primary to secondary deviation, and what we see in the army surplus store scene are some important moments in this process. It is clear that Bill undergoes this significant reorganization toward secondary deviation and identifying with a deviant role, but although we see this role as deviant, Bill does not conceptualize this until the end of the film. Bill openly adopts a vigilante-type role, symbolized by the shedding of his middle-management work uniform of white-collared shirt and tie and adoption of black combat boots and fatigues. This gradual shift to secondary deviation is also demonstrated by Bill’s incremental graduating from relatively general-purpose weapons to specialized weapons more befitting to his new role (moving from the first weapon of defense, the baseball bat picked up early in the film in the altercation with Mr. Lee, to a rocket launcher). It is at this point where he “begins to employ his deviant behavior or a role based upon it as a means of defense, attack or adjustment to the overt and covert problems created by the consequent societal reaction to him” (Lemert 1951, 76). Drawing on Katz, it is clear that Bill’s new role is one that is more suited to the defense of the morally good and his own basic worth. His “adjustments” to reactions by his wife, family, daughter, employer, those whom he encounters, and finally, Sergeant Prendergast all lead him toward secondary deviation. His encounter with gang members, the neo-Nazi store owner, patrons of a local fast-food chain, privileged old men at an exclusive golf course, his daughter, and Prendergast promote adjustment and reorganization of self; these interactions with symbolic environments and social selves provide Bill with “organized attitudes” that are incorporated into the “me.” The second to last scene involves Bill searching his former home for his daughter. Here he encounters some old home movies. The scene depicts quite literally the self-interaction outlined by Mead, Lemert, Katz, and other symbolic interactionists. Bill sees himself getting angry and scaring his young daughter. In the final scene, the encounter with Prendergast, Bill comes to realize that his legacy to his daughter (imprisonment for violent crimes and estrangement) will be a source of humiliation for her: a moral offence to the Good. He must 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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sacrifice himself to restore to himself the good father and provider role; he will not become an estranged or absent father but a dead one, sparing his daughter humiliation he would cause in life. By compelling Prendergast to shoot him, his family will, presumably, benefit from his life insurance policy. The key thing is that Bill does not become fully aware or cognizant of his deviant role and of himself as a source of humiliation until this last self-defining juncture. Thus he only reaches secondary deviation at this point when the “societal reinforcement” of his deviant role and identity become forceful enough to have him see himself as deviant and morally offensive.

C o nc lusion Perhaps Bill was really crazy all along: going to work everyday even though he had been fired months ago. “Where does he eat his lunch?” his mother asks Prendergast and his partner. The three intersecting conditions Katz theorizes to underpin the emergence and experience of deviance and criminality and the religious and mystical overtones of this process have been illustrated and utilized to analyze the social reality offered by Falling Down. I have also drawn heavily on Lemert because his work offers an earlier attempt to theorize elements of the transformative process outlined by Katz. The analytical narrative we have arrived at does not support the assertion that Bill is merely crazy or pathological. Whether or not we agree with Katz or hold that he is offering an apology for violent behavior is not at issue. Quite possibly, Katz has it wrong and we would do well to steer clear of his position. The value, however, of Katz and other theoretical frameworks does not rest upon whether or not they are right or have been empirically tested. What is at issue here is how fictional realities can be fruitfully exploited for illustrating and honing a craft enterprise of theorizing and how they can enable a deeper understanding of how theoretical concepts within criminology and sociology are crafted, refined, and operated and how they might be combined.







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ony Kaye’s 1998 film American History X exemplifies a great many sociological and criminological themes and issues. It is a rich and layered fictional reality that captures the principal ideas of a great many criminological theories. Perhaps the most obvious and important theme explored in the film is that of “subculture.” By examining the personal troubles of brothers Danny (Edward Furlong) and Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton), the film explores subculture formation (including attempts to “resolve” the contradictions between personal troubles and public issues) and the characteristics of subcultures (including their integrative and exclusionary aspects). In short, American History X provides us with a case study of the formation of an “outgroup.” The film captures both “new” and “early” conceptions of subculture. Subculture is a central and foundational concept for the sociology of deviance as well as British cultural studies, both of which influence the development of cultural criminology. American History X helps us visualize features of this concept. The concept’s importance stems from attention given during the early twentieth century by University of Chicago researchers to the growing ethnic diversity and stratification of the city of Chicago. The reshaping of communities and emergence of differentially organized groups combined with tensions over divergent cultural values marked Chicago at a time of rapid urbanization and industrialization. Similar developments are depicted in American History X, notably through the attention given to Danny and Derek’s personal experiences of structural problems within their differentiated community of Venice Beach (Los Angeles). We learn 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Chapter 5


from Danny that Venice “used to be a great neighborhood” but now it has “gone to hell.” Ethnic gangs have moved in causing fear, especially for white folks. Danny tells us that this is the reason that his brother Derek started a white-power gang, the DOC (Disciples of Christ), so “we wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore.” A later scene shows Derek appealing to a group of youth, who according to Danny are “frustrated and sick of getting their assess kicked.” Derek offers a rousing speech to empower them, to get them involved in something bigger than themselves, to reclaim their community, and to take back America for (white) Americans. American History X exemplifies many ideas associated with subculture theory as well as many of the problems encountered by Chicago researchers, which were taken up and theorized in a more sophisticated manner at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1970s. Subculture emerges as a foundational concept within sociology not because differentially organized groups emerged within the city of Chicago and were named “subcultures.” The emergence of this empirical phenomenon only partially explains the emergence of the concept. Differentially organized groups within working class communities came to be understood as subcultures because the Chicago approach was able to develop over a long period of time and became very influential for later developments in North American sociology. “Subculture” may not have emerged as a central concept had Chicago sociology not been able to grow and develop over many years (especially its ethnographic and symbolic interactionist variant); had researchers not intensely scrutinized differentiated working-class communities; and had Chicago sociology not emerged as a formidable “school”1 supported by a gradually developed institutional infrastructure that enabled it to develop and consequently exercise a great influence over sociology more generally. Because the concept of subculture is tied not only to the emergence of these differentially organized groups within Chicago (and the initial studies of these groups) but also to the material infrastructure that supported the development and influence of Chicago sociology, this chapter focuses on both these material underpinnings and the conceptual development of subculture. The first section of this chapter charts the emergence of this concept from North American sociologies of deviance and highlights the pivotal role played in this by the Chicago school of sociology. I then consider subculture’s transference to—and subsequent reformulation by—British “cultural studies” in the 1970s, as represented by the work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS). I then give brief consideration to the impact of the CCCS’ 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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reformulated concept of subculture and the North American interactionist sociologies on cultural criminology. The last section of this chapter offers an examination of subculture, as it manifests in the film American History X. In drawing out some of the implicit linkages between the U.S. sociologies of deviance and the work of the CCCS, I by no means attempt to provide an exhaustive genealogy of “subculture.” My focus is selective. However, if we are to forge an understanding of contemporary criminological developments, such as those discussed in Chapter 2, we must appreciate the intertwining of criminology with sociology and cultural studies that has made possible the movement toward realizing the promise of the criminological imagination. The imaginative criminologies greatly benefit from and indeed are made possible by the gradual development of the concept of subculture and the impact of this on the emergence of British cultural studies.

The E merg enc e o f S ub c ulture Theory a nd th e C h ic ago S c ho o l of S oci olog y The concept of subculture has a long origination and spans sociology, cultural studies, and criminology. As I demonstrate later on in this chapter, linkages can and must be drawn between the advances made by American sociologists of deviance (mainly concerned with a type of status politics) and the investigations of youth culture by Birmingham researchers (primarily concerned with the intersections of workingclass attitudes and social mobility). The growth and development of subculture as a major concept within studies of crime and deviance stems in large part from an early empirical focus by Chicago sociologists on particular working-class milieus. The Chicago sociologists aimed to thoroughly describe the daily life, organization, and understandings of these enclaves. Although no major theory of subculture formation was advanced until the mid-1950s—when social scientists began studying what Lemert (1951) called “ingroups” and “outgroups” in the early twentieth century and much thought was given to the nature of the city and these enclaves—subculture as a concept and empirical reality became central to the growth of sociology in the United States, the study of deviance and crime, British cultural studies, and more recently, cultural criminology. Unlike “deviance,” however, “subculture” was slow in gaining prominence among sociologists and was not used in a sustained way until Albert Cohen’s (1955) study of delinquent youth gangs. It is around the concept of “subculture” that we can forge the clearest and most direct connections between 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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An Infrastructure The department of sociology at the University of Chicago was the first department in North America to initiate studies of differently organized social milieus embedded within the larger society. Although it was Milton Gordon in 1947 who first called for the use of “subculture” as an analytic tool, this was already being explored empirically by Chicago sociologists—primarily graduate students. The reach of these pioneering ethnographic studies of Chicago city life has extended well beyond their immediate place and time. These early twentieth-century studies of urban life influenced many post–World War II American sociologists of deviance and impacted studies of youth delinquency in 1970s Britain.2 The University of Chicago’s Department of Sociology was the first significant sociology department in North America, established in 1892 under the direction of Albion Small through generous funding provided to the university by John D. Rockefeller (Cavan 1983, 408; Ritzer 1994a; Thomas 1983a, 388).3 Chicago’s department placed a high priority on collaborative research and publication, as the university was established to train and promote graduate research. For a period of about 30 years, Chicago’s Department of Sociology dominated the American Sociological Society and controlled its official journal, the American Journal of Sociology. In 1935, the American Sociological Review replaced the American Journal of Sociology as the society’s official organ (Bulmer 1983, 421; Cavan 1983, 410, 417–18; Harvey 1987, 259; Ritzer 1994a, 70). The Chicago “school” of sociology consisted of a mix of approaches to the study of that city’s social life that were refined over a number of decades. The favoring of the social-anthropological approach of ethnography may have had much to do with the sociology department being twinned with anthropology until 1929 (Cavan 1983, 410). Although today Chicago research is thought predominantly in terms of this approach, many researchers also conducted quantitative research and helped advance social statistics. One need only glance through Smith and White’s (1929) collection Chicago: An Experiment in Social Science Research to see that ethnography was only one component, albeit a large one, of Chicago sociology. Bulmer (1983) 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


the early Chicago ethnographies (and subsequent sociology of deviance), the Birmingham investigations of youth “style,” and criminology. “Subculture” tethers these “old” and “new” approaches to youth delinquency and deviance.

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has suggested that Chicago’s widespread influence on a number of generations of sociologists rested partly on the organizing of the Society for Social Research in 1920, which predated all but one of the regional sociology societies in the United States. The society’s annual summer institutes and the publication of its bulletin were instrumental in forging connections with the community and researchers in other cities. Devoted to the study of the urban environment, the society was primarily driven by graduate student research. Later, the externally funded Local Community Research Committee was founded to complement the stimulation and dissemination of original social investigation and exchange of ideas fostered by the society. The society had dues-paying members from Chicago and elsewhere: at one point numbering 150 persons (Bulmer 1983, 423). Under the auspices of these collaborative units, much research was undertaken and published by the University of Chicago Press. This no doubt contributed greatly to the Chicago school’s widespread influence on other burgeoning sociology departments. The Chicago school’s influence is also manifest in the impact of Park and Burgess’ 1921 text, Introduction to the Science of Society. This text became commonplace in many sociology departments (Bulmer 1983, 421; Cavan 1983, 411), earning it the unofficial title of “the green bible” (Sumner 1994, 87). In 1922, the Committee on Homeless Men was organized by the City of Chicago’s human service agencies “to study the problem of the migratory casual worker” (Burgess, et al. 1962, xxvii). Following from this, the 1923 ethnography of Chicago’s homeless by Nels Anderson inaugurated Chicago University Press’s series of studies on the urban community (Burgess et al. 1962, xxix). Anderson’s work is a pioneering effort in the development of “participant observation” as well as an example of one of the earliest uses of life histories (Rauty 1998, 5)—two methods that would become characteristic of Chicago sociology. Like his father, Anderson rode the rails as a transient worker for many years, deciding on graduate work at Chicago at the behest of one of his Brigham Young University professors (Anderson 1962b; 1983, 396). Anderson seems to have “fallen” into this externally funded research on hobos, and having only taken a few sociology courses prior to arrival in Chicago, drew mainly from his own personal experiences and “common sense” notions of transient workers, immersing himself in hobo culture in that corner of Chicago he termed “Hobohemia” (Anderson 1983). Hobohemia was formed in response to the dominant culture, which exerted a structural pressure on unskilled workers through the growing economic demand for skilled and organized labor. With fewer jobs available, unskilled 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




workers turned to drifting and vagrancy. Hobohemia can be viewed as a response to this dominant culture. Anderson’s painstakingly detailed account of the social environs is sorely lacking in any attempt at theoretic analysis. Its uncritical and journalistic descriptions avoid drawing out connections between social conditions and social and political structures. Anderson fails to address, for example, public issues pertaining to the rise of Hobohemia, the role of the burgeoning social welfare system, the growing professionalization of American life, and the seemingly unproductive and in many ways threatening existence of the transient worker. This study, however, provides an invaluable, richly detailed account of day-to-day practices of a differentially organized milieu. It began the long tradition of the highly focused description of subcultural activities that became so influential for the development of the Birmingham studies of youth culture—especially the explicit focus on the interconnection between the experiences of youth and political and economic dimensions of subcultures. These many developments illustrate the formation of an infrastructure that facilitated Chicago’s widespread influence on North American sociology. Given its dominance and given the empirically central place of subculture in the research conducted, it is little wonder that the concept of subculture would find a central place within sociology. Intellectual Currents The symbolic interactionist framework, which had a significant impact on the formation of both Birmingham cultural studies and cultural criminology, originated at the University of Chicago. The work of George Herbert Mead (discussed in Chapter 4) was central to this. Mead influenced countless graduate students and colleagues. It is useful to point out that Mead’s work was not the only influence on the symbolic interactionist framework. The tradition of phenomenological philosophy was incorporated into sociology by Max Weber who picked up on Wilhelm Dilthey’s notion of verstehen.4 Weber hoped to apply a type of social hermeneutics to the social and cultural realm, in order to better understand why people acted the way they did and how actors conceived of their actions and their reasoning behind this. Although many of the early inquiries of the Chicagoans were reformist, given to uncritical assumptions about human nature, and empiricist (Thomas 1983b), it is plausible to suggest that the “naturalist” approach of the early Chicagoans was a type of phenomenological inquiry into how persons experienced and thought about their world and into why people acted the way they did. These researchers relied 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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heavily on an intuitive understanding of others’ existence in the social milieu or “life-world” under observation. We know that Max Weber visited the department at least once and that several members of the department had studied in Germany. Robert Park, who was influential for a generation of sociologists, brought the interactionist perspective of his former teacher, the German social philosopher Georg Simmel, to Chicago sociology. Although it was Gordon (1997) who in 1947 first elaborated the need and potential uses for an analytic concept of subculture, the theoretical underpinning present but largely ignored by Chicago researchers would prove an important context for Gordon’s arguments and their elaboration. Viewing subculture as an alternative to established but sometimes homogenizing concepts such as “class” and “ethnicity,” Gordon suggested that subculture could allow for the conceptualizing of various differently organized “worlds” within the broader culture and for differentiation within these worlds. To some extent this reflects earlier views put forth by Chicagoans Robert Park, William Foote Whyte, and Edwin Sutherland and anticipates later developments by Edwin Lemert, Albert Cohen, Irving Goffman, and Howard Becker (all discussed later on in this chapter). In the following statement, Gordon articulates a sentiment that informed Chicago research practice for years but had not been expressly theorized: “A wider use of the concept of the sub-culture would . . . give us a keen and incisive tool which would, on the one hand, prevent us from making too broad groupings where such inclusiveness is not warranted . . . and, on the other hand, enable us to discern relatively closed and cohesive systems of social organization which currently we tend to analyze separately with our more conventional tools of ‘class’ and ‘ethnic group’” (Gordon 1997, 41). Gordon’s view of subculture stems from an interest in persons socialized against a differently organized “environmental background” and by implication sets of dominant norms, values, and expectations of conduct differing in some way from those underpinning other forms of social organization (1997, 41, drawing on Green). Gordon’s efforts added some theoretical flash to Whyte’s descriptive outline of the social, political, and economic organization of a working-class Italian community in Boston (Cornerville). Whyte’s (1955) classic study of social stratification within Cornerville is an exemplar of subcultural analysis. Robert Park, the primary influence behind the journalistic reporting that characterized many of the early efforts of graduate students to document “man in his natural habitat,” conceptualized the city as a “social laboratory” in which to carry out investigations of human life. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




He viewed the city as a living organism that functioned to place people in symbiotic relationships with others and direct their life chances. Although his statements on the role of the city evince a certain degree of determinism, he did not believe that individuals were without agency—only that they acted upon their immediate environment from where they found themselves in it (Park 1925, 158).5 A consistent thread throughout Park’s works, he stressed the importance of interpersonal communication and economic competition for maintaining social equilibrium—a view that informed others’ work on “culture conflict” and “subculture formation.” Park’s notion that competition is one of the driving forces behind city expansion and equilibrium, combined with the emerging recognition of the existence of differentially organized zones within the city, anticipated to some extent an early notion of the “cultural conflict” that characterized Sutherland’s (1939) notion of “differential association,” Lemert’s (1951) notion of “primary” and “secondary” deviation and “differential reaction,” and Albert Cohen’s (1955) explanation of subcultural “reaction formation.” Park’s emphasis on the importance of communication is likely due to Mead’s influence and comes through in Cohen’s description of subculture as emerging through gestures or signals indicating a “shared fate” if you will. Park believed that all persons existed toward a common end (1925, 158) and any disruption to achieving this end of social equilibrium was viewed as disorganization and indicative of a breakdown in the mechanisms of social control. His sociobiological notions of social life offered a theory of anomie, suggesting that disorganized areas were the result of a breakdown of strong community and family ties.6 We can see in this view the rudiments of Becker’s (1963) notion of “commitment” as a crucial force in the prevention of rule-breaking behavior as well as the theory of the social bond as developed by Hirschi (1969). Park’s sociobiology held that the city-as-organism “placed” individuals in “natural” areas wherein they could engage in competition and communication. The city and community were held to be the natural habitat of humans (Park 1952c, 147–48).7 Park employed this notion perhaps most clearly in his discussion of the urban community (1952e).8 The “natural” areas of the city envisioned by Park to be differentially populated by “types” and “breeds” of persons were represented by Burgess (1925, 1929) as “concentric circles” or zones. These delineated regions of the city were characterized by certain “social problems” or lack thereof. This “mapping” approach was subsequently employed by criminologists Shaw and McKay (1969), who also improved upon the life-history case study approach initiated 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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by Thomas and Znaniecki (1918) by employing autobiographical accounts of boys in studies of youth delinquency. This latter technique was employed perhaps most famously in Shaw’s (1930) study of the “Jack-Roller” completed under the direction of Burgess.9 Others have subsequently taken up the analysis of urban “delinquency areas” and have utilized “life histories” including the CCCS’ Paul Willis (1977) in Learning to Labour. As if commenting on the orientation that characterized much of the early Chicago studies, Harvard-trained sociologist Robert Merton (1938, 672), in his influential paper on “how some social structures exert a definite pressure upon certain persons in society to engage in nonconformist rather than conformist behavior,” stipulates, “There persists a notable tendency in sociological theory to attribute the malfunctioning of social structure primarily to those of man’s imperious biological drives which are not adequately restrained by social control. In this view, the social order is solely a device for ‘impulse management’ and this ‘social processing’ of tensions. These impulses which break through social control, be it noted, are held to be biologically derived. Nonconformity is assumed to be rooted in original nature . . . This point of view . . . provides no basis for determining the nonbiological conditions which induce deviations from prescribed patterns of conduct” (1938, 672). Despite this rejection of Park and other Chicagoans, Merton nevertheless retained Park and others view that there was one dominant societal wide set of norms and values. Even though Park recognized the diversity of city life, this did not extend to a recognition of differentiated value systems. Further, Merton’s views echo the latent social reformism of Park and others. Merton believed that strain or the dysfunction arising from the lack of access to legitimate institutional means for attaining culturally prescribed goals resulted in a breakdown of social order as people opt to adopt more expedient but illegitimate or “technical” means. This is quite similar to the latent social reformism of Park and others who viewed “‘disorganized’ cultures and corresponding deviant behaviors [as those that] could be ‘corrected’ with proper application of researchinformed social policy” (Thomas 1983b, 483). For both Park and Merton, the assumption is that human nature can be reformed given the “proper” social conditions. Turning Merton on his head, Sutherland (1939; Sutherland and Cressey 1966) proffered that delinquent conduct resulted from an excess of potential behaviors (rather than too few means) offered through the range of normative meanings or “definitions of the situation” available to actors. It was this idea of “differential association” 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




that provided the basis for what became generally known as “cultural transmission theory.” William F. Whyte (1955, 272–73) and Howard Becker (1963) illustrated the wrongheadedness of not recognizing the role and impact of differentiated value systems and of conceiving certain urban areas as “disorganized,” suggesting instead that these areas, such as poverty-stricken districts, were highly organized but along lines different from what might have been expected by those holding the view that only one overarching criterion served to guide the setting and achieving of individual and collective goals. Contrary to both Park and Merton, many of these areas were characterized by very strong community and familial bonds but with goals not predominantly reflecting “middle-class” values, a theme taken up later by Albert Cohen (1955). The milieu of Whyte’s (1955) Street Corner Society can be described generally as a “working-class” community, with the “corner boys” and “college boys”—two different groupings of Cornerville male youth—holding different culture goals stemming from different sets of culture values. These two groups are “subcultures” within the “parent working-class culture” of Cornerville, which in turn is formed within the context of the larger and “dominant middle-class culture” of the city of Boston.10 As Gordon (1997) would argue a few years later, “class” is not specific enough to enable distinctions between groups such as Cornerville’s corner boys and college boys, given that both are part of the same class. Furthermore, “class” cannot help one distinguish between Cornerville and other working-class areas of the city. Although age, race, and ethnicity might be fruitfully employed, Cornerville can most usefully be represented as a “culture within a culture,” to invoke Gordon. Whyte describes a sophisticated social hierarchy among what might have otherwise been considered a homogenous working-class slum district, anticipating Gordon’s (1997, 41) suggestion that a subculture be viewed as “relatively closed and cohesive systems of social organization.” Whyte’s examples of the organization of the corner boys and college boys and the detailed account of a highly organized neighborhood racketeering operation provide substance for later theoretical formulation. Echoing Whyte’s observations, Gordon (1997, 42) suggests the demarcation of “separate sub-cultures and separate units of the same sub-culture,” calling for “the need for its [i.e., the term “subculture”] wider application.” Cornerville is a differentially organized area, and within it are differentially organized groups. It is a “subculture” or “culture within a larger culture,” to paraphrase Gordon (1997). However, the corner boys and college boys are also subcultures. At this point, we do not 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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have a sophisticated language for conceptualizing or describing the internal dynamic of Cornerville or its relation to the broader culture. What we do have at this point is rich description and illustration of an organized and collective response to some shared problem or interest. Although Whyte provides a very thorough description of what will later be articulated as subcultures within parent cultures within a dominant culture (by the CCCS), Anderson is the first to empirically explore “subculture.” Although undeveloped, Anderson’s 1923 work The Hobo (1962a) illustrates an organized and collective response to some shared problem or interest. It illustrates an organized subculture in what he calls “Hobohemia.” Anderson’s text offers us a very rich and detailed description of a subculture, which would have been influential for Whyte. Additionally, the description of Hobohemia as a differentially organized “natural” area of Chicago illustrates Park and Burgess’s notion of “concentric zones” (Burgess 1925, 1929; Park 1952e). This space of differentiation is described by Sutherland, who advances a notion of differently organized areas in his explanation of his learning theory, “differential association” (1939, 1966). Differential association argues for differentially organized groupings of persons who, through their interactions, exchange different ideas or definitions of their situation, which facilitate the possible emergence of particular patterns of behavior. Differential association is illustrated by Whyte. We can see aspects of subculture theory in these early ethnographic studies in part because of the influence of Robert Park, the longtime chair of the University of Chicago Department of Sociology. What might be termed Park’s “ecological determinism,” exemplified in the work of Anderson and Whyte, resembled to some degree Sutherland’s notion of differential association: “There is not now, if there ever was, any question that the individual’s conception of himself, the role which he plays in any society, and the character which he eventually acquires are very largely determined by the associations which he makes and, in general, by the world in which he lives. The city is a complex of such worlds—worlds which touch but never completely penetrate” (Park 1929, 14, emphasis added). Park suggests a complex interrelation of “worlds” or “subcultures” if you will (also suggested by Gordon [1997]). Putting aside Park’s penchant to paint practices underpinned by nonmainstream values as disorganized and his determinism, his view resonates with Sutherland’s “differential association” theory, which is twinned with his less-developed notion of “differential organization.” Sutherland’s notion of differential association has been extremely influential. His 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




ideas about differential organization influenced the conceptualization of subculture as a “relatively closed and cohesive system of social organization,” as held by Milton and adopted by others. Sutherland and Cressey (1966, 83) suggest that this differential organization is crucial for explaining rule violation and conformity: “One of the best explanations of crime rates from this point of view is that a high crime rate is due to social disorganization. The term ‘social disorganization’ is not entirely satisfactory and it seems preferable to substitute for it the term ‘differential social organization.’ The postulate on which this theory is based, regardless of the name, is that crime is rooted in the social organization and is an expression of that social organization” (1966, 83). Because the “person’s associations are determined in a general context of social organization” (Sutherland and Cressey 1966, 83) and because “criminal behavior is human behavior, [and] has much in common with non-criminal behavior, and must be explained within the same general framework used to explain other human behavior,” rule-breaking behavior is thought to be learned through association with both criminal and noncriminal patterns of behavior (1966, 81–82). This in many ways is a much more sophisticated reworking of Park’s understanding of how one’s character and self-understanding is shaped through associations with the various “worlds” within the city. That which Park viewed as disorganization was viewed by Whyte, Sutherland, and later Lemert as “organized” or “systematic deviation.” Relating this to communities, this organized deviation is behavior that has become routinized or normalized in one milieu for a group of persons, and it operates to maintain that community’s general form of organization. The formative process of these “differential associations” stemmed from “the knowledge that others have met the [cultural] conflict situation in an atypical, socially disapproved way. When such communication carries specific content, when rapport develops between deviants and common rationalizations make their appearance, the unique and situational forms of deviation are converted to organized or systematic deviation. Systematic deviation appears as a subculture or as a behavior system, accompanied by a special social organization and formalized status, roles, morals, and morals distinct from the larger culture” (Lemert 1951, 44, emphasis added). Lemert can be seen as elaborating on the formation of the “worlds” referred to by Park and empirically mapped out by Anderson and Whyte, the “cultures within cultures” broached by Gordon (1997), and the “differential social organization” elaborated by Sutherland (1938, 1966). Lemert’s concern with the formation process of subcultures as the 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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formation of differentially organized groups or associations of persons is an elaboration of Sutherland’s inchoate notion of “differential organization” and is prominent in Albert Cohen’s (1955) systematic elaboration of subculture formation. Although Gordon (1997) was the first to argue for subculture as a useful analytic concept, it is clear that others had been working on this without explicitly using this term and that this early work contributed to the first systematically elaborated theory of subculture formation put forth by Cohen (1955). Drawing on the work of Sutherland and Lemert and drawing inspiration from some weaknesses in Merton’s notion of strain, Cohen (1955, 59–62) suggested that the symbolic “effective interaction” or “continual communicative interaction” by persons with similar “problems of adjustment” was central to initiating the formation of a subculture. Cohen was referring to those who might be watching for a “sign from others,” an “exploratory gesture . . . toward innovation,” or “cues” (1955, 59–62) (what Mead called “significant gestures”) that make reference to a particular outlook or living condition. This formulation includes Park’s and Mead’s notion that communication was a central component to the formation and maintenance of different “worlds.” For Cohen, individuals move between groups in search of “a social milieu favorable to the resolution of their problems of adjustment”—a milieu that provides a means of communication and potential audience to initiate the formation of a subculture (Cohen 1955, 59). Cohen suggests, “Among conceivable solutions to their problems may be one which is not yet embodied in action and which does not therefore exist as a cultural model . . . For each participant, this solution [which is socially valid or carry the social rewards of consensus] would be adjustive and adequately motivated provided that he could anticipate simultaneous and corresponding transformation in the frames of reference of his fellows” (1955, 59–60). Cohen integrates the various ideas on the nature of differentially organized areas and groups. In Cohen we can see an inchoate notion that rebellious behavior is the affirmation of differently determined goals by those who do not internalize middle-class values (contra Merton). Thus rebellious behavior is less a failure to be socialized into middle-class values and aspirations than it is an issue of becoming attached to alternative sets of values. This is not developed in Cohen and some will argue that this is not what Cohen meant. Arguably, however, this is what Cohen (1955, 25) has in mind with his criticism that Merton provides no explanation of nonutilitarian youth delinquency. The “differential evaluation” by youth that leads to what Cohen terms “reaction formation” (frustration in youth 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




and replacement of dominant values and goals with achievable ones) exhibits a “subcultural” approach to understanding class-influenced gang behavior, incorporating Mertonian functionalism and Chicago interactionism. Cohen’s (1955) Delinquent Boys was very influential for the CCCS as evidenced by their adoption and extension of his work on class-based youth delinquency. These views, indebted to the structural-functionalism of Merton, the environmental determinism of Park, and the symbolic interactionism of Mead (and Lemert), have been encapsulated by Cohen’s suggestion that all problems arise from either the actor’s “frame of reference” or the “situation he confronts” (1955, 51). This echoes Gordon’s (1997, 43) discussion about the mutually conditioning relationship between “subcultural personality” and a person’s “environmental background” and whether or not this might lead to “stresses and strains.” Cohen suggests as much by speaking about how social structures generate “characteristic combinations of personality and situation and therefore characteristic problems of adjustment” (1955, 55, emphasis added). This is articulated by the 1930s Chicago sociologist Louis Wirth who, according to Sumner (1994, 84), held that culture and personality were “indissolubly and dialectically linked,” further stipulating that “this culture-personality couplet was crucial to the emergent sociology of deviance.”11 It is interesting to note that in 1929, Park suggested that the city itself was a “frame of reference” used to control observations of social conditions as they related to human behavior (1929, 11).12 According to Cohen, the point of view or the “frame or reference” can promote some measure of change in the situation or material condition. Cohen held that “an effective, really satisfying solution must entail some change in that frame of reference itself” (1955, 53). In terms of the CCCS we might think of this frame of reference as an ideology and one’s working-class milieu as the material condition. The Marxist orientation of the CCCS emphasized that one’s material or subcultural environment influenced the development of one’s ideological outlook or frame of reference.13 To extend Box’s (1981) critique of Cohen (1955), we can say that this frame of reference is either oriented to working-class or middle-class values. If middle-class values have not been internalized, Cohen’s suggestion that a change in point of view can lead to conflict resolution would not be entirely accurate because, as already suggested, such “failures” to which one is adjusting may simply be viewed by the actor as a positive assertion of working-class values and rejection of middle-class hegemony. What is of concern is the underlying theme that runs through the majority of 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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the U.S. and British endeavors: that there is a dialectic between one’s “outlook” and one’s milieu.14 One interpretation of Cohen could suggest that he simply reworks Merton’s notion of strain in his positing that “status frustration” or a failure to achieve middle-class culture goals compels individuals to organize around what they are able to do well—around self-defined values that differ from the “parent” culture. However, Cohen’s concept of “innovation” is different from Merton’s,15 as he recognizes Merton’s inability to account for nonutilitarian delinquent acts such as the destruction of property.16 Box (1981) suggests that Cohen articulates two explanations for such attempts to resolve social tensions between socialized middle-class goals and working-class means: The first is closely aligned with Merton and suggests that juveniles involve themselves in delinquent acts so that they can attain a socialized culture goal of status. Box (1981, 100–101) suggests that this is due to the experience of “guilt” or “shame” in their inability to attain such goals using legitimate, institutionalized means. Secondly, and important for our later discussion of the Birmingham research, Box suggests of Cohen that delinquent acts were catalyzed by a feeling of “resentment,” stemming from working-class kids being classified or labeled according to middle-class standards. In short, Box (1981, 101) suggests that guilt and shame rest upon an internalization of middle-class culture goals, while resentment arises from what the delinquent may take as an “implied insult” upon their working-class values and differently defined goals. Box makes a crucial point here, suggesting that the delinquent behavior resulting from resentment would not be “innovative” (in the Mertonian sense) because of the rejection of middle-class goals. In Box’s words, “It would be behaviour through which working-class adolescents sought to assert their own independent standards of worth. They would not seek to deny they were failures, because in their terms they are not failures; they simply object to others’ imputing failure to them” (1981, 102). This explanation is a crucial component of the Birmingham researchers’ and cultural criminologists’ understanding of delinquency as rebellion or as resistance through innovation (“style”), which is discussed further in the next section. Yet another important feature of Cohen’s work that finds its way into British work on youth delinquency and deviance is found in Cohen’s comments on crowd behavior. Cohen (1955, 63) suggests that certain situations can generate collective “solutions” to shared problems after a “prior existence of unresolved tensions and a period of ‘milling’ about during which a set of common sentiments is elaborated 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




and reinforced.” These comments stem from his idea of differential evaluation and anticipate to some extent Stan Cohen’s (1980) and Hall et al.’s (1978) effort to explain the public’s (over)reaction of panic to the mass media’s selective construction of “deviant” identities. Lemert (1951, 56, 61) employs the term “amplification” to denote this overreaction to selective constructions of deviance. This concept of amplification has been instrumental for understanding the growth of “societal reaction” into “moral panic” and subsequent calls for social reform. For Stan Cohen (1980) and Hall et al. (1978), translation and amplification by the media are crucial processes in the creation of public overreaction (and these processes are also central to cultural criminology). A transformation of meaning is initiated by making available to the public only a selective reporting of events that overemphasize certain elements and amplify the danger or risk to the general public. By discussing the concept of “subculture” we have been able to draw together a wide range of sociological work. Key conceptualizations of differentially organized areas and groups can be found in the work of Albert Cohen, who offers the first systematic explication of a theory of subculture. Cohen argues that persons adjust to social strain by differentially evaluating their situation and organizing around achievable goals in order to reject the imposition of middle-class values or to, in a sense, neutralize their failure to achieve middle-class goals. Cohen, then, offers us at least two ways of thinking about subculture formation: he offers (1) an underdeveloped notion (organized around the idea of “reaction formation”) that subcultures are formed as a show of defiance or rebellion to the imposition of a “foreign” value system, and (2) a developed assertion that subculture arises from a collective action aimed to resolve what he calls “status frustration” or the acknowledged failure to achieve middle-class goals. The former suggests that middle-class goals have not been internalized; the latter that they have been. Cohen’s concept of reaction formation is greatly developed by the CCCS, along with the idea that subcultures are symbolic worlds—worlds of meaningful objects and collective expression. Cohen elevates the importance of the symbolic as a mobilizing force behind the formation of subcultures, paving the way to seeing subcultures as unified around collective symbols, expression, and meaning and not simply as geographical units effected by intolerance. It is this underformulated notion of reaction formation and the symbolic character of subcultures that the Birmingham school develops and which is later adopted and further refined by cultural criminologists. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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The CCCS’s influence on the development of contemporary cultural studies and cultural criminology is in large part due to the appropriation and modification of the work produced by U.S. sociologists of deviance and delinquency.17 In addition to that work, the “neo” Chicago works of Becker (1963) and Goffman (1961, 1963) were highly influential. Sutherland’s (1939) cultural transmission theory of “differential association” and “differential organization”; Whyte’s (1955) 1943 illustration of the existence of a sophisticated system of social stratification within a seemingly disorganized “slum” district; Lemert’s (1951) discussion of the formation of “ingroups,” “outgroups,” “amplification,” and “differential reaction”; Cohen’s (1955, 68) discussion of a “community of innovators” and “subcultural formation” as collective problem solving among delinquent youth; Goffman’s (1963, 23; 1961) analysis of “stigma groups” and “totalizing institutions”; Becker’s (1963) discussion of the “deviant career,” “insiders,” “outsiders,” and the “transactional” approach more generally (i.e., symbolic interactionism) were pivotal for the burgeoning of the British sociological and Marxist studies of youth culture exemplified by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (1976), Paul Willis (1977), Hall et al. (1978), Dick Hebdige (1979), and Phil Cohen (1997[originally published in 1972]).18 The influential North American work was indebted mainly to a symbolic interactionist framework, while the Birmingham school was heavily influenced by Marx, Althusser, and Gramsci. In both cases, processes of representation and mediation play a central role. When incorporated into the British scene, however, the concept “subculture” was radicalized and politicized. Visano distinguishes the work of Phil Cohen (1997) and subsequent CCCS researchers from the “early subcultural approaches” of Albert Cohen (1955) and others. These early approaches are described as “reformulations of strain theory,” in which the subculture is conceived as a “collective solution” to the “uneven distribution of legitimate and illegitimate opportunities” to achieve along middle-class lines (Downes and Rock 2003, 141; Visano 1998, 65). Downes and Rock, however, claim that the “new” subcultural theory of the 1970s was more sophisticated, especially in the idea that subculture was an expression of class conflict made up of “styles” that “can only ever retranscribe and not resolve in any structural sense, the set of contradictions that gives rise to them” (Downes and Rock 2003, 162). Although the symbolic is certainly important 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Th e “N ew ” S ubc ultur al Theory : Th e Bir mingham S c hool


to the early formulations, this is developed far more adequately by the later efforts (which also get away from the functionalist undertones of the early explanations). There was a move away from the ethnographic method of the Chicago school; although this did not disappear, the focus became more theoretical and less empirical. This was a move away from the empirical or substantive sociological theory that characterized the U.S. endeavors and a move toward European social theory. The CCCS was concerned with developing conceptual frameworks for explaining aspects of subcultures rather than simply chronicling observations. Their work borrowed from the linguistic structuralism of Swiss philologist Ferdinand de Saussure, French literary critic Rolând Barthes, and made use of recently translated works of Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci. These were powerful conceptual resources that enabled taking some of the ideas embedded in the U.S. literature in a radically different direction. Gordon’s (1997, 42–43) suggestion in 1947 that “speech patterns” and clothing could be employed as “indices of participation in a particular subculture” was taken up most notably by Dick Hebdige in his 1979 analysis of punk “style.”19 The analysis of speech patterns or argot was adopted by Stan Cohen (1980) and Stuart Hall et al. (1978) in a different way in their content analysis of the role of the media in ossifying a particular “reality” that in turn acted as a catalyst for eliciting widespread panic around a threatening but fictive “folk devil.”20 Additionally, Gordon asked, “In what way are identical elements of national culture refracted differently in the sub-culture?” emphasizing not only the shared elements between a subculture and its “parent culture” (as discussed in Hall and Jefferson 1976, 13) but also bricolage—the unconventional use of items by members of a subculture. The “style” of the subculture is tied to bricolage, the use of things in such a way as to be “subverting and transforming these things, from their given meaning and use, to other meanings and uses” (Hall and Jefferson 1976, 54). The working-class youth group known as the “mods” appropriated the bowler hat and umbrella, which were emblematic of upper-class affluence; the “teddy boys” made use of Edwardian dress, devaluing its appeal for the upper classes. These are examples of “the many ways in which the sub-cultures used the materials and commodities of the ‘youth market’ to construct meaningful styles and appearances for themselves” (Hall and Jefferson 1976, 56). Hebdige (1979) provides an analysis of punk style that takes as its starting point (even if unacknowledged) the suggestion by Gordon and elaboration by Goffman (1963, 32, 87–88; 1961) that persons 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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“pass” themselves off as members of a particular status group or “get by” by making innovative use of available spaces and items found within their milieu. Furthermore, Becker’s (1963) notion of “moral entrepreneurism,” which describes innovative moral campaigning, is derived in part from Lemert’s suggestion that “deviant groupings [can] emanate from deliberate cultural innovators and inventors, who may for a long time remain more or less socially isolated pending the acquisition of a sympathetic audience or following. Gradually, by a combined use of persuasion, propaganda, rewards, and other means of social control, they contrive to attract a personal following which becomes the spearhead of a new organization and the surrogate of a novel culture complex” (Lemert 1951, 45). Thus in many respects, a central theme of “innovation” ties together many of the underlying themes of the 1950s through the 1970s. In an updating and reformulating of Albert Cohen’s work (and by implication the work of Mead), elements of style including bricolage and argot were thought to signal to others the potential for a differentially organized association based around working-class values (Hebdige 1979). Bricolage and argot in this sense function as a form of communication. In short, traces of Chicago or Chicago-inspired sociological approaches are woven throughout the CCCS’s attempts at developing an approach to the unique sets of social relations encountered. For instance, Howard Becker’s (1963) “neo-Chicago,” symbolic-interactionist work on “outsiders,” where he offered rich descriptions of the “subcultural” milieus of the marijuana user and jazz musician, was an important stimulus for the work done at the CCCS. According to Hall and Jefferson, “Our starting point, as for so many others, was Howard Becker’s Outsiders—the text which, at least for us, best signalled the ‘break’ in mainstream Sociology and the subsequent adoption, by many sociologists working in the fields of deviance, subcultural theory or criminology . . . of what came to be known as an interactionist, and later ‘transactional’ or ‘labelling’ perspective” (Hall and Jefferson 1976, 5). As Sumner (1994) points out, Stuart Hall and Stan Cohen made a crucial impact on the sociology of deviance by shifting the focus of study from deviant behavior to symbols and representations of deviance produced by youth themselves as well as the mass media’s selective production of rhetorical imagery. Although not working out of the CCCS, sociologist Stan Cohen’s groundbreaking analysis in 1972 of media’s role in the creation and circulation of “folk devils” that amplified a danger in the “mods” and “rockers” employed an interactionist approach similar to that advanced by Lemert and 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




Becker (Cohen, 1980, xlviii). This line of investigation culminated in the 1978 publication of Policing the Crisis, emerging from the collective efforts of the CCCS research workshop on mugging. Sumner suggests that Stuart Hall’s earlier interventions into the sociology of deviance, including the 1976 collective effort, Resistance Through Rituals, “marked the beginning of a whole new, coherent, framework for the sociological analysis of the attributions of deviance” (1994, 271). Cohen states, “Above all else, the new theories about postwar youth cultures are massive exercises in decoding, reading, deciphering, and interrogating. These phenomena must be saying something to us, if only we could know exactly what. So the whole assembly of cultural artifacts, down to the Punks’ last safety pin, have been scrutinized, taken apart, contextualised, and recontextualised . . . The result has been an ingenious and, more often than not, plausible reading of subcultural style as a process of generating, appropriating, and reordering to communicate new and subversive meanings” (Cohen 1980, liv). We can see in the CCCS a return to the early Chicago focus on a phenomenology of culture and even an occasional lapse into uncritical, sometimes empiricist assumptions about human behavior (cf. Sumner 1994, 271); although the ethnographic method is not favored, there is a focus on milieu in conjunction with wider social and political events. The concept of “strain” was reformulated by the CCCS (e.g., Hall and Jefferson 1976; Hebdige 1979) along the lines of Albert Cohen’s notion of reaction formation, viewing strain as conflict between competing sets of class values and as a catalyst of subculture formation. Merton’s notion of rebellion as innovation was now seen as ritualized resistance aimed at reclaiming displaced working-class values. It is clear that what Albert Cohen (1955, 18, 25, 37) describes as “non-utilitarian, malicious and negativistic” activity but also as “normal, integral and deeply rooted feature of the social life of the modern American city,” which is located in the male workingclass, underpins the CCCS research on youth subculture throughout the 1970s. Delinquent acts were characterized as expressions of youth “style.” This concept, “style,” later to become central to cultural criminology, replaces the notion that youth delinquency is “nonutilitarian.” Subcultural style signifies “resistance.” There is a shift in emphasis from the geophysical aspect of subcultures to their symbolic and expressive elements. There is a shift from negative conceptions of “deviance” and “rule-breaking” to an orientation that emphasizes the “creative” forms of youth expression as embodied in acts of “resistance.” This 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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shift signaled a move away from an earlier interest in the subculture of gangs and “slum” districts, typified by the “concentric circles” of Park, Burgess, and McKenzie (1925). It also signaled a shift away from the determinism and functionalism that characterized the field, from the work of Park up to Albert Cohen, focusing more on the expressive and symbolic elements discussed by Becker and Goffman. This lead to strong emphasis by the CCCS on working-class lifestyles. There was also more sensitivity given to differential values, but there remained by and large an assumption that one set of values existed for all (e.g., “working-class” values pitted against “middle-class” values) within a given subculture (e.g., punks, mods). The early Chicago view of “disorganization” gave way to the recognition of organized subgroups within the wider society. The new focus was on both physical and symbolic social environments and the use people made of such spaces—their “style” of life. Understanding this as a “collective reaction of the youth themselves” (Bennett 1999, 600), the CCCS adopted a view similar to the “differential evaluation” model offered by Albert Cohen (1955), the “differential reaction” model offered by (Lemert 1951) and the notions of “differential association” and “organization” (Sutherland 1939). Bennett summarizes the CCCS as follows: “Using the original Chicago School premise that subcultures provide the key to an understanding of deviance as normal behaviour in the face of particular social circumstances . . . CCCS research, re-worked this idea as a way of accounting for the style-centred youth cultures of post-war Britain” (Bennett 1999, 600). Birmingham research is informed by a notion of “deviance” that is intertwined with the concept “political minority,” leading to the view that delinquent acts are political overtures. It reflects Matza’s assertion that “a distinctive feature of the subculture of delinquency is that its beliefs are imbedded in action” (1964, 51). This view that political beliefs are imbedded in deviant conduct making deviant conduct political conduct is central to cultural criminology. As Stuart Hall remarks in his discussion of the “process of politicization of deviant subcultures,” “the latent political content of the deviant process and the deviant element in radical politics now emerge together as a single phenomenon” (1974, 268). This illustrates the radicalized version of “subculture” posed by the CCCS, who used it as a concept to denote political rebellion against middle-class values. This also clearly illustrates the break with Albert Cohen’s developed assertion of “status frustration” (that youth delinquency is nonutilitarian and destructive) and developing of Cohen’s undeveloped notion of “reaction formation” (i.e., resentment). 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




The following statement by Lemert is telling, and anticipates much of the Birmingham studies: “Deviant social organization within a given culture may appear quite spontaneously, deriving from cumulative situational deviation, in which many deviants come to communicate with one another and to perceive their common interests plus the necessity for defensive or aggressive organization” (Lemert 1951, 45). This notion is employed by Becker (1963, 82) who suggests that “a subculture grows around” the problems musicians face from outside interference in their craft by “squares.” The ensuing resentment (as per Box’s interpretation of Albert Cohen) generates or draws attention to a common set of problems around which an “insider” group develops. This notion of resentment— the asserting of working-class values over an imposed middle-class standard—is encapsulated in the collective work of Birmingham researchers and clearly draws from the advances in the field made in the United States: Working-class sub cultures, we suggested, take shape on the level of the social and cultural class-relations of the subordinate classes. In themselves, they are not simply “ideological” constructs. They, too, win space for the young: cultural space in the neighbourhood and institutions, real time for leisure and recreation, actual room on the street or street-corner. They serve to mark out and appropriate “territory” in the localities. They focus around key occasions of social interaction: the weekend, the disco, the bank-holiday trip, the night out in the “centre”, the “standing-about-doing-nothing” of the weekday evening, the Saturday match. They cluster around particular locations. They develop specific rhythms of interchange, structured relations between members: younger to older, experienced to novice, stylish to square. They explore “focal concerns” central to the inner life of the group: things always “done” or “never done”, a set of social rituals which underpin their collective identity and define them as a “group” instead of a mere collection of individuals. They adopt and adapt material objects—goods and possessions—and reorganised them into distinctive “styles” which express the collectivity of their being-as-a-group. These concerns, activities, relationships, materials become embodied in rituals of relationship and occasion and movement. Sometimes, the world is marked out, linguistically, by name or an argot which classifies the social world exterior to them in terms meaningful only within their group perspective, and maintains its boundaries. This also helps them to develop . . . plans, projects, things to do to fill out time, exploits . . . They too are concrete, identifiable social formations constructed as a collective response to the material and situated experience of their class. (Clarke, et al. 1976, 46–47) 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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This characterization of working-class subcultures draws also on Phil Cohen’s (1997) foundational essay of 1972, “Subcultural Conflict and Working-Class Community.” Cohen’s piece according to Hebdige, “furnishes the most adequate model available for a reading of subcultural style” (Hebdige 1979, 78; see also Downes and Rock 2003, 143). Downes and Rock credit Phil Cohen with reviving subculture theory after it had “languished” for a number of years, reformulating the concept of “subculture” in terms of working-class communities struggling to win space for working-class values and resisting the imposition of middle-class values and norms: “The inability of the ‘parent’ working-class generation to cope with these problems means that they were refracted, already freighted with associations of class defeat, onto the young. Their response to the resultant family tensions, fragmented community and economic insecurity was necessarily symbolic. It was to create a succession of subcultural styles which express and resolve, albeit ‘magically,’ the contradictions which remain hidden or unresolved in the parent culture” (Downes and Rock 2003, 161). Phil Cohen interestingly suggests, not unlike Sutherland’s “differential association,” that subcultural formation in 1970s East London was due in part to patterns of social life. Kinship ties, and patterns of social life Cohen suggested, were displaced by middle-class values and new patterns of activity based on these new values. He links this displacement to social policies and the urban renewal of slum areas, whereby some were relocated to different areas of the city under subsidized housing programs while others stayed in their community and were subjected to new housing arrangements. Community and economic change, he (1997, 90–91) argued, stemmed from new housing designed on the model of the middle-class nuclear family rather than the working-class extended family. Coupled with this, the “natural” or routine surveillance that characterized the extended family and working class community disintegrated under these new conditions.21 It is noteworthy that Cohen (1997) discusses two basic types or forms of subcultures: “plastic forms” and “infrastructural forms.” “Plastic forms” have to do with the dress and music embraced by the subculture to express itself, while “infrastructural forms” such as argot and ritualized activities “reflect changes in the more plastic forms” (Cohen 1997, 94). These indicators of style are similar to those of Gordon (1997, 43) who suggested that speech patterns and clothing where good indicators of subculture.22 The similarities are significant and demonstrate that even if Phil Cohen was not directly familiar with Gordon, he and others made use of his sociological imagination. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




There are a number of important ideas advanced by Phil Cohen that are extensions of already established ideas about deviancy and delinquency. He argues that the cultural or class conflict that arose from the imposition of middle-class values (premised on private ownership and property) on working class families leads to persons being “caught and pulled apart by two opposed pressures of social mobility” (1997, 93). Such pressures are reminiscent of Merton’s “strain” hypothesis. Similar to Albert Cohen, Phil Cohen suggests that the “strain imposed” by the two conflicting value systems was in part fostered by the concomitant “disintegration of community structures” (1997, 93). He invokes Albert Cohen by suggesting that youth cultures emerged as an attempt to ameliorate this strain and in so doing overtly oppose the parent, adult culture. Here, the developed (i.e., adjustment) and undeveloped (i.e., resentment) strands of Albert Cohen’s analysis are brought together. He adds that this activity is a communicative action that expresses “the contradictions that remain hidden or unresolved in the parent culture” (1997, 94). In other words, strain, which elicits rebellious acts of resistance, reveals the contradictions in the parent culture between the acceptance of middle-class goals and having only working-class means and indicates that not all working-class youth aspire to middle-class roles. The advancement here is that the later subcultural theories do not assume one dominant set of “culture goals” or norms but rather hold to a pluralistic and differentiated set of goals and norms; rebellion here is resistance rather than an attempt to resolve failure to achieve middle-class aspirations. The expressive gestures of youth “style,” which signified a “reaction against” these contradictions, were “an attempt to retrieve some of the socially cohesive elements destroyed in their parent culture” (Cohen 1997, 94–95). If we invoke the language of Albert Cohen, Phil Cohen can be viewed as suggesting that each working-class subculture has a “frame of reference” and a concrete “situation” (the social and economic conditions of east-end London) to contend with and that the strain or friction that arises between these engenders a breakdown in the equilibrium of the community. Importantly the strain for Phil Cohen is the result of ideology not simply mismatch of goals and means. Cohen (1997) suggests that delinquent behavior is not simply a “mode of adjustment,” to use Merton’s term; it is “a metastatement about the whole process of social mobility” (Cohen 1997, 95), a “significant gesture” that clearly indicates rejection of middle-class “culture goals.” This is signified not through failure to achieve middle-class goals but through the active expression of working-class values. This is echoed by Hebdige’s (1979, 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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119) suggestion that these were “signifying practices” that not only communicate to an audience but also serve to place the actor within and reinforce a particular context. The concept of “subculture,” which was so important to U.S. sociology (and today to cultural criminology), is formulated thusly by the CCCS: Relative to these cultural-class configurations, sub-cultures are subsets—smaller, more localised and differentiated structures, within one or other of the larger cultural networks. We must, first, see sub-cultures in terms of their relation to the wider class-cultural networks of which they form a distinctive part. When we examine this relationship between a sub-culture and the “culture” of which it is a part, we call the latter the “parent” culture . . . What we mean is that a sub-culture, though differing in important ways—in its “focal concerns”, its peculiar shapes and activities—from the culture from which it derives, will also share some things in common with that “parent” culture . . . Sub-cultures, then, must first be related to the “parent cultures” of which they are a sub-set. But, sub-cultures must also be analysed in terms of their relation to the dominant culture—the overall disposition of cultural power in the society as a whole. (Hall and Jefferson 1976, 13)

This is congruent with Gordon’s (1997) thinking about subculture but also is an advancement in that it is a more highly differentiated concept. Subculture, according to Gordon, was thought to be a subdivision of a national culture composed of a combination of factorable social situations such as class status; ethnic background; place of residence; and religious affiliation, which when combined as a functioning unity, have an integrated impact on the participating individual (Gordon 1997, 40–41). These views are reflected in Phil Cohen’s foundational essay and Paul Willis’ (1977) participant observation of three working-class kids in their final two years of high school and their first year in the workforce. Here, Willis demonstrates that the actor’s frame of reference is tied to one’s “moral standards.” The CCCS’s similarities to Chicago go beyond the conceptual and methodological to the organization of the centre itself. Similar to the Chicago school of sociology, Birmingham established itself at the forefront of the emerging discipline of cultural studies partly through the various working-groups formed to collectively study new and emerging forms of social relations, such as the media and mugging groups, which emphasized innovative and original graduate research and training. Birmingham researchers also published their work via their own journal, Working Papers in Cultural Studies, and 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




the London publisher, Hutchinson, published texts in collaboration with the centre. The administration of the centre closely resembled the Chicago school, even down to the initial small faculty complement; Chicago had four and Birmingham had two. It has been my task in this section to demonstrate that contemporary British cultural studies, which takes its name from the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, is indebted to the early North American investigations of deviance and delinquency, especially the work of Albert Cohen (1955) and the Chicago school of sociology. In turn, these developments operate as conditions for the emergence of cultural criminology and groundwork for thinking about and expanding our criminological imagination. The focal concern with the concept subculture described above is present in the film, American History X, to which I now turn. American History X provides a visualization of these themes and issues.

Amer ican History X The concept of subculture was developed incrementally over a number of years from the empirical and theoretic study of differentially organized groups similar to those depicted in American History X. This film concentrates on the formation and impact of one differentially organized group, the DOC. An outsider might view Venice Beach, the setting of the film, as a community in disarray, but an insider like Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong) sees it as a territory carved up by gangs or various subcultures. Venice Beach is portrayed as a differentially organized working-class area where frustration, resentment, and tension stems from the widening gap between working-class means and middle-class goals and growing ethnic diversity. The gap is characterized by an ethnically diverse “underclass” within Venice Beach that is characterized by poverty, crime, and unemployment. Venice Beach “used to be a great neighborhood,” Danny states in a voiceover, but it is now marred by violence and racial tension, a focal concern for frustrated and resentful white youth and important factor for the emergence of the white power gang, the DOC. Importantly, the DOC is not simply an ad hoc aggregate of individuals but a hierarchically organized association underpinned by a structured system of values and goals. Derek Vinyard emphasizes this aspect of the DOC when he distances himself from the Ku Klux Klan, calling them a “low rent, disorganized bunch of rednecks.” The DOC elicits a strong reaction from outsiders and in part the identity of the gang is derived from this strong “societal reaction.” The eliciting of 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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this strong negative reaction from outsiders is necessary, especially where other gangs are concerned. The DOC would not be able to empower its members if others did not consider it a threat. Its formation stems from the experiences of frustration, inadequacy, and resentment, within the immediate structured setting of Venice Beach. Growing competition for space to express values and an increased intolerance of difference facilitates organization of ethnically based gangs and conflict between them. A class-based and racialized “frame of reference” guides interpretation of the significance of these experiences and for the DOC the correlation of these experiences not with structural problems within the community but the presence of nonwhites. This ideological framing of the problem is important because it frames certain actions as viable and necessary forms of resistance. Some key things to note is that subcultures like the DOC include differentially organized value systems that explicitly reject and replace dominant middle-class values. The DOC is located within a workingclass parent culture. The subculture actively expresses its dominant values, which are common with some latent aspects of the parent culture. These values are expressed through subcultural style (i.e., dress, speech, walk, symbols, etc.). Because the dominant values embraced by the parent culture are imposed upon it by the hegemonic middle class, these middle-class values permeate the parent culture, and with this there is a structural contradiction between working-class means and middle-class goals. Moreover, because of these dominant middle class values, the subculture is positioned as espousing alien values or those that seemingly run counter to those of the parent culture. However, they run counter only to the dominant middle-class values imposed on the working-class parent culture. Thus the subculture’s organization around a rejection of the dominant values of the parent culture is an attempt to reclaim working-class values and reject those which have been imposed on the parent culture by the middle class. Thus the DOC explicitly rejects middle-class values as these subordinate working-class values. Importantly, how such values are understood and their material manifestation is ideological (thus may be misconstrued by the members of the subculture). Two dinner discussion scenes (one with Dennis Vinyard the firefighter father and another with Murray the teacher) help us understand this, especially the Althusserian (1971) point adopted by the Birmingham school that one lives and thinks “within” ideology and thus resolves contradictions and problems ideologically and not materially. Derek discounts his sister Danica’s views, as well as his former teacher Murray, on issues of social justice as “liberal nonsense.” In 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




doing so he espouses a hard-line right-wing view of minorities as social “parasites” and as responsible for problems of poverty, crime, and drug abuse. This is in keeping with his father’s bigotry and racism, especially his father’s view that Derek’s black English teacher and principal, Dr. Robert Sweeney, is teaching “nigger bullshit.” Education, tolerance, and conformity—important middle-class values—are rejected as well as the institution of schooling. The rejection of higher education is especially apparent in Dennis’s suggestion that “Mister two PhDs” should not be treated as an expert or knowledgeable on his subject of English literature. Here we witness Dennis’s distain for Sweeney because he is black and because he has a PhD. Dennis likely does not have a university degree, given that he simply does not require one for firefighting. It is also likely that teaching is not considered “real” work as it does not involve the physical labor required for fighting fires, which tacitly reinforces a division between white collar and blue collar work. The frivolity of education is further suggested when Dennis tells Derek to “ace the guy’s test” but not “swallow whole” everything that Sweeney “feeds” him. This view devalues a liberal education that challenges and expands one’s higher order cognate abilities to enable critical, analytical, and abstract thinking. At the same time this devaluing of liberal education positions education as a credential rather than as an inherently meaningful or transformative undertaking. The impact of these views are depicted throughout the film as Derek, then Danny, drift toward delinquency. Derek’s sister, Danica, is affected differently. She appears to maintain a commitment to liberal education and is open minded. She is a responsible and seemingly well-adjusted teen with what we might call a liberal-minded attitude, representing a counterpoint to Derek. Derek’s hatred of Murray the teacher is a hatred of open-mindedness, conformity to traditional middle-class values, and the middle-class establishment. Moreover, Murray is Jewish. The DOC’s rejection of education and liberal, middle-class values represents an attempt to reclaim or “win” space for working-class values which are ideologically construed to be untainted by liberalism or multiculturalism. Thus the formation of the DOC is not simply born of a frustration at failing to attain middle-class goals but of a resistance (resentment) to the domination of middle-class goals and values. Although the dominant middle-class values that permeate the parent culture are rejected, the alternative set around which the DOC is organized can be found in the parent culture, as Albert Cohen and the CCCS argued. The DOC, as well as rival gangs, are a working-class subculture. The resistance signified by the DOC and its activities is a resistance 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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to the imposition of middle-class values on working-class family and community. Derek and Danny are raised in a working-class family that aspires to be middle-class. Because their father is a firefighter and mother a homemaker, the family is blue collar (i.e., working class) not white collar. When their father is killed, the family no longer have the means to achieve the middle-class culture goals set out for them, eventually rejecting not only these goals but also the values and means (i.e., education and work) associated with them. The fragmenting of the family, rejection of school and legitimate work, and demographic changes in the community contribute to Derek’s drift away from the dominant values of middle-class culture that have permeated his life thus far. Derek, rather than turn to illegitimate means to achieve these middle-class goals, replaces these goals and values. The new seemingly achievable set is not adopted to avoid a failure to achieve middle-class culture goals but in order to reject such goals. The alternative values and goals are arrived at after much tutoring from Cameron Alexander, a white-supremacist organizer. Derek’s rejection of middle-class values and embracing of alternative values is overtly symbolized by changes in his dress, rhetoric, new tattoos, shaved head, and his actions to recruit others to reclaim Venice Beach for whites. This goal of “wining space” for a white working class is conceptualized as reclaiming the neighborhood from vice, crime, and violence. Because the members of the DOC have ideologically conceived of these problems as the problems of nonwhites, the resolution of these problems seems clear: get rid of nonwhites. Thus intolerance of racial and ethic diversity is a “focal concern” or rallying point as well as a strategy for resolving structural, societal problems of crime, poverty, unemployment, among other things. Following the CCCS, this is an ideologically conceived solution to the social issues plaguing their working-class community and will only be resolved symbolically and not materially.23 Thus we see Derek and his gang playing basketball with blacks. This is a strange sight, but this is one way to reclaim territory or assert one’s dominance symbolically. Interestingly basketball is chosen when fighting might easily have been; this is a form of innovation. The basketball game is symbolic and represents urban warfare and operates as one strategy to win space (i.e., to expel the rival, black gang) for subcultural expression. The DOC is able to reclaim the courts, and space for cultural expression, for white working class kids. Notably, after Derek goes to prison, the black gang reclaims the courts. Although physical locations are important for subcultures—such as the basketball courts of Venice Beach—these do not define subcultures. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




The symbolic is the defining element. Physical spaces facilitate an expression of collective style but do not define it. Style expresses what are not only subcultural values but also values found in the parent culture. The DOC style consists of the wearing of working-class apparel similar to the skinheads of 1970s Britain, now symbolizing not just a rejection of middle class values but of nonwhite people. Shaved heads, army boots, white-power tattoos, distinctively nonwhite collared shirts, wallet chains, and suspenders in some cases, blend the idea that one is at war with the idea that one is working hard (to at the very least symbolically claim space).24 In this, material objects are adapted and reorganized as a distinctive stylized expression of values. Nazi paraphernalia and propaganda adorn the walls of Derek’s and later Danny’s rooms and many of the bodies of DOC members. Many emblems, clothing, and accessories of the Third Reich are displayed as status symbols at a local DOC house party. These material objects (including the tattoos) are used not only instrumentally but also symbolically to publicize the values of the group and what might be done to defend these (for instance, Derek uses his combat boots to stomp a black gang member to death in the opening scene of the film). Derek’s muscled flesh is a billboard for white-power symbols, including a very large and very dark swastika on his left breast that can be seen through his white T-shirt. Each bicep sports a barbed wire armband and there are several tattoos of icons associated with Nazi Germany. An eagle carrying a swastika, the symbol of the Nazi Party, can be found on Derek’s right upper arm. This symbolizes the Nazi rejection of communism, liberalism, and democracy. Like the swastika, it is a symbol of intolerance and a hatred of “enemies” such as the mentally disabled, homosexuals, and especially for the DOC, blacks and Jews. His lower forearm displays the words “white power” and an iron cross, symbolizing bravery and leadership. Derek’s upper back displays the letters “DOC” and two snarling dogs that look like pit bulls. These indelible markings stigmatize and label Derek. They symbolize to others of like mind that he is their compatriot and committed to particular values and goals. For example, while in the California Institution for Men (Chino Penitentiary), Derek displays his tattoos as a “flag” to get noticed by the Aryan Brotherhood in order to avail himself of their protection. They are also constant reminders to Derek of the intolerance taught to him by his working-class father. His father, Dennis, loathed affirmative action, devalued liberalism, and was killed by a black drug dealer while putting out a fire in what Derek calls a “nigger neighborhood he shouldn’t have given a shit about.” 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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Members of the DOC frequently utter racial slurs and derogatory comments in an attempt to dehumanize and castigate those of other ethnicities and cultures. Jews and blacks are especially loathed. In a scene in which Derek’s former teacher Murray (Elliott Gould) is having dinner with the Vinyard family, we find out that Derek does not approve of his mother dating Murray because he is a “kike” and perceives him to be “poisoning” the Vinyard family with “Jewish, nigger-lovin’ hippie bullshit.” Derek marshals a slew of rationalizations to defend the beating of Rodney King, to demonize blacks as opportunists and for rioting after LAPD officers were found not guilty of abuse, and to justify his racism and intolerance as a strategy to defend and protect his family. Derek despises “liberal nonsense.” Immediately following his father’s death, Derek in a television interview illustrates his full blown racism, ranting that “blacks, browns, yellow, whatever” are “social parasites”; that “minorities don’t give two shits about this country! They come here to exploit it, not to embrace it”; and that crime, AIDS, and welfare are not “white problems” but “problems of the black, Hispanic, and Asian communities.” A very powerful but uncomfortable scene to watch, the obese hate monger, Seth, who is a bug exterminator and driving what appears to be a Volkswagen minibus, is singing a perversely modified version of the nineteenth century, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” This patriotic Civil War era song, with its strong Christian sentiment, is debased as the new lyrics glorify and testify to the death and destruction of nonwhites. Derek is the leader of the DOC, but he is also a member of a larger subculture organized around values and goals that can be found more generally within his working-class culture. Thus some of the values expressed by the DOC are not different from other working-class gangs; blacks hate whites, and together they hate Hispanics. An ideology of hatred is common to all gangs, each blaming the other for their oppression. A mentality of collectivism is valued to a point but only if it serves the individual interest. Thus the DOC, organized around one set of goals and system of values, is an empowering organization. The values of the DOC can be found within the parent culture. Trade unions or workers cooperatives, although certainly not formed to inspire hatred, do serve a similar purpose to subcultures of delinquency: they empower members and offer a collective means to meet individual economic interests. Also common to each subculture is the idea that each group is entitled to more than the others, similar to the values centered around individualism and individual rights within the United States. A radical individualism has always existed in the United States and is exemplified in the 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




doctrine of “manifest destiny.” Thus if one is successful in taking by force what one wants, then one is entitled to reap the benefits. In addition, Western settler societies such as the United States and Canada have a history of racism and intolerance and are the outcome of imperialism and colonialism. So although it may not seem like the white-power values and goals of the DOC could be found in the wider parent culture, this is indeed where they are found. An example from the film illustrates this. Danny is contemplating how his brother ended up the way he did and concludes that it all started with their father. The scene depicts a flashback of their dad giving Derek some fatherly advice at the dinner table, cautioning Derek not to accept “nigger bullshit” and to be wary of “affirmative blaction,” impressing upon him the need to understand that this is a type of reverse racism inherent in not simply education but hiring practices. When Derek reluctantly concurs, his father states that he is proud of him. Racism and bigotry are not relegated to deviant groups but are pervasive in liberal democracies. Particular values may be subordinate or “subterranean” (Sykes and Matza 1957) within the dominant and parent culture but may be taken up and become the dominant organizing values of the subculture. Thus distasteful values are not unique to subcultures of deviance. The DOC ends up reproducing the oppressive conditions it is formed to help pull its members out of because it reproduces the structural contradictions between working-class means and middleclass goals by imposing a rigid set of values on the group that will not facilitate upward social mobility. Nor will the DOC create or sustain space for expressing working-class values. The irony is that all the gangs are part of a working-class parent culture, so the problems to which the DOC is supposed to be a remedy—structural problems like the changing demographics of communities, poverty, forced commitment by unskilled minorities to low paying jobs, illegal immigration, and violent crime—are simply obscured by a focus on the specific milieu of Venice Beach and the ideological conception of these problems as problems of milieu caused by nonwhites. Thus what is key is not the white-power values of the DOC but the working-class values that the white-power ideology is supposed to help its members assert. The contradiction is resolved only ideologically: it is simply believed that minorities are to blame for public issues (societal problems) and that by attacking them as the source of the problem, the problem will be resolved. Thus the gang serves to divide and weaken working-class solidarity and reproduce the violent crime, unemployment, and other problems affecting their community. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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Tony Kaye’s American History X not only exemplifies a blending of the new and the early conceptions of subculture but also offers an empirical referent to help us ponder the development of the concept. It helps us visualize some of the rather abstract language used by sociologists in reference to deviance and subculture. Through attention to the personal troubles of brothers Danny (Edward Furlong) and Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton), the film helps us to explore the public issues experienced in the milieu of Venice Beach and how contradictions and ideological understandings emerging from the relation between personal troubles and public issues (the experiences of milieu and social-structural issues), engenders a subculture of violence and hatred. The film helps us visualize the biographical and structural aspects of subcultures and helps illustrate in exemplary fashion the importance of utilizing our criminological imagination.



C o nc lusion




4

Pathology, Power, and Medi caliz ation in K-PAX

I ntro duc t i on

A

man (Kevin Spacey) is arrested in New York’s Grand Central Station. He seems out of place. He is not carrying luggage and has no ticket; he has not arrived nor is he departing by train. He is simply there. He claims to be Prot (Prōt), an observer from another planet. The police, there in response to a mugging, question Prot and hastily determine that he is delusional and that he requires evaluation by medical experts. He is sent to the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute for observation and evaluation, where Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges) attempts to diagnose and correct what is depicted as an obvious abnormality. What has happened here? Agents of law enforcement and criminal justice have deferred to an alternative system of knowledge. One system of knowledge has been deemed inadequate for assessing or dealing with the problem, which ironically has been constructed as a medical-psychiatric problem by agents of law and criminal justice. In determining the problem to be one of medicine and not criminality, Prot is “medicalized.” The process of medicalizing Prot results in his institutionalization, where he is confined and subjected to psychiatric techniques and procedures aimed at extracting the truth about his condition. This routinely happens in films and television shows and indeed in “real” life. The knowledge and practice of sciences such as physics, physical anthropology, medicine, biology, psychology and psychiatry are often depicted as superior to legal reasoning and important supplements to legal understanding. Without what is depicted as “hard” 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Chapter 6


science (the science of statistics and probabilities) many offenders would simply be deemed “irrational” because they would simply be viewed as not conforming to the legal standard of the “reasonable person.” In the case of medical science, there are many categories of illness not found within legal knowledge that can be used to classify offenders. Because of this offenders need not be seen exclusively in terms of the classical rationalism that underpins legal knowledge and reasoning as having exercised poor or faulty judgment. At a much earlier time in Western history, Prot would have been seen as a harmless “village idiot” and tolerated. A large range of things today are considered intolerable in Western societies and it is common for all kinds of troubles to be viewed as medical problems that can be corrected or managed. The fact that more and more problems of social life are being described as medical or psychiatric problems suggests the prominence of medical authority and expertise in societies such as ours—a power and expertise that underwrites a pervasive social and political process known as medicalization. Medicalization is a form of social control that often works in conjunction with criminalization (social control via the criminal law) and legalization (social control through regulatory law). Prot, our protagonist, is not deemed an eccentric or a harmless yet strange man but is judged in medical terms by representatives of law enforcement to require confinement, examination, and evaluation through subjection to the instruments and techniques of psychiatry in order to determine the “truth” of his condition. At the very least it is felt that because Prot breaks with the expectations and norms of behavior set out by psychiatry and accepted widely, he poses a potential danger to either the public or himself. Many have written on the process of medicalization and medical social control (e.g., Conrad 2007; Conrad and Schneider 1980; Horowitz 2002; Ingleby 1980; Lane 2007b; Sedgwick 1982; Szaz 2007). Peter Conrad and Joseph Schneider (1980) argue that there are three major models of deviance—one being more prominent than the others at different points in history: “deviance as sin” (the moral-religious model), “deviance as crime” (the state-law model), and “deviance as sickness” (the science-medicine model). “When a theological world view dominated,” they argue, “deviance was sin; when the nation-states emerged from the decay of feudalism, most deviance became designated as crime; and in our own scientifically oriented world, various forms of deviance are designated increasingly as medical problems” (Conrad and Schneider 1980, 28). K-PAX 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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offers a complex social reality where the “deviance-as-sickness” model dominates the others. Deviance as sin is well known to criminologists and sociologists. The deviance-as-sin model is often referred to as the “demonic perspective”: “the oldest of all known perspectives on deviance” (Pfohl 1994, 22). This medieval view held (and for some still holds) folly, deviance, and criminality to be the outcome of demonic possession. One form of release from this state of madness was thought to be the trepanning ritual: the removal of part of the skull to enable evil to escape the patient. Contemporary criminology is mainly organized around a state-law model of social control, which long ago displaced the moral-religious model. But perhaps more important than the state-law process of criminalization is the scientific-medical process of medicalization. “Medicalization” describes a deeply entrenched mode of social control in societies where the human sciences and their experts play a central role in organizing and ordering everyday life. Conrad and Schneider’s argument about the domination of medicalization and medical social control today bears many similarities (but also quite a few differences) with Michel Foucault’s (1977, 1978a, 1980c, 1980d) work on the “disciplinary society.” Here Foucault argues that the subtle yet most important forms of power and domination in modern societies stem from the production and application of different types of knowledge that have status as science. It was the vast range of everyday practices informed by scientifically derived norms to which people are routinely subjected that was of interest to Foucault. Medicine is one type of disciplinary field, knowledge, and practice that enables its practitioners to exercise a high degree of domination over those subjected to it. Disciplinary power, Foucault argues, augments and dominates sovereign power (the state-law model of control) in modern Western societies. Foucault’s view on the nature of disciplinary “normalizing” societies resonates with the “medicalization thesis,” which holds that more and more of our daily troubles are being recategorized as medical in nature, thus falling under the jurisdiction of medical science and the science-medicine model of social control. This chapter will explore the medicalization thesis in order to highlight some of its strengths and weaknesses and suggests how the work of Foucault on the social power of scientific discourses and the psychiatrization of medicine can be drawn on to provide for a more robust framework. It then illustrates how we might put these ideas to work by producing our own analytical narrative of the film, K-PAX. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley



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In the late fifteenth century, around 1475 to 1480, the Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch painted “Extracting the Stone of Madness.”1 This painting depicts an ancient ritual—trepanning—which is perhaps “the world’s oldest known surgical procedure” (Harris 2004, 1118). Bosch’s provocative work can be viewed as a commentary on medicalization. The “Extracting of the Stone of Madness” portrays a primitive medicine: a moral-religious pseudoscience during a time when the supernatural and mythological were invoked to explain deviance, criminality, and many other social problems. Trepanation was thought to offer a cure for the plight of fools and idiots. The painting depicts a medieval physician removing a tulip (imagined by some to be the cause of idiocy) from the skull of the imbecile Lubbert Das. During the time of Bosch (the Renaissance, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century) medicine was not a science as it is known today. The painting is a commentary that portrays it as a primitive science, which is equated to quackery and charlatanism. The image is “highly symbolic, reflecting many of the attitudes toward medicine, quackery and mental illness that were prevalent in northern Europe during the late fifteenth century” (McAlister 1974, 1380). We see a physician (a charlatan) perform the surgery (a ritual) while accompanied (and legitimated) by a priest and a nun. Sound knowledge is unavailable to this practitioner as the “funnel of wisdom” sits upside down on the physician’s head (looking like a dunce cap) and a “book of knowledge” is worn instead of read by the nun. The “cure” is part religious ritual, part medical procedure. In this very early depiction of the medicalization of deviance, the nun and the priest lend credibility to the physician; thus the moral-religious legitimates the medical-psychiatric. Importantly, we also have in this image an indication that the knowledge underpinning this ritual is in transition: shifting gradually from the mystical-moral-religious to what will become the human science of medicine. At a later point in history, beginning in the late seventeenth century with the Enlightenment and the secularizing of knowledge, we have the gradual separation of the moral-religious and the scientific. Scientific reasoning and practice during this period develops explicitly against the validity of blind faith as a legitimate source of knowledge and challenges the church’s control over knowledge (Anderson 1996; Hamilton 1996). The Enlightenment period of skepticism and the challenge to Church power offers the right conditions for a scientific 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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ethos to develop and take for the first time human beings and the cosmos as objects of systematic reasoning and exploration. Today the centuries-old practice of trepanation is still performed as the medical procedure known as craniotomy, which relieves the skull of pressures due to internal swelling. Today, medical-scientific discourse is predominant and has come to subordinate the moral-religious and the state-law models for conceptualizing social problems and strategies of control. This is explicit in a relatively recent and ironic reenactment of the Bosch painting. Whereas Bosch ridiculed physician and patient alike, a relatively recent case has two modernday buffoons from Utah attempting to “restore” a British woman’s “childhood buoyancy” through drilling holes in her head (“Pair guilty of drilling holes in woman’s head” 2001). “Some New Age followers believe the centuries-old drilling practices promotes higher consciousness and relieves depression,” the article reads. Although framed by the perpetrators in moral-religious terms, the event was evaluated by a court of law as a medical procedure rather than a moral-mysticalreligious ritual or a crime; hence they were charged with “practicing medicine without a license.” Drilling holes in heads by non–medical experts for moral-religious reasons is conceived by the court as a medical procedure—an “operation” and a “surgery” rather than a religious ceremony or criminal act. The woman in this case is not represented as a victim of a crime or as under pastoral care but as being illegally operated on. The act and actors have been categorized medically: the act conceived as a medical procedure and perpetrators as unlicensed physicians (in need of psychiatric evaluation). The penalty is a fine for regulatory infractions rather than the stigmatizing punishment accorded to those considered violent criminals or the penitence accorded to sinners. Five hundred years after Bosch, we find that the rudimentary medical and primarily moral-religious ritual he chastised has been discursively recoded. It is now underwritten by medical science. Although primarily conceptualized as medical not moral, the moral does not completely disappear, as Conrad (1980) and Conrad and Schneider (1980) note. Today there is widespread belief that science is the correct way to truth and is a moral and public good. Religion is positioned as ideological and truth distorting. However, the fact that we have put our faith in science and are faithful to something called the “scientific method”—that Western societies ritualize the production of what is taken to be truth—is not unlike the uncritical, ideological blind faith depicted and criticized by Bosch.2 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




Robert Nye appositely remarks, “Undoubtedly, medical discourse continues to infuse the culture of health and well-being in our society. It seems that some new behavior is medicalized every day. In the United States, we have witnessed the invention of ADD and a drug to treat it, the conversion of sexual desire into ‘addiction’ complete with support groups and the usual, obesity into an illness, and unreasonable fear of social interaction into a mental disorder treatable with medication” (2003, 126). Nye’s comments on the medicalization of personal troubles and public issues come to life when one scans newspaper headlines: “Between madness and badness: A reflection on medicine, morals and the mind of the criminal” (Brown 1998); “If you’ve got a pulse, you’re sick” (Kolata 2006); “What’s making us sick is an epidemic of diagnoses” (Welch, Schwartz, and Woloshin 2007); “Shy? Or something more serious?” (Lane 2007); “A bitter pill? Psychiatrists push to make embitterment an official mental disorder” (Kirkey 2009); “A rose, by any other name, is still a rose. But impotence is now a disorder” (Allemang 2010); “Manitoba student granted reprieve over exam anxiety” (Martin 2010); “Is there such a thing as sex addiction?” (Shrieves 2010); “Too much sex? Psychiatrists are proposing that hypersexuality, aka sex addiction, get official status as mental disorder” (Roumieu 2010); “Too far beyond tattoos? Some extreme body modifications stirring legal debate about what is expression and what is surgery” (Quan 2010); “The sickening of society” (Kirkey 2010b); and “The new ‘normal’” (Kirkey 2010a), among others. The appearance of news items on sex addiction are particularly apposite given the notoriety of David Duchovny’s and Tiger Woods’s recent stints in “sex rehab” for their sexual infidelities. From Bosch to Tiger Woods, we have plenty of illustrations of medicalization.

Medic a l iz atio n and M edi cal S o c ia l C o ntro l : A n Overv i ew Medicalization has been described as the “development of medical conceptions and controls for deviant behavior” (Conrad and Schneider 1980, 29) and “the process and outcome of human problems entering the jurisdiction of the medical profession” (Conrad 1992, 210). This situates modern medicine as a field concerned with social control and thus as an important object for criminological scrutiny. This process of medical social control is interesting for criminology for obvious reasons. The general societal context of medicalization is not different to that of crime and justice so criminologists have much 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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to gain by analyzing medical social control. In addition, “social control” has long been central to criminology as both a set of professional practices that criminologists are concerned with as well as an important concept that influences how criminologists think. If new forms of social control have emerged or old forms have been reorganized around the medical field, criminologists will need to reorient their own practice and broaden their focus from the criminal justice field (and state-law model). Criminologists, to the chagrin of many (e.g., Braithwaite 2000; Fattah 1997; Garland and Sparks 2000; Tombs and White 2003; Walters 2003), spend an inordinate amount of time looking at the process or implications of criminalization. However, as Nicholas Kittrie has argued “criminal law has failed to deal effectively (e.g., in deterrence) with criminals and deviants, encouraging use of alternative methods of control” (Conrad and Schneider 1980, 34–35; see also Feeley and Simon 1992).3 In this way, medicalization “overlaps” with and sometimes displaces criminalization and moralization (Conrad and Schneider 1980, 17, 26) as a field of knowledge and procedures that contribute to social control. At the very least, medicine is an important form of “social power” that should concern criminologists. Conrad and Schneider’s main concern with medicalization is with “how certain forms of deviant behavior have become problems for medical jurisdiction and been designated as sickness rather than badness. [Medicalization] . . . focuses on how certain categories of deviant behavior become defined as medical rather than moral problems and how medicine, rather than, for example, the family, church, or state, has become the dominant agent of social control for those so identified” (1980, 17–18). In questioning the practice of defining and applying medical categories to characterize deviance (to characterize a whole range of personal troubles and public issues, to draw on Mills), Conrad and Schneider argue that medicine is now poised to become the dominant, hegemonic form of social control in developed industrial and postindustrial societies: “We view religion and the state as social control agents that have lost, or in the case of the state, transferred, some of their control prerogatives in the development of modern societies. Medical science, in particular, typically buoyed by state legitimation, has grown to assume these age-old control functions” (Conrad and Schneider 1980, 17). Following the interactionist and conflict traditions in the sociology of deviance, Conrad and Schneider argue, “The power to so define and construct reality is linked intimately to the structure of power in a society at a given historical period. This is another way of 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




saying that historical constructions of deviance are linked closely to the dominant social control institutions in the society” (Conrad and Schneider 1980, 17). As medicine is a dominant institution in contemporary Western societies, it exerts a high degree of control over all elements of sociality. It should be noted that much of the literature that explores this idea does not investigate these structures of power, nor does it concern itself with the concept of “power” or etiology of disease. It works with a rather inadequate and one-sided view of power imported from conflict-interactionist sociology. Foucault, however, has done much to identify and distinguish between varying modalities of power operating in the modern period, and his work can be drawn on to supplement the impoverished conflict-interactionist approach. “Discipline” is a modern form of power that Foucault argues is tied to the rise of the knowledge-producing sciences and their ability to shape conduct through the subjection of bodies and minds to normative techniques, strategies, and programs of regulation (Foucault 1977; 1978a). Medicine and psychiatry are instances of this disciplinary form of power—a micro power that permeates all aspects of modern life, public and private. It might be more fitting to follow Foucault and see science— especially a branch as loosely defined as “medicine”—as a unity of discourses.4 In medicine, we find psychiatry, psychology, and an allopathic approach to healing incorporated as “medicine.”5 This leads us to view medicine as a dominant and powerful system of truth production that excludes competing knowledges and truth claims. The medical field of knowledge and practice constitutes what Foucault (1980c) has termed a “regime of truth.” This position is broadly compatible with the medicalization thesis. Because of medicine’s general acceptance and ubiquity and its status as scientific, medical knowledge carries social power that is often exercised toward the control and management of individuals through the production of ever more categories of illness and the exclusion of non-medical explanations and remedies. The outcome is the subjection of greater numbers of people to medical social control.6 The argument that Conrad and Schneider put forth is that medicalization—the process of defining and categorizing a trouble as a medical problem—has become the major mechanism of social control in modern (post)industrial societies. In an updating of their work, Conrad (1992) elaborates that physicians are likely, but not necessarily, to be the main agents of medicalization and medical treatments. As Conrad (1992, 211) explains, this is because medicalization can occur at three levels: the conceptual, organizational, and interactional. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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At the conceptual level a medical vocabulary or model is used to “order” or organize, interpret, and experience problematic issues or troubles as medical problems. This need not be done by medical experts. In K-PAX, medical experts are central, but nonexperts such as patients, police, and administrators also organize their understanding using medical-psychiatric categories. Prot is the only character that has not organized his self-understanding by use of psychiatric categories. Dr. Powell and his colleagues as well as the other patients view the world through the language of psychiatry. All activities, including leisure, are construed as therapeutic. K-PAX helps us visualize the conceptual aspects of medicalization, but it also helps us question Conrad’s assertion that it can operate without non-medical experts. Even though medical experts may not be directly involved, the medical field and experts are the progenitors of medical categories. An important point about this conceptual level made in the medicalization literature is that medical-psychiatric language is so pervasive that lay persons take it up to help them understand personal troubles and social issues. For example, my mother insists that as a young child I had ADD (attention deficit disorder). Sometimes she insists that I had ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Interestingly, there was no such classification as ADD or ADHD at that time. “Hyperkinesis” was the term, and it was officially introduced into psychiatric language in 1968 with the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II). This evolved officially into ADD in 1980 and ADHD in 1994. My mother uses the language of psychiatry, as if it is a natural part of everyday parlance, to describe behavior that she found to be unruly and rambunctious (a result perhaps of my boredom or a hyper curiosity). One can only imagine my mother’s exasperation. However, coding the source of this exasperation as psychiatric rather than as perhaps her youth and inexperience with children and parenting, my boredom, or simply a child’s natural exuberance, is to impute an individual pathology as causal. The implications of conceptualizing her frustration and my unruly behavior as outcomes of a psychiatric problem are lost on her. Medicalization can be seen here, working at the conceptual level to provide a framework of understanding. A second example of the conceptual level of medicalization illuminates these issues differently. Allemang comments on research done at McMaster University about the impact and implications of using mundane language versus medical jargon to describe medical conditions on how treatment is understood: “When conditions are described in medicalese, they are taken more seriously” (2010, F3). 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




Not only are serious conditions taken more seriously when described in medical terms but so are ordinary, mundane aspects of everyday life despite these not demanding or requiring serious contemplation or action. “The quiet humiliation of impotence has given way to the highly treatable . . . erectile dysfunction disorder. No longer is a limp organ a natural sign of aging’s sad inevitability but rather a curable disorder awaiting its drug-plan-approved remedy. In its wake, malepattern baldness became the semi-manageable androgenic alopecia, which critics regard as the drug companies’ way of elevating ordinary life into a fearsome disease that must be fought off with pharmaceuticals” (2010, F3).7 In keeping with the theme of elevating “ordinary life into fearsome disease,” I offer a third example of the conceptual level of medicalization. Women today are, at least by some accounts, at increased risk of having their husbands cheat on them. Why? Because husbands (or wives) may suffer from “hypersexual disorder” (Bielski 2010, L1, L3), also known colloquially as “sex addiction.” This is how David Duchovny and Tiger Woods have recently explained their errant ways. As Linda Shrieves suggests, “Once upon a time, we called them lotharios or Don Juans. But today men who chronically cheat on their wives have earned a different scarlet moniker: sex addicts” (2010, B9). Perhaps they are not “real” sex addicts, but it does not matter. Something resembling a medical-psychiatric vocabulary has been taken up and used by the lay populace as if authorized by medical science. Designations such as these serve to order and organize daily practices and conceptualizations. At the organizational or institutional level, we see medical categories used as bureaucratic categories or used to make administrative decisions. This level has to do with how medical knowledge, categories, and practices are utilized in public administration. We can clearly see the implications of this in K-PAX, as the social reality depicted unfolds in a psychiatric institution. In the film, we see psychiatric administration through the use of medical and psychiatric categories rather than other forms of administration. Another example of the administrative uses of medicine is given by Nick Martin (2010, A4), who reports that “extreme examination anxiety” has now become an accepted psychological disability at some universities, legitimately excluding some students from writing exams. Here educational administration within the institution of the university makes use of medical-psychiatric categories. Another example is medicalization as a bureaucratic response to problems such as workplace absenteeism. In many cases, one’s absence is only acceptable if one can provide a 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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medical certificate from a certified health professional stipulating that one was ill or suffers from a chronic illness. Interestingly, at a time when workplace stress has been recognized as the cause of a range of emotional, psychological, and physical ailments, “management by stress” (Sears 1999) appears as a dominant strategy for managing employees and their productivity. Employees who become frustrated in the workplace and whom are deemed aggressive or unmanageable as a result of these sorts of management techniques may be requested to take anger management classes or go for counseling. Reaction to stress is medicalized (pathologized), but the strategies that are designed to cause and manage via stress are not. Along a different line, as Allemang (2010) suggests, pharmaceutical companies might construct medical-sounding terms and attach these to products as part of a marketing strategy. There is no shortage of television advertisements in the United States that promote “drugcraft” (Turner and Edgely 1983) as medicine, directly marketing a large array of potentially dangerous drugs to consumer–patients.8 Bottled-water companies have long argued for the benefits of keeping “hydrated” and vitamin-supplement companies have long promoted themselves as the key to healthy living. As Bielski (2010) has recently pointed out, with increased medicalization the lucrative market in pharmaceuticals grows. Currently, the growth of this industry is fuelling concerns about the inclusion of many more diagnostic categories in the forthcoming update of the DSM, which could expose thousands to potentially dangerous antipsychotic medications (Kirkey 2010b, 2010c). The diagnostic categories employed by psychiatrists affect tens of thousands across the globe. Possible contenders for inclusion in the forthcoming fifth edition of the DSM (due out in 2012) will no doubt help in societal management as old or even new behaviors are officially designated illnesses. “Internet addiction disorder,” “compulsive buying disorder,” “compulsive pathological overeating,” and “apathy disorder” (Kirkey 2009, A1) will all serve to medicalize and in doing so offer a strategy of governance for activities that, for whatever political, economic, or moral reasons, are deemed socially or individually injurious. Interestingly, “apathy disorder” was diagnosed in 1959 by Mills as a social problem: one of political and intellectual disengagement or the suffering from lack of sociological imagination.9 At the interactional level, medicalization occurs “as part of doctor-patient interaction” (Conrad 1992, 211). Here either a physician “defines a problem as medical” or “treats a ‘social’ problem with a medical form of treatment” (Conrad 1992, 211; e.g., prescribing 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




mood enhancers for unhappiness). Kirkey (2009) offers us an example of this interactional level of medicalization in her discussion of potential inclusions to the new edition of the DSM. Some psychiatrists, she writes, “are proposing that ‘post-traumatic embitterment disorder’ be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (2009, A1). This diagnostic category was created by a German psychiatrist as the result of patient-doctor interaction over a ten year span, during which he perceived an “increase in affected patients following German reunification” (Kirkey 2009, A3) Here a social and personal problem—for example a reaction to a negative experience perhaps due to forces beyond one’s control such as losing one’s job during economic downturn or finding oneself in conflict at work—is defined in psychiatric terms, and a psychiatric treatment is offered. Kirkey explains, “People view the event as unjust, a violation of their basic beliefs and values, and ‘want the world to see how badly they have been treated’” (2009, A3). Dr. Michael Linden states, “These people don’t have the feeling that they must change, but rather have the idea that the world should change or the oppressor should change, so they don’t ask for treatment” (in Kirkey 2009, A3). Linden holds that by pathologizing these overreactions, disgruntled employees, for instance, can legitimately claim to be patients in need of treatment and will be able to get much needed help.10 That resentment to an injustice—whether real or imagined—can be explained in social terms is not addressed and any such explanation would likely be dismissed as unscientific. The interactional level of medicalization is prominent in K-PAX. In the opening scene, Prot attempts to help a victim of a mugging and is arrested by police. He is quickly classified by police as needing a psychiatric consultation and is lead away in handcuffs to the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute (MPI). Dr. Mark Powell, chief of clinical psychiatry, is tasked with his examination and diagnosis. His limited observations confirm Prot is indeed “ill,” suffering from delusions. We learn later on that Prot is in fact Robert Porter, who has suffered a lifealtering trauma that has affected him emotionally and psychologically. However, psychiatry and drugcraft fail to produce a breakthrough in the case because Porter/Prot is treated as a self-contained object rather than as a social being; information on his symptoms is compiled and treatment designed but the social elements of his trauma are neglected. The major reason Prot is diagnosed as delusional is because the knowledge he marshals to confirm his fantastic story that he is from planet K-PAX cannot be verified or falsified by psychiatric knowledge. Thus the default position is to discount Prot’s account 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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and deem it a product of a delusional mind. We learn later that Prot’s information is indeed correct. Powell later breaks protocol and defies his supervisor to chase down the back story to properly contextualize Prot’s case. In the end we are left feeling that Prot would benefit far more from psychoanalysis than psychiatry. At this interactional level, as with the organizational and conceptual, we can see that public issues are often but not always pathologized as personal troubles with little to no regard for how societal organization or historical developments generate the conditions for these experiences. When we accept the definition and designation of certain problems as “medical problems” we make the same mistake. Having said this, it is paramount to understand that the literature concerned with medicalization does not claim that all problems considered “medical” or “psychiatric” in nature do not exist. They may certainly be personal problems of milieu, but they are also connected to public issues. They cannot be only individual problems of pathology, and certainly their status as simply “mental disorder” is very problematic. This individualized pathology, however, is widely accepted given that medical social control is dominant—meaning that other forms of knowledge, such as socialscience knowledge or astrophysics in Prot’s case are displaced (or “subjugated,” in the words of Foucault [1980d]). The medicalization “thesis” is that medical categories are created and defined and then used to designate something as a medical problem. These categories endow an existing problem or issue with medical or psychiatric characteristics so that it is understood in nonmedical spheres to be a medical-psychiatric problem (e.g., problems of social integration, familial discord, economics, or what have you). Understood medically, for instance, depression is conceptualized as a problem of individual pathology requiring a pharmaceutical such as Paxil. Psychiatric knowledge constructs the problem in a particular way that makes only particular remedies look legitimate and perhaps even necessary. In this, medical knowledge of depression is held to correspond to the state of depression, rather than understood as making (an only ever partial) reference to it. Depression, as a personal trouble and also as a public issue (given its pervasiveness), might be treated successfully by a move from the suburbs to the city or from city to country, by divorcing an inattentive and perhaps unloving spouse, by gaining a promotion at work, by winning the lottery, through a reorganization of gender roles, or a redistribution of societal wealth. This is not to make light of depression but to suggest that there may be many elements involved in one’s depression, and we ought not only to link 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




this to an individual pathological state, which in turn makes potentially harmful psychiatric drugs seem necessary. The medicalization of Prot’s eccentric behavior as delusion leads to him being medicated. The drugs do not work, so Powell turns to hypnosis. Finally, Powell decides he needs the “back story” on Prot to actually help him (an acknowledgement of the limitation of psychiatric knowledge and that the problem is not simply one of individual pathology). The Politics of Definition and Designation Conrad and Schneider argue that medicalization is characterized by a “politics” of both deviance definition and deviance designation. The competition over how categories are defined and which ones are used to designate problems (and in so doing claim jurisdiction over the problem for law or medicine or what have you) is central to medicalization. According to Conrad and Schneider, “Although the legal process [criminalization] is the most formal and institutionally obvious political avenue by which individuals and groups can influence and promote their definitions of deviance, it is by no means the only one. Moral entrepreneurs and other champions of deviance definitions can operate in any social system that has power and authority to impose definitions of deviance on the behaviors and activities of its members” (1980, 23). Following the conflict tradition in sociology, which underpins Conrad and Schneider’s work, the processes of definition and designation are part of a type of status politics. The process of attributing social meaning to categories is combative and political as is the imposing of special meaning on particular actions or social problems through the process of categorization. The processes of defining meaning and of characterizing personal troubles and public issues in a particular way are exclusionary and must therefore represent some interests over others. Here we may see conflicts between, for instance, the processes of criminalization and medicalization, between legal and medical authorities, as well as between legal and medical knowledge. We might also witness conflict within one field about the proper definition of key concepts or the proper classification of problems. For instance, in K-PAX, there is a constant tension between the Powell character and his supervisor. She is of the mind that Prot is unsalvageable and should be committed to long-term care (essentially permanent institutionalization in an asylum). Powell does not concur and believes Prot’s condition can be corrected if a fuller range of approaches are employed or if he delves more deeply into the problem by broadening his perspective. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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In terms of conflict over whether a medical or legal model will become dominant for understanding and describing a set of practices and the implications of this, we can turn to recent conflict over Vancouver’s Insite, North America’s only supervised safe-injection site for hard-drug users. The British Columbia Court of Appeal has recently granted Insite a permanent exemption from federal drug laws for reasons of public health. As Insite is part of a harm-reduction strategy, it has been found by the court to be a “health facility . . . and that its chief role is to provide health care” (Bagnall 2010; see also Bailey 2010 and Hall 2010). Although the Federal Government of Canada has argued that Insite is illegal under its drug control laws, with this superior court ruling the Province of British Columbia has been given jurisdiction in the matter, as the Canadian provinces have a constitutional power over matters of health. This is an interesting case of medicalization. Although the forum for this politics of definition and designation is a court of law, the language of the law and legal knowledge has recognized the language and knowledge of medicine and has appropriated the latter for use in legal designation and definition. This is a case of medical discourse directing the law finding of the courts, and in this instance medicalization has displaced criminalization. On a conceptual and institutional level, medical language and the medical model can be seen here to be the primary way by which Insite has been defined in the common law. Not only is the definition and application of these categories an outcome of a political process but there are also political implications to the use of these categories (although they may appear to be valueneutral) (Conrad and Schneider 1980, 35). “If drug addiction and alcoholism are diseases, then the medical profession is the legitimate agent of social control; if they are crimes, then they are in the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system” (Conrad and Schneider 1980, 26). What is at stake in this conflict is the proper definition and designation of deviance (legal or medical); the designation of who the proper social control agent is or will be (crime control apparatus or medical-health apparatus); and the conferral of potential economic entitlements, status, and prestige. Medical discourse today is argued to be more powerful than legal discourse because it “transcends social and national boundaries” (Conrad and Schneider 1980, 23). That is, whereas criminalization (the practice of legal definition and designation) is bounded by a state apparatus (legislatures and courts) and has force only within the physical boundaries of a state, the practice of medical definition and designation, although legally sanctioned and legitimated by the 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




state, is not constrained by the state, is self-regulated and “usually considered to have universal applications” (Conrad and Schneider 1980, 23). The DSM is a good example. While it informs the practice of psychiatry universally, criminal codes are geopolitically specific. Also, as is well known, medicine has long been accepted by law courts as a special and necessary nonlegal knowledge. The obverse, however, is not the case. For example, non compos mentis (mentally incompetent to stand trial) may exist as a legal category but requires medical certification. Medical categories do not require certification by legal knowledge. Some Problems For all its benefits and interesting line of examination, and for its important contribution to reviving the beleaguered concept of “social control,” there are some limitations in the general framework of the medicalization literature that require discussion. First, not enough emphasis is placed on a politics of science. Those working within the interactionist-conflict tradition, which underpins the medicalization approach, emphasize overt conflict between groups or individuals. This is a status politics, according to perhaps the most famous of the interactionist-conflict tradition, Howard Becker (1963). The problem with this approach is that it assumes groups are relatively coherent, in the same way that some Marxists assume that classes are relatively coherent units or in the way that some liberal political scientists assume that interest groups are coherent and organized aggregates of individuals. The value of Foucault’s work, which will be explored further on in this chapter, is his outlining of a politics of discourse. This politics of discourse includes attention to forms of power and domination that contextualize the formation of the conditions under which scientific categories and statements emerge. This concept emphasizes the nature of a scientific field rather than focusing solely on the individual scientists or experts. Foucault (1980d) is very clear that the formation of any body of scientific knowledge and its truth claims requires an exclusion of competing claims, competing forms of knowledge, and competing procedures of testing, experiment, and examination. This is a politics, not just of definition and designation but of the exclusion and marginalization that underpins the formation of all scientific fields. This politics of exclusion is the context that frames which forms of definition and designation become possible and thinkable. It has to do with the political status of science and the effects of domination produced by claims having a scientific status. Because of medicine’s 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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general acceptance and ubiquity and its status as scientific, medical knowledge carries with it a social power that is often exercised toward the control and management of individuals through the production of ever more categories of illness and the exclusion of non-medical explanations, non-medical knowledge, and non-medical experts. The outcome is the subjection of increasing numbers of people to medical social control. Both Foucault and the medicalization thesis imply that we should not blindly accept that the human sciences are the outcome of a linear development toward a more “correct” or “truthful” knowledge. It is a mistake to take advances in science as indicators of the progress of a society. If we note that “science” refers to competing models of knowledge and truth production (Foucault 1971; Frauley and Pearce 2007; Harris 1979), it becomes problematic to hold on to assumptions that equate science and progress. It is more fitting to follow Foucault and see science—especially a branch as loosely defined as “medicine”—as a dominant and powerful system of truth production that operates through exclusion. Prot’s extraordinary knowledge of astrophysics, his ability to see ultraviolet light, his ability to calm and help mentally disordered patients, and his rational and lucid discussions are designated by Powell to be proof of delusion because psychiatric knowledge cannot countenance these in terms of anything other than delusion and mental illness. Claims by Conrad and Schneider and others that medicalization has hegemonic effects resonate with Foucault’s work on “discipline” (Foucault 1977; 1978a). Medicine and psychiatry are instances of a modern “disciplinary” power—a micro power that permeates all aspects of modern life, public and private. This micro or “capillary” power does not emanate from the state but from multiple sites of scientific (and scientistic) practice and expertise dispersed throughout society. In a 1977 interview, Foucault connected his work on the relation between scientific knowledge and effects of power (namely domination) with something he called a “regime of truth” (1980c). Although underdeveloped, this concept captures in a self-evident way the political and hegemonic aspects of fields of expertise and their production and application of specialized categories. This adds a valuable dimension to the medicalization literature and will be explored later on in this chapter. A second problem with the medicalization position is that it does not do enough to specify the economic, political and moral conditions of medical power today or the transformation of these conditions. Some conception of a medical “field” is needed. Since the 1970s we 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




have seen a trend toward more punitive justice and away from therapeutic-rehabilitative approaches. The great convergence of medical and legal in what some have called the “therapeutic state” or “penal welfare state” (Garland, 2001) has come unglued. This punitive turn poses problems for the medicalization literature and forces a rethinking of the notion that either law or medicine will be dominant modes of social control. Conrad is attentive to this punitive turn and the shifting nature of medical power, stating “It may now be the right moment to focus more directly on investigating the structural underpinnings of medicalization, especially given the enormous changes occurring in medical organization and knowledge” (1992, 228). Although he acknowledges this transformation, he does not adequately pursue this, in part because the medicalization literature’s concepts of power and conflict are derived from interactionalist sociology rather than a sociology of social structure or institutions. Drawing on recent literature, he suggests that “medical authority is declining” (1992, 227), that corporate structures are displacing the physician’s position of power, and third parties and “buyers” of health services are becoming more powerful and increasingly repositioning physicians as “employees.” As Stebbins points out, the physician or psychiatrist as employee must first serve the interests of the employer and secondly the interests of patients: “[Thomas] Szasz says that psychiatrists who are paid by an organization, such as a government, prison, court or military unit, control behaviour in the interest of their employer (rather than the suffering patient) and thereby become institutionalized psychiatrists” (1996, 183, 184). Contemporary medicine has become marketable and physicians are increasingly marketed as purveyors of health and pharmaceutical commodities. The commodification of medical knowledge is a major fundamental change in the organization of the medical field. Because medical social control is pervasive we require further specification of how it connects to other forms of marketable and commodified social control such as the for-profit crime control industry and the for-profit evangelical ministries that have emerged in the previous 30 years. A more integrated understanding needs to be developed along the lines of the sociology of law and regulation (see for example, Cotterrell 1995; Garland 2001; and Hunt 1993, 1997a). This approach takes regulation to be pluralistic, with multiple forms of law operating at any given time across various domains of society. Legal regulation is not only held to be pluralistic but also to combine with processes such as moralization, connecting it to extralegal regulatory processes. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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More must be done to situate medicine as an institutionalized field of knowledge, with physicians as a category of subject within this field. More must be done to specify the social power inherent in medical discourse, how this operates, and how medical knowledge and practice interpenetrate law and other control mechanisms. The claim that medical power has been reorganized is too limited and more must be done to specify this configuration and its implications. However, as Conrad and Schneider have articulated, their interest was never in the etiology of disease itself or the formation of medicine as a scientific field, practice, or body of knowledge but rather with the social construction of illness through categorization. This, however, is a major weakness of the medicalization approach and can be traced back to limitations in the conflict-interactionist tradition, which focused on biography and only secondarily on social structure as represented by the work of Becker and Goffman. This leads us to a third limitation of the medicalization approach: its limited view of power as conflict. The medicalization literature tends to visualize conflict as “individuals in conflict” or “organized groups in conflict.” The literature holds a very limited understanding of power, politics, and conflict, defining these as “interaction” from the conflict orientation exemplified by American interactionist sociology. This is a very limited understanding that negates discussion of the structural aspects of power. Layder (1993) has argued that interactionist conceptions of power are limited in scope and do little to help us understand conflict and politics in terms other than overt coercion or active contestation. This is because “many forms of power and control do not conform to this active and overt model,” especially where “power is often dormant or latent and is built into the structural features of settings. Thus forms of power underlie or underpin the observable dealings between people. These power relations are the result of historical processes through which have emerged forms of domination and control based on the group possession (including ownership) of valued resources” (Layder 1993, 153). Although some effects of power may not be produced, important material and discursive factors for their potential production may be present. If one is looking only at overt forms of conflict, one will not detect the conditions under which certain effects of power might be actualized. In comparing direct and indirect forms of control in the workplace, Layder demonstrates that interactionist conceptions of power and control emphasize direct control, either through face-to-face interactions or more complex hierarchical forms of control and 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




management. Social systems that “displace the locus of power away from direct intervention of authority figures (owners, managers, foremen and supervisors) and invest it in the very structure of work itself” (Layder 1993, 155) are not recognized by the interactional model. This structural form of power is consistent with Foucault’s notion of disciplinary power (1977)—especially his discussion of the process of normalization (discussed in the following section). Foucault’s work proves useful for supplementing the medicalization literature because it is very good at illustrating the indirect and non-humanist nature of modern power and domination and their articulation with the mobilization of scientific discourses. The medicalization literature also works with a limited understanding of what others have identified as “discourse,” perceiving it as merely “language.” This is a fourth problem. This comes across in Conrad and Schneider’s understanding of language as a tool manipulated by individuals or groups to impose one’s will or might on another by shaping “reality.” They come closest to some sense of discourse when they suggest that definitions of deviance are “legitimated in legal statutes, medical vocabulary, or religious doctrine” (Conrad an Schneider 1980, 25). A concept of discourse is needed to help explain how “legitimation” is accomplished, how language use and the effects of domination are intertwined, and to go beyond an instrumentalist understanding of language as a tool used by one group to construct and dominate the reality of another. Given space constraints, I cannot offer a detailed and thorough reworking of the medicalization position along the lines described here. I can only suggest where we might go with this, particularly by crafting an approach to K-PAX that will facilitate discussion of the power effects of medicalization without lapsing into the interactionist and individualist labeling approach. I will touch on some of these issues when I discuss how the work of Foucault overlaps with the medicalization literature’s interest in medical social control. This will give us a sense of how some of the themes and issues in the medicalization literature can be rethought and expanded.

Fo u c au lt, S c ienc e, and the S oci al Power o f S c ientif ic K nowledg e Foucault’s studies of madness, medicine, sexuality, punishment, power, and governance have been highly influential for criminology and sociology. These studies offer powerful analytic tools that can be used to reformulate the medicalization approach—especially the 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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conceptions of power, politics, and regulation. Foucault has elaborated a sophisticated understanding of how power operates in modern societies and how this is quite different from the dominant conceptualization of power as repression or “state” power. Foucault offers a more robust and holistic understanding of control that moves beyond the “state-law” and “science-medicine” models outlined in the previous section. Foucault was concerned with the “politics of the scientific statement” (1980c, 112). The political-power effects of these statements include the creation and exclusion of marginal populations and the delegitimizing of competing modes of understanding. Foucault is especially applicable to our discussion, given the fourth type of medical social control outlined by Conrad (1992, 216): medical surveillance (the others are ideology, collaboration, and technology). Surveillance for Foucault was a central mechanism of disciplinary power in the operation of what he termed “reception structures” such as the hospital and prison, as outlined in the sections that follow. The Dualities of Discipline First we must think of the term “discipline” as having a double meaning: On the one hand, it refers to the discipline one might receive for violating a rule or a norm. On the other hand, it refers to a seemingly coherent set of practices, techniques, and grouping of experts that engage in the production and application of knowledge as well as production and dissemination of norms of conduct. Examples of the latter notion of discipline include criminology, medicine, and law. Second, disciplinary procedures produce compliant subjects that are also acted upon as objects of knowledge. One is “subjected” to disciplinary procedures that adjust or align conduct to the field in question (penal field, law, medicine, etc.). This objectification is twinned with something Foucault calls “subjectification,” which is the enhancing of capacities to act as a particular category of subject, including self-regulation. The spaces that embody the knowledge-producing disciplines, such as the hospital (attached to medicine) or the criminal justice system (attached to criminology), are considered by Foucault to be complex “reception structures.” They are circumscribed with norms of conduct and enable a spatial distribution of objects of knowledge. This leads to the third duality: these spaces are designed to expose features of an object which will be viewed under the expert’s gaze within that particular normative context as an abnormality. Within 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




such contexts the hidden truth of, for instance, disease or criminality may be revealed, investigated, sorted, and classified. These material and discursive spaces are not neutral but rather frame and enable the production of truth and the “reality” of the illness through testing and experiment. Thus the hospital enables “contemplation of the species” of disease and of human beings, as well as “the elaboration of pathological substance” (Foucault 1997, 39, 40). Although all are important, I want to emphasize here Foucault’s observation that the truth of disease and illness is revealed through observation as disease is allowed to progress so that it may be studied and is also produced through this process (which includes testing and experiment). Given Foucault’s work on discourse, especially in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972a), it seems fair to suggest that from these reception structures, from the use of particular techniques and procedures, and from within the field of knowledge wherein states such as madness are medicalized, madness emerges as if disease and illness and also as a discourse object that makes only partial reference to real events, experiences, or activities. Modern medicine is organized around discourse objects such as this. The implication here is that “mental illness,” as an object of psychiatric knowledge, does not correspond exactly and directly to the reality of “madness.” Mental illness is specific to the field of psychiatry; it is one particular way of coding or understanding and acting on madness. A different field might construct a different discourse object to make reference to madness (e.g., such as “deviance” or the “dangerous”). The moral-religious model might situate Prot, for instance, as demonic or perhaps angelic, which would necessitate a different set of tests, experiments, and procedures be used to determine the truth (e.g., trial by ordeal). The state-law model might simply see Prot as potentially dangerous to the state in that his true identity and capabilities are unknown, making him unpredictable and difficult to track. Yet a different set of tests and procedures would be employed to render Prot knowable and manageable (e.g., finger printing, photography, central database). Each set of tests, experiments, and procedures would aim to reveal the “truth,” but as Foucault (and Bourdieu [1992]) has argued, it is through these tests, procedures, and experiments that scientists construct a discourse object that makes reference to but does not directly correspond to the independent thing that is being studied. In K-PAX, Dr. Mark Powell grows increasingly puzzled and frustrated by his inability to produce a “breakthrough.” On one level this may simply appear to be Powell failing as a psychiatrist. However on another level, which Foucault points us toward, we can view this as indicative of the limitations of 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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psychiatric discourse for capturing important elements of Prot’s state because his state of mind does not correspond directly to the psychiatric discourse object of “mental illness.” The object Powell constructs using psychiatric knowledge and techniques only makes partial reference to Prot’s actual state, rather than corresponding directly to it. Accomplishing the Dualities of Discipline We find in both Foucault’s book on prisons, Discipline and Punish (1977), and his book on the psychiatrization of sex, The History of Sexuality (1978a), a vivid and rich description of disciplinary procedures for accomplishing the duality of revealing yet producing truths and for objectifying and subjectifying bodies. According to Foucault, disciplinary power is a modern form of power that begins to operate widely in the later eighteenth century. Discipline is distinguished from an earlier mode of power, sovereignty, which is embodied in the figure of the king (and later the liberal state). Disciplinary power can be detected in earlier periods, but it really takes off with the formation of the human sciences and the advent of industrial capitalism. Thus for Foucault the politics of what consititutes being scientific is intimately connected to political economy. The three major procedures through which disciplinary power operates are hierarchical observation (which includes the partitioning of space), normalizing judgment, and the examination. Foucault explains, “Discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise . . . The success of disciplinary power derives no doubt from the use of simple instruments; hierarchical observation, normalising judgment and their combination in a procedure that is specific to it, the examination” (1977, 170). All modern disciplines (e.g., medicine and criminology) and their reception structures (e.g., hospital, prisons, and schools) operate similarly. Individuals are the objects subjected to disciplinary power as well as the conduits through which modern disciplinary power flows. Power is not a thing held or possessed by an individual or group; it is found in the relation or connection between bodies and institutional locations in a system. Individuals or more rightly “bodies,” as Foucault refers to them, are positioned in impersonal systems that make the exercise of power possible. At the same time the particular exercises of power expected and required of bodies moulds them into particular kinds of active subjects. Experts take on new importance for the operating of these new disciplinary procedures emphasizing the production of specialized 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




knowledge. The techniques utilized—hierarchical observation, normalization, and the examination—are administrative in nature, producing effects or outcomes of order and truth. It is through the production and application of what are taken to be truths that power is exercised. Hierarchical observation refers to the perpetual surveillance that is built in to the organization of disciplinary spaces. “Observation, recording, and training” are key here (Foucault 1977, 173). This includes the objectification of bodies through the partitioning of space to disaggregate populations: to distribute bodies in space to make them more easily studied and continuously watched. This sort of arrangement requires specialized personnel (experts), which we find in modern bureaucratic organizations such as hospitals, prisons, schools, factories, and so forth: Hierarchized, continuous and functional surveillance . . . organized as a multiple, automatic and anonymous power; for although surveillance rests on individuals, its functioning is that of a network of relations from top to bottom, but also to a certain extent from bottom to top and laterally; this network “holds” the whole together and traverses it in its entirety with effects of power that derive from one another: supervisors perpetually supervised. The power in the hierarchized surveillance of the disciplines is not possessed as a thing, or transferred as a property; it functions like a piece of machinery . . . it is the apparatus as a whole that produces ‘power’ and distributes individuals in this permanent and continuous field. (Foucault 1977, 176–77)

This type of observation can be electronic or physical and is exemplified, for example, in the structure and operation of the contemporary prison (see McCormick 1996). Foucault emphasizes that this continuous observation is designed to enable the perpetual extraction of information; that is, constant surveillance works through “individuation” (the locating of individuals in isolated spaces of observation). Foucault emphasizes that this is not simply a matter of someone or a group objectifying another, as those doing the objectifying are themselves being objectified. For instance, Prot is an object of Dr. Powell’s observation, but Powell’s work is observed and scrutinized by his immediate supervisor and his colleagues (through regular group meetings). Above the level of the institution, the state bureau responsible for mental health supervises the operation of the psychiatric hospital, and further on, state licensing boards and professional associations regulate the licensing and practice of psychiatrists 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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more generally. Thus observation (and oversight) is hierarchical and information is always being extracted and compiled for bureaucratic administrative purposes. This sort of surveillance operates alongside and makes possible something that Foucault calls normalizing judgment. The information produced and compiled is utilized to set standards for assessing and evaluating conduct. “Norms specify the goals to which those subjected to discipline must strive to achieve—standards of tidiness, punctuality, etc.” (Hunt and Wickham 1994, 21). Every disciplinary field sets out rules and standards for conduct within that field: for evaluating behavior and for measuring, ordering, ranking, classifying, and distributing persons in a series (e.g., normal and abnormal; good and bad; moral and immoral; pass or fail, or ranking according to A, B, C, etc.). Subjecting one to practices of correction or to routinized practices that are time-tabled to render one compliant or docile, so as not to deviate, is an example of “normalization.” Normalization is at the heart of disciplinary power. Within any institution, objectives are set out, activities are scheduled, and their duration is outlined to render conduct in the institution regular and predictable. In K-PAX, the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute partitions the day into blocks of time to make actions routine and subject to scrutiny. Group therapy sessions, one-on-one therapy sessions, visiting hours, structured activities, structured leisure time, as well as scheduled meals serve to normalize conduct by inculcating expectations and standards of behavior, making possible detection of deviation and corrective intervention. This process works to produce controlled and manageable subjects. Normalizing judgment is exercised by all experts. “In a sense, the power of normalization imposes homogeneity; but it individualizes by making it possible to measure gaps, to determine levels, to fix specialities and to render the differences useful by fitting them one to another” (Foucault 1977, 184). Prot is “ill,” as with all others in Manhattan Psychiatric, but Prot is also ranked according to his responsiveness to treatment, level of difficulty, violent tendencies, and so forth. Normalization along with surveillance is “one of the great instruments of power” in the modern period (Foucault 1977, 184). Both surveillance and normalization, according to Foucault (1977, 184), are combined in the examination. The examination was a crucial mechanism for the formation of modern disciplines such as medicine, as it provides for the ongoing extraction of knowledge by way of perpetual observation, classification, and evaluation. Here individuals are transformed into “cases” or “describable, analysable objects” (Foucault 1977, 190, 191) to be differentiated and managed. They are 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




distributed spatially. The hospital at the end of the eighteenth century, stipulates Foucault (1977, 185), was organized as an “examining apparatus” for a perpetual and ritualized scrutiny. The psychiatric institute in K-PAX is organized similarly to facilitate ongoing examination. This is a feature of public administration. Perhaps the most well-known and widely dispersed form of examination is the confession: “one of the main rituals” and “one of the West’s most highly valued techniques for producing truth” (Foucault 1978a, 58, 59; see also 1977). This is described extensively in Discipline and Punish and the History of Sexuality: The confession has spread its effects far and wide. It plays a part in justice, medicine, education, family relationships, and love relations, in the most ordinary affairs of everyday life, and in the most solemn rites; one confesses one’s crimes, one’s sins, one’s thoughts and desires, one’s illnesses and troubles; one goes about telling, with the greatest precision, whatever is most difficult to tell. One confesses in public and in private, to one’s parents, one’s educators, one’s doctor, to those one loves; one admits to oneself, in pleasure and in pain, things it would be impossible to tell to anyone else, the things people write books about. One confesses—or is forced to confess. When it is not spontaneous or dictated by some internal imperative, the confession is wrung from a person by violence or threat; it is driven from its hiding place in the soul, or extracted from the body. Since the Middle Ages, torture has accompanied it like a shadow, and supported it when it could go no further: the dark twins. The most defenceless tenderness and the bloodiest of powers have a similar need of confession. Western man has become a confessing animal . . . The obligation to confess is now relayed through so many different points, is so deeply ingrained in us, that we no longer perceive it as the effect of a power that constrains us; on the contrary, it seems to us that truth, lodged in our most secret nature, “demands” only to surface. (Foucault 1978a, 59)

One might speak here of the normalizing of confession. We might think of the protagonist of FOX television’s 24, Jack Bauer, and his routine and widely applauded extractions of truth; or the role of the United States and Canada in having confessions extracted from suspected terrorists by handing them over to countries that have not criminalized torture. Confession—a form of examination that fuses hierarchical observation and normalizing judgment—is an illustration that the production of truth “is thoroughly imbued with relations of power” (Foucault 1978a, 60). One must not forget that although Prot may be sick and 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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in need of help, he is confined and subjected to psychiatric examination. His seemingly benign discussions with Powell and other staff members in the context of leisure or therapy is an example of a relation of power from which information is extracted and assembled. Confessions are compelled “for one does not confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a partner who is not simply the interlocutor but the authority who requires the confession” (Foucault 1978a, 61). This describes a power relation operating between two positions: that of the “confessor” who is objectified, modified, constrained, and compelled and that of the “authority or expert,” who compels the confession, scrutinizes, and judges (and to a degree is governed by the action or inaction of the confessor). The confession is the best and most pervasive example of disciplinary power: one that has been refined over the centuries and is central to the moral-religious, statelaw, and medical science models of social control. Reception Structures as Power Formations: Medicalization and (Social) Mutation These disciplinary practices operate within the structured spaces of “reception structures.” These are structured fields designed to transform acting subjects into objects of scientific knowledge and facilitate the production of norms as well as the production of truth. Examples of these reception structures include the courts, prisons, hospitals, and clinics. Foucault points out that these institutional spaces undergo change in relation to broader social and economic transformations, and in turn, the practices undertaken within these spaces are subject to change or “mutation.” This is outlined by Foucault to show how, over time, “madness” mutated into “mental illness” and how the source of knowledge of madness shifted from the body of the patient to the field of medicine: “The practice of internment at the beginning of the nineteenth century coincides with the moment when madness is perceived less in relation to delusion than in relation to regular, normal behavior; when it appears no longer as disturbed judgment but as a disorder in one’s way of acting, willing, of experiencing passions, of making decisions, and of being free” (Foucault 1997, 42). When madness was medicalized in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, it was transformed from “idiocy” into “mental illness.” Thus in K-PAX, Prot arrives at a period in Western history where madness had long ago mutated into mental illness—from a tolerated difference to an intolerable aberration. Mental illness, as Foucault shows, is an object that emerges from psychiatric knowledge 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




and practice and hence is exclusively identified with the psychiatric field. Thus Prot’s strange and eccentric behavior is automatically determined to be psychiatric in nature. This change in object and institutionalized practice—from madness to mental illness—is referred to as a “mutation” by Foucault (1998, 336). Prior to this medicalization (or more rightly, psychiatrization), the “therapeutic spaces” for madness were nature and the arts (Foucault 1997, 42; 1998, 339). With growing intolerance for economic and social reasons (1998, 342), these therapeutic spaces gave way to those of confinement. Foucault suggests that tolerance for those deemed “mad” disappeared with the advent of industrial capitalism (1998, 337, 341). We can refer to this as mutation one (i.e., from “madness” to “mental illness”). Accompanying this shift in object and discourse, there is a gradual change or mutation in the collective sensibility about madness: from a tolerance of the mad in the middle ages, toward their more marginal status in the sixteenth century, to intolerance in the late eighteenth century. Foucault writes, “In Europe in the Middle Ages, the existence of madmen was accepted. Sometimes they would get excited and unstable, or they would turn out to be lazy, but they were allowed to wander around. Now, beginning in the seventeenth century, roughly, industrial society was formed and the existence of such persons was no longer tolerated. In response to the requirements of industrial society, large establishments for confining them were created almost simultaneously in France and England” (1998, 339). It is in this process of mutation from mad (disturbed judgment) to mentally ill (delusional) that Foucault situates the birth of psychiatry and medicalization, and he is quite clear about its connection to the growth of industrial capitalism. Initially within these spaces of confinement were found not only the mad but “also the unemployed, sick people, old people, all those who were unable to work” (Foucault 1998, 338, 341), until the first mutation in the late eighteenth century. From this point only the mad were confined in what were now referred to as “hospitals” (Foucault 1998, 341). The mad were considered unfit for work and in need of continual surveillance and regulation (along with those unwilling to work), while others were considered to be a “reserve army of labor power” necessary to the rapid development of industrialism (Foucault 1998, 341–42). At this point “what had previously been a confinement institution became a psychiatric hospital, a treatment organization” (Foucault 1998, 342). In describing the General Hospital of eighteenth century Paris, Foucault remarks that it “is not a medical establishment. It is rather a sort of semi juridical structure, 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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an administrative entity which, along with the already constituted powers, and outside courts, decides, judges, and executes” (Foucault 1965, 40). For Foucault, the early hospital is a disciplinary apparatus that resembles prisons and workhouses. As an administrative entity, it orders and organizes and enables the production of useful information that can be employed in public administration. This newly recodified and reorganized place of internment and confinement was an enclosed space of hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, examination, and spatial distribution of disease: a site of struggle between the “diseased will” and the “healthy will” (Foucault 1997, 43). The hospital, far from being a place to cure disease, was the place where disease could thrive and become known. Categories of “patient” and “disease” were produced through the use of elaborate procedures and techniques of “subjection.” With the medicalization of madness—especially through the disciplinary procedure of examination—the individual was positioned as “patient:” a body positioned as a particular kind of acting subject while also an object that held the truth of disease. Importantly, the expert gaze, practice, and techniques of the physician were now widely recognized as necessary for externalizing the truth of illness: “All the techniques or procedures employed in asylums of the nineteenth century [were] designed to make the medical personage the ‘master of madness’: the one who makes it [disease] appear in its truth . . . and the one who dominates it, pacifies it, absorbs it after astutely unleashing it” (Foucault 1997, 43). Foucault (1997, 44) argues that at this time the idea that disease itself is the source of truth all but disappears. Disease is reorganized around the expertise of medical knowledge and the reception structure of the hospital coalesces in the figure of the physician. We can speak of this as mutation two: the source of the truth of illness shifts from the body to the psychiatric field. With mutation two, the physician, medical knowledge, and medical techniques that objectify humans came to be understood as the source of truth about disease. With this, Foucault argues, “the power that the asylum gives to the psychiatrist will have to justify itself . . . by producing phenomena that can be integrated into medical science” (1997, 44). Such phenomena—psychiatric disorders—can be produced discursively through the examination (and the use of the techniques of hierarchical observation and normalizing judgment). Thus, the first great mutation was the medicalization of madness; the second was the psychiatrization of medicine. It is in these two great mutations that Foucault situates the development of a psychiatric power that can meet the shifting demands of the economy (see also 1978a). Scientific 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




discourses and their disciplinary reception structures are implicated in facilitating the growth and reproduction of capitalism; their social power is identified in terms of the control and domination that comes from the exercise of disciplinary “rituals of exclusion” (the exclusion of alternative knowledge as well as the production of marginalized, medicalized populations). Since the mediaeval period, Foucault argues, the West has reserved for science and those participating in it a special power with particular effects (1980d, 85). It is these “effects of the centralizing powers which are linked to the institution and functioning of an organized scientific discourse within a society such as ours” (1980d, 84) that make medicalization of interest to those concerned with social control—not the overt conflict between law and medicine in the politics of definition and designation. Far from a gradual linear evolution of science and knowledge, political and economic changes form the conditions for psychiatry to grow and develop as a politically and economically useful science, especially for public administration in the constitution, exclusion and then management of marginalized populations. It may be true, as the medicalization thesis holds, that medical social control is pervasive, but the institutionalized basis of this control and domination is not explained well. Foucault offers a powerful account of the formation of the medical-psychiatric field as a field of power relations concerning a politics of scientific knowledge as well as overt conflict and contestation. He indicates how this field provides the basis of a knowledge and set of practices that facilitate a form of power that is constitutive of new categories of subject (e.g., nonproductive mentally ill versus productive worker) as well as charged with enhancing the productive capacities of those subjects. The formation of scientific fields of knowledge and practice facilitate the “subjugation” of alternative knowledges: on the one hand, disqualified “popular knowledges” that do not meet the standard set for scientific knowledge and on the other hand those that are erudite, historically accurate but obfuscated or concealed through a process in which a rival body of knowledge establishes its coherence. Foucault argues that with this any struggle and conflict inherent in what might appear to us as a uniform, unified body of thought and set of practices is smoothed over to render it unproblematic. Medicine is an example of this. It can be approached as an unstable historical formation that obtains its coherence through exclusion or subjugation of some knowledge (e.g., chiropractics, holistic medicine, reiki, and the conflict this represents) and inclusion of others (e.g., psychiatry, psychology, and allopathic practice). In this, it is highly political and 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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its power effects stem from its scientific status and ability to exclude and dominate. Foucault has argued that we must recognize that all such formations are an artificial unity and that we “must challenge their hegemonic effects” (1980, 84–85). Prot represents a challenge and resistance to the uniform appearance and power effects of psychiatric knowledge. His case leads Dr. Powell to question the adequacy and value of psychiatric knowledge and practice. Prot is considered a “very-convincing” delusional and the only way for Powell to reclaim the psychiatric hegemony is to find a way to disqualify or delegitimize Prot’s knowledge. One attempt at this has him arranging for Prot to undergo examination by a few astrophysicists to scrutinize and then confirm as nonsense Prot’s explanations for his arrival on earth, his physiological “defect” in his ability to see ultraviolet light, as well as his knowledge of the location of planet K-PAX (Prot’s home planet) The astrophysicists cannot falsify Prot’s claims and indeed confirm that he displays a high level of knowledge that many PhDs in the field would not possess. This places Powell and psychiatry in further doubt; Prot not only resists being the silent object of psychiatric medicine but also constructs Powell as an object of an alien discourse, reversing the “expert-object” relation and challenging psychiatric knowledge and Powell’s ability to prove the truth of Prot’s illness (which he fails to do until the end of the film). Powell’s aspirations to reveal the truth of Prot’s illness might be couched in terms of healing, but they are also rooted in a necessity to position and construct Prot as a delusional, to affirm the legitimacy of psychiatry as a scientific field, as well as reproduce his own position as expert. Getting to the truth is not so much about revealing the illness as reproducing the power effects of psychiatric discourse. This is particularly clear in a scene in which Powell stipulates that he is the “doctor” and Prot the “patient” and that it is not Prot’s job to attempt to help other patients with their problems. According to Foucault, we must “question ourselves about our aspirations to the kind of power that is presumed to accompany such a science. It is surely the following kinds of question that would need to be posed: What types of knowledge do you want to disqualify in the very instant of your demand: ‘Is it a science’? Which speaking, discoursing subjects—which subjects of experience and knowledge— do you then want to ‘diminish’ when you say: ‘I who conduct this discourse am conducting a scientific discourse, and I am a scientist’?” (Foucault 1980d, 84–85). Elsewhere Foucault has referred to this as a problem of the “discursive regime” or “regime of truth.” This is the problem of “the politics of the scientific statement:” the problem of the effects of scientific knowledges taken up by and incorporated 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




into political programs (Foucault 1980c, 112). How does internment serve a political purpose? How is confinement a strategy of public administration? “To put it simply, psychiatric internment, the mental normalization of individuals, and penal institutions . . . are undoubtedly essential to the general functioning of the wheels of power” (Foucault 1980c, 116). Foucault, in a more sophisticated manner than the medicalization literature, links not just medical or psychiatric knowledge to social control (or more rightly, “governance”) but all human sciences. For Foucault, disciplinary power, characteristic of modern Western societies, operates through the procedures and techniques utilized in the human sciences. To this end, the appearance of unity and parsimony required for “scientificity” is a political rather than methodological requirement. For Foucault, all claims to being scientific invest a body of knowledge, a set of techniques and practices, and those who uphold these claims with power or a capacity to dominate, exclude, control, manipulate, marginalize, and modify. This disciplinary power that Foucault speaks of is qualitatively different from power as “sovereignty” (in either its liberal or despotic forms), and he spent a great deal of time and effort illustrating this (see Foucault 1977, 1978a, 1980d). The human sciences constitute an “economy of discourses of truth,” which has to do with their procedures and their outcomes (i.e., the effects they generate; see Foucault 1978a, 69; 1980c, 119): “Procedures which allowed the effects of power to circulate in a manner at once continuous, uninterrupted, adapted and ‘individualized’ throughout the entire social body. These new techniques are both much more efficient and much less wasteful . . . than the techniques previously employed which were based on a mixture of more or less forced tolerances . . . and costly ostentation” (Foucault 1980c, 119). As reception structures are the organized spaces of regimes of truth and as scientific knowledge produces effects of domination and subordination, the reception structure has elsewhere been referred to by Foucault as a “power formation” (1978a, 92) or “power centre” (1978a, 30, 34, 49, 98). Reception structures are designed to objectify and produce not only the truth of the object but also the object itself. As truth “is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint” (1980c, 131), reception structures are spaces of domination, control, modification, and exclusion. These are the power effects of discourse (scientific statements, knowledge, and practice) and of a politics of scientificity. Medical social control is a disciplinary form of power that operates via the mechanism of medicalization. Psychiatry and its reception structures constitute a “power formation,” which is not 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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about repression but about expanding the domain of “the medical:” ordering this domain in a particular way, shaping the practices that might come to fall into this domain, and producing more, not fewer, categories of illness, thus expanding the population of diseased bodies. Importantly, medicine is not a special form of control as Conrad, Schneider, and others have argued but simply one form of disciplinary power: “In a society such as ours, but basically in any society, there are manifold relations of power which permeate, characterize and constitute the social body, and these relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse. There can be no possible exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth which operates through and on the basis of this association. We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth” (Foucault 1980d, 93). The medicalization literature scrutinizes and highlights the importance of attending to the defining and designating of troubles and issues as medical problems, but it does not grasp or pose a challenge to the form of power inherent in medical discourse (the disciplinary basis of truth claims and truth-producing practices and their effects). Foucault’s work on the transformation of acting subjects into objects of science, the mutation of madness into mental illness, and the psychiatrization of medicine enable one to interrogate and reveal not only the structure of scientific discourses such as medicine but also their formation (including the conditions that authorize scientific statements as statements of truth). In this way, one can challenge not just “the contents, methods or concepts of a science” (Foucault 1980d, 93) but also the conditions that underpin the power effects of medicalization (e.g., marginalization, exclusion, delegitimation, and so forth). Revealing the instability of a seemingly coherent science can be done through charting the formation of its current configuration and revealing knowledge that might have been marginalized or excluded in the process of formation, utilizing this to challenge the coherence of the field of medical practices as well as the status of truth accorded to statements emanating from this field. This is a form of deconstruction that Foucault termed “genealogy” (1980d). Discovering or revealing fragments of knowledge that have been covered over or purged in the process of making a field systematic and uniform is one way to challenge the effects of power that stem from scientific truth claims: “In the specialized areas of erudition as in the disqualified, 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




popular knowledge there lay the memory of hostile encounters which even up to this day have been confined to the margins of knowledge” (Foucault 1980d, 83). This genealogy is described by Foucault as “a painstaking rediscovery of struggles together with the rude memory of their conflicts . . . a historical knowledge of struggles . . . to entertain the claims to attention of local, discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate knowledges against the claims of a unitary body of theory which would filter, hierarchize and order them in the name of some true knowledge and some arbitrary idea of what constitutes a science and its objects” (1980d, 83). Foucault’s work—unlike critical work on the medicalization of non-medical problems (Conrad [1980, 1992]; Conrad and Schneider [1980]; Nye [2003]; Pfohl [1977]; Turner and Edgely [1983]; Williams and Calnan [1996] and others)—is concerned with the political economy of scientific truth: how scientific categorizations and the power they carry emerge from medical practice, how these medical practices are situated within and constituted by the medical field, how such fields have been constituted, and their political and economic usefulness especially for public administration (social ordering). Foucault’s work challenges much more than simply the politics of defining and applying categories. Unlike much of the medicalization literature, Foucault rejects an interest group and interactionist understanding of conflict and power. He is quite concerned with the social power of medical (disciplinary) practice, the social power of medical knowledge, and the social power exercised by physicians and how this social power is implicated not in the discovery of disease but in its production (as a discourse object that is in the medical-psychiatric field conflated with the physical and mental state of the patient). The disciplines are part of a system of power that produces and sustains “truth”—the name given to a system of ordered procedures for the production of scientific statements (1980c). Definition and designation do not govern statements and produce control and domination; systems of power that make definition and designation possible both govern how and what statements can be produced and in turn produce forms of domination within society.11 Foucault offers a much more sophisticated view of power and politics than medicalization literature. He is able to show that power operates through “highly complex systems of manipulation and conditioning” (1980c, 125) and that these systems are premised on and also constitutive of the “truth claims” or statements that are authorized by an institutional field. Any politics of definition and designation must countenance the production of specialized categories, 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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practices of knowledge production and their institutional fields, as well as the subject-positions that are necessary for this (such as “physician” and “patient”). Although Conrad’s (1992) updated statement on medicalization suggests that on some level (the conceptual or organizational) medical experts and treatments may not be involved, it is difficult to see how medicalization could be accomplished without at least some indirect involvement by medical science. Thus the conceptual and institutional levels of medicalization, as discussed previously, would necessarily involve medical experts in some way if only at a distance (indirectly). What is important about Foucault is that he situates power and politics at the level of the institution and beyond, in the disciplinary networks that form a complex and dense web of governance and control and shape and organize the activities of groups or individuals (including definition and designation). The medicalization literature argues that medical social control through medical categorization is expanding or has at least become as prominent as legal social control. This formulation assumes one is more powerful and influential than the other. Foucault, on the other hand, would see both legal and medical social control as systems of power and domination and not pose the question of which is more powerful. Rather, both operate together within a disciplinary matrix.

K-PAX We have already discussed K-PAX at various points in this chapter. The film exemplifies both the medicalization thesis and Foucault’s arguments about the nature of disciplinary power. It helps us visualize principal concepts from each body of work as well as how the medicalization thesis might be reworked and extended through the use of Foucauldian concepts. K-PAX demonstrates biography and experience in the milieu of the psychiatric hospital as well as how problems of the psychiatric field are experienced at the level of milieu. As the primary setting is a psychiatric institution with a hierarchically organized bureaucratic structure, social structure is also exemplified. The film helps us explore medical social control by drawing on the medicalization literature to explore the interactional features of the social reality depicted in the film and by drawing on Foucault to explore the structural aspects of power and domination that the psychiatric field helps to reproduce. Prot (Kevin Spacey), the main character who claims he is an observer from the planet K-PAX, proves to be a challenging and intransigent object of the psychiatric techniques and procedures employed by Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges). From the beginning, 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




Prot is subjected to examination and evaluation against the medicalpsychiatric norm within the institutional field of psychiatry. K-PAX revolves around a medical-psychiatric model of control, and in the film it is not simply Prot and the other patients who are subjected to the techniques and strategies of psychiatric power; the physicians too are dominated by this. For instance, Powell becomes obsessed with Prot’s case, going beyond what is expected of him by his supervisor and profession to the point of neglecting his family and breaking with psychiatric procedures to track down the truth about Prot. Powell’s questions about and perceptions of Prot and his problems are framed by psychiatric knowledge, so he has great difficulty making sense of Prot’s lucid thinking and rational behavior, his extraordinary knowledge of astronomy, his ability to see ultraviolet light (marshaled convincingly to support his claim that he is from planet K-PAX), and his positive transformative impact on patients who have been written off as permanently damaged. Powell eventually begins to doubt and question his discipline, profession, instruments, and the psychiatric regime of truth when he cannot falsify Prot’s strange abilities or the knowledge that supports his claims. According to psychiatric medicine, Prot must be ill because his behavior does not conform to the standard set by the psychiatric field. Yet Powell cannot determine the truth of Prot’s illness. Dr. Powell is an “expert” who exercises a degree of domination over Prot through the latter’s subordinate position within the institution. Most of the film takes place within the reception structure of the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute where Prot is confined. Excluded from the general population of “normals,” the entire film revolves around Powell attempting to categorize Prot through subjecting him to constant observation (by orderlies, nurses, physicians, and closed circuit television cameras), normalizing judgment (assessment, evaluation, classification, distribution, and medication), and examination (perpetual extraction of information through hypnosis, therapy sessions, subjecting Prot’s claims to examination by astrophysicists, and having Prot interact with his family at his home). Prot is medicalized as a confessing subject and object of psychiatric knowledge. Powell is the psychiatrist who will not simply reveal but construct the truth of his object: Prot’s delusional nature. In doing so, Powell will also reproduce himself as a “psychiatrist.” The film illustrates the three domains or levels of medicalization outlined by Conrad—the conceptual, administrative, and interactional—as well as the structural and indirect forms of disciplinary power that Foucault argues to be characteristic of modern societies. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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The major language and organizational categories are psychiatric; the administration of activities, even leisure time, is couched as therapeutic, and face-to-face interactions are with either psychiatric experts or patients who have adopted psychiatric language for their self-understanding. Powell’s lack of success with normalizing Prot illustrates a failure to produce the desired effects of psychiatric power, including reproducing his own position as expert.

C o nc lusion In this chapter K-PAX has been utilized as a vehicle for exploring the concept of medical social control, themes from the medicalization literature as well as the work of Foucault on the psychiatrization of medicine. The medicalization “thesis” was explicated and weaknesses of the approach were highlighted. Turning to Foucault, some possible avenues of resolving these weakness were discussed. By thinking about K-PAX, especially the poles of personal milieu and social structure and their interconnection, we were able to locate potential points of integration of the interactionist focused medicalization position with the more institutionally and macro oriented work of Foucault. This work of reformulating and expanding the medicalization position through use of theoretical resources offered by Foucault was then employed to produce an analytical narrative of K-PAX. Thus K-PAX proved a useful tool for situating and exploring themes and issues from both Foucault and the medicalization literature and these themes and issues proved useful for rethinking the social reality depicted in K-PAX.







4

Biopolitics and the Gover nance o f Geneti c C apital in GAT TACA

In a normalizing society, race or racism is the precondition that makes killing acceptable. —Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”

I ntro duc t i on

A

ndrew Niccol’s (1997) GATTACA is a provocative film that can be “read” on at least two levels: that of “society” and social organization and that of the “individual” (self-regulation and social interaction). GATTACA is a tale of authoritarian rule, the triumph of the human spirit over adversity, and social injustice. At the interactionist level, GATTACA is a case study in what Erving Goffman called the “management of spoiled identity” (1963). Jerome Morrow is Navigator First Class at Gattaca Aerospace Corporation. He is a member of an elite class. Jerome’s daily ritual consists of vigorous exfoliating of his entire body; rigorous vacuuming of his workstation and home; and very careful disposal of skin, hair, and other traces of his existence. Jerome needs to avoid contamination; he must limit the amount of his “in-valid self left in the valid world.” Jerome is not a man possessed by an obsessive-compulsive impulse for cleanliness. He is engaged in the very careful management of what Goffman (1963) called a “virtual social identity,” carefully manipulating “social information” in the presentation of himself to others. Jerome is impeccably dressed, manicured, and coiffed, and his daily blood and urine tests confirm his genetically superior nature. His apparel, mannerisms, and fluids are “prestige symbols” that 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Chapter 7


convey positive information and affirm his virtual social identity as an elite member of his class and society. To manage and control the information presented through “prestige symbols” and to delimit the appearance of “stigma symbols” that will betray his “failing,” he employs many techniques. These include the strategic planting of hair and skin scrapings to fool those who might submit his traces to genome “sequencing,” the use of finger-tip blood sachets and urine pouches to fool scanners, and the use of contact lenses to hide his myopia. All of this is done to “pass” as the owner of a robust genetic capital.1 Jerome, however, has a secret and is, in Goffman’s words, a “discreditable” self: one with “hidden differences” that evidence a “failing” (1963, 4, 42). Jerome’s ritualistic self-discipline is a strategy not only for presenting a “valid” self to others but also for avoiding stigmatization and becoming “discredited,” exposed, and cut off from the population of “normals.” Stigma, the subject of Goffman’s (1963) text and that which Jerome Morrow seeks to avoid, is what Morrow’s “actual social identity” symbolizes. Jerome Morrow is actually Vincent Freeman, a genetically inferior “in-valid” and a member of a new underclass. He is a “god-child,” a product of a “faith birth,” frowned upon in an era marked by geneticism and a blind faith in science. As a “de-gene-erate,” Vincent Freeman is the owner of a “spoiled identity” and blocked from upward social mobility. He does not meet the biological norms of his society. Expectations for Vincent and those like him are very low. For him, the statistical probability of “abnormality” is high and because of the pervasive ideology of geneticism (i.e., that all human characteristics, including their capacities and potential, are solely determined by one’s genes), Vincent Freeman is not expected to live beyond 33 years or to exceed his genetically determined potential. Vincent faces what he describes as a new “science” of discrimination, “genoism.” In Vincent’s society, geneticism and genoism caste people, locking them into the social hierarchy and shunting them into new categories of person. One’s “genetic quotient” determines assignment as “valid” or “in-valid.” Legitimate means of upward mobility and social entitlements are distributed according to this “genetic capital.” Genetic capital determines one’s degree of integration into the society; without it one exists on the periphery. Geneticism is not simply an ideology; it is a rationality for governing and regulating the distribution of human beings and social power. Genoism (genome discrimination) is a mechanism of governance. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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This brief sketch of GATTACA, aided by the analytic language of Goffman and to some extent ideas proffered by Foucault, raises several issues that can be explored further at a different level: namely that of racism and biological politics. Thus GATTACA may also be fruitfully read as a narrative about governance and social ordering, where a form of biological and evolutionary racism operates as a “biopolitical” mechanism and technique of governance: one that fragments (hence divides the population into “valids” and “in-valids”) and venerates the death of the biologically inferior for the good of the species (that is, the human race) (Foucault 2003, 255). Genoism is made possible within the larger context of the ideology of geneticism (which operates in the film as a dominant rationality of governance). Eugenics is a strategy within the film for distributing social power; for regularizing the life of the object of governance, the “population” (which is not simply a collection of individuals); and for enhancing the internal strength of the state. Geneticism and its correlate practice eugenics are thought to enhance the “human resources” of the nation-state, to standardize the population, and to render it calculable, predictable, and manageable. Genetics and genomics operate in GATTACA as hegemonic forms of scientific knowledge that guide practices of social ordering and legitimate geneticism, eugenics, and genoism. The “geneticist” is positioned as an important expert not only for the distribution of genetic capital but also for producing and setting biological norms that form the basis of social expectations; political conduct; an ever increasing variety of categories of biological, moral, and legal deviance; and the delimiting of “prejudicial” human characteristics. GATTACA, in short, is concerned with what Foucault called a “biopolitics of population” (2003). Gattaca Aerospace Corporation and the society in which it is situated is structured, organized, and governed according to a biological politics that “deals with the population, with the population as a political problem, as a problem that is at once scientific and political, as a biological problem and as power’s problem” (Foucault 2003, 245). Biopolitics is underwritten by a “modality of power” that takes as its object the regularizing of the characteristics and internal dynamics of the population. By implication, it shapes individual capacities and conduct. In his text, Discipline and Punish (1977), Foucault distinguishes between “sovereign” or “juridical power” and “disciplinary power” by contrasting the bloody, harsh, and ostentatious display of the king’s might in the torture of offenders, with the subtle, almost invisible, and highly pervasive disciplinary mechanism of the timetable. In the History of Sexuality (1978a), we are introduced to the 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Biopolitics and Genetic Capital in GATTACA


regulatory “apparatus” of sexuality that produces “sex” as an object in discourse, situating sex as a social and political rather than biological object. Here Foucault introduces us to “biopolitics,” which concern regulating and standardizing both the conduct of individuals and the population, making conduct amenable to statistical calculation and prediction. Biopolitics comprises three forms of power: governmental power—”big” power that works through techniques and mechanisms that regulate and standardize the conduct of masses, aggregates, and populations; disciplinary power—a corrective “capillary” power that normalizes through techniques and mechanisms of micromanagement of individual bodies, production of subjectivities, and enhancement of the productive capacities of those subjects; and juridical-sovereignroyal power—a repressive, command-and-control, state-centered form found in both despotic types of rule as well as liberalism’s social contract and rule of law. These three forms or modalities of power together form a complex and totalizing form of social management or governance. It is this biopolitics of population and social ordering that will be explored in GATTACA.

Cr imino lo gy and Illi b er ali sm The themes raised by GATTACA and Foucault’s notion of biopolitics parallel themes found within criminology. The kind of biological determinism and actuarialism depicted in the film has a long history in criminology, beginning with the social statistics of Adolphe Quetelet and André-Michel Guerry in the early nineteenth century (Beirne and Messerschmidt 2006). Social statistics provided a way of tracking the “criminal classes” and eventually a way of rendering predictions about what became known as the “dangerous classes” of poor and unemployed. Risk of criminality, poverty, and unemployment were thought to correlate with moral and biological defects. Italian physician Cesare Lombroso introduced the idea of the “born criminal” and eventually established the Positivist School of criminal anthropology (supported by Enrico Ferri and Raffaele Garofalo). Born criminals were thought to be incorrigible “atavists” (genetic throwbacks). Lombroso believed that there was a correlation between phenotype and genetic predisposition to criminality. At the beginning of the twentieth century, English physician Charles Goring, whose work straddled the areas of social statistics, the medical study of convicts, and evolutionary biology influenced by Darwin, advanced the idea that criminality as well as intelligence were hereditary. This work resonated with the broader bourgeois concern within Britain with restoring or at least 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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stemming the political and economic decline of the empire. Eugenics appeared to be a viable strategy toward this end. This strategy would have the middle and upper classes interbreed and have the working, lower classes isolated and sterilized. This elimination strategy for the purification of the population was based on the belief that some had “bad” genes and others “good” genes, indicated by class and status. Eugenics, then, was conceived as a strategy to improve the moral and physical character of the British population by eliminating “a broad spectrum of social undesirables, including the physically unfit, alcoholics, the very poor, the morally and mentally depraved, and habitual criminals” (Beirne and Messerschmidt 2006, 280). Geneticism as an ideology and rationality of rule underpined this eugenic strategy for the improvement of life, and in this respect GATTACA depicts the “dark side” of biopolitics (Dean 1999, 139). McLaren (1990) describes a nineteenth-century evolutionary eugenics founded by Francis Galton. Here, social statistics are compiled to produce actuarial tables used to chart the evolution of the population’s characteristics. This eugenic program advocated selective breeding of the “fit” to produce a population with preferred mental and physical attributes while restricting the breeding of the “unfit.” Intelligence, feeble-mindedness, criminality, alcoholism, and other characteristics where thought to be hereditary. Therefore it was important to detect differences among people and adopt a selective breeding strategy. However, a biological eugenics based on the work of Austrian Gregor Mendel emphasized that “characteristics passed from one generation to the next was determined by a combination of dominant and recessive elements” (McLaren 1990, 16). This genetic view, by implication, rejected the evolutionary position of the hereditary view of how to increase the population’s “fitness.” This is because the genetic view of a biological eugenics held that the evolutionary eugenic strategy of selective breeding was based only on manifest differences. “The Galtonian biometricians and the Mendelian-minded biologists could heatedly disagree about the best way to analyse the transmission of characteristics over time, but they gave the public the impression that all scientists at least agreed that heredity was now determined to be more important than environment” (McLaren 1990, 17). Both these views are embodied in GATTACA, especially a “radical strand of thought in eugenic thinking [that] was rooted in a belief in perfection” (McLaren 1990, 18). Importantly, with the view that “lack of fitness” was hereditary, a determinism was established that fuelled a fear that the lower classes or unfit would multiply thoughtlessly “while the prudent restricted family size” (McLaren 1990, 18), 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




thus making eugenics an important “scientific” mechanism of social control. “What eugenicists wanted . . . was a new aristocracy. It was difficult to police or repress the breeding of the unfit, but one could at least reward the reproduction of the fit” (McLaren 1990, 25). This reward is evident in GATTACA, where genetic capital, one’s “genetic quotient” as Vincent tells us, determines one’s social, political, and economic entitlements and where a widespread genomic discrimination (i.e., genoism) ensures this. The certainty that all human characteristics are determined by heredity and contained in one’s genes underpinned Hitler’s strategy to strengthen the German “race” by eliminating Jews, homosexuals, political dissidents, and anyone considered threatening or polluting. This is also the same ideology that informed the early to mid-twentieth century mass sterilization (i.e., genetic hygiene) programs of liberal democracies such as the United States, Canada, and the Scandinavian states (McLaren 1990; Park and Radforth 1998). As Colaguori (2005), Dean (1999), Pratt (2000), Ratner and McMullan (1983), Snider (1998), and Valverde (1996) have demonstrated, such “illiberal” forms of governance are not diametrically opposed to the ideals of liberal democracy and sometimes are informed and legitimated by them. Dean (1999), drawing on Valverde (1996), argues that liberalism has a “despotic” component, especially where “unimproved” populations are at issue. Of interest is how such “practices of improvement can be used to divide populations on the basis of those who avail themselves of the opportunity for improvement and those who do not” (Dean 1999, 133). This is seen in GATTACA, where it has been determined that “in-valids” cannot be improved and are incorrigible. Authoritarianism can be justified under liberalism for the purposes of improving people’s capacities for self-government, cultural development, training, and instruction (Dean 1999, 133). This authoritarian current is also explored by Pratt (2000) in tracing the emergence and transformation of the concept of “dangerousness” and the rise of indeterminate sentencing as a normal part of contemporary Western criminal justice systems. This antidemocratic and authoritarian current within liberal democracies is also of interest to Ratner and McMullan (1983), discussed in the context of the rise and normalizing of the “exceptional state” wherein coercion becomes the major mode of “democratic” government following a crisis of leadership.2 The point is that under some circumstances, authoritarian and despotic forms of rule are justified and legitimated within democracies by liberalism. On the other hand, authoritarianism itself is also a distinct form of nondemocratic, illiberal rule. Thus it is difficult to determine 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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if the society of GATTACA, although clearly authoritarian, is a liberal democracy or fascist regime. The line is fine, and in my opinion, this is part of the value of the film. GATTACA also displays both a biological and evolutionary form of racism, both of which are embodied in what Foucault called “biopolitics.” GATTACA and Foucault provide us a way to reexamine and build upon these two important conceptualizations of governance and social control.

No r ms, D isc ipl ine, and Bi opower Foucault has identified, from the middle ages to the advanced liberal capitalist period, the operation of three different but overlapping types of power: sovereign-juridical-royal power, disciplinary-normalizing power, and a regulatory-standardizing-governmental power or biopower (discussed briefly in the previous chapter). All three operate within biopolitics, a biological politics of life. For Foucault (1965; 1978a; 2000a; 2000b), the norm has played an increasingly central role in the governing of Western capitalist societies. The norm is a mechanism, he argues, that enables the classification and evaluation of conduct. In technologically advanced societies, as with GATTACA, the norm is biopolitical. According to Foucault, it is “the one element that will circulate between the disciplinary and the regulatory, which will also be applied to body and population alike” (2003, 252). For instance, in GATTACA, “in-valid” operates as a category of person but also the normative classification of the potential and capacity attributed to a class within the population. Particular techniques of regulation, such as urine analysis, blood tests, and routine genome sequencing operate as normative mechanisms at the level of individuals but are concerned with a category of person indicative of an entire population. That is, although the individual is subjected to corrective and disciplinary practices, the entire population is taken as the object of a biological politics of life and thus subject to biopolitical mechanisms and techniques of regulation. Thus in the case of GATTACA, a biologically derived norm informs disciplinary practices that seek to correct conduct and regularize group conduct in order to render individual and collective activity predictable and manageable. Ewald, drawing on Foucault, states the following: The norm is the principle that allows discipline to develop from a simple set of constraints into a mechanism; it serves as the matrix that transforms the negative restraints of the juridical into the more positive controls of normalization and helps to produce the generalization 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




of discipline. The norm is also a means through which the disciplinary society communicates with itself. The norm relates the disciplinary institutions of production—knowledge, wealth, and finance—to one another in such a way that they become truly interdisciplinary; it provides a common language for these various disciplines and makes it possible to translate from one disciplinary idiom into another. (1990, 141)

In GATTACA, genetics and genomics offer a common language for translating everyday life and social problems into biological categories. Through the knowledges of genetics and genomics, social life and problems are made to appear as amenable to scientific and technical solutions and as appropriate objects of a politics underscored by a form of biological and evolutionary racism. This norm, according to Ewald, “is a measurement and a means of producing a common standard” (1990, 141). Combined with “the institution of a social security system it will become a way to manage the entire population of a given state” (Ewald 1990, 141). The society depicted in GATTACA has a very sophisticated social security system; everyone has a data file that can be instantly retrieved via a vast physical and mobile network. The security of society rests on the quality and quantity of information compiled, collated, and processed. Unknowns are considered dangerous. The norm is central in an obvious way for dividing the population into two differentiated groups—the valids and in-valids. In Discipline and Punish and the History of Sexuality, Foucault details how norms are derived and applied through the perpetual observation, examination, and evaluation of the human sciences. This is why knowledge considered to be scientific cannot be separated from its effects of power and domination (1980d). Truth claims authorized by scientific knowledge play a pivotal role in supporting social programs of policing (Foucault 1980d). Policing is driven by what Foucault calls “regulatory disciplinary power” (2003, 254), which is both the disciplining and normalizing of the individual body and the regulation and regularizing of the life and death of the social body. It concerns also the standardizing of needs and means of human fulfillment. Racism in the context of GATTACA is a complex regulatory-disciplinary apparatus of production; it takes as its object the human species, derives knowledge, and produces the norm on which is constructed sets of practices and programs of regulation, in turn authorized and legitimated by geneticism. Through Madness and Civilization (1965), The Birth of the Clinic (1973), “The Birth of Social Medicine” (2000a), “The Politics of Health in the Nineteenth Century” (1984), Discipline and Punish 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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(1977), and The History of Sexuality (1978a), we can see a gradual mutation in Foucault’s analytic. In the History of Sexuality, Foucault begins to outline a shift away from what he, in Discipline and Punish, called the “disciplinary society” to what in the History of Sexuality is referred to as the “normalizing society.” The individual body is disciplined and the social body is “regularized” (Foucault, 2003, 247). Disciplinary power is individualizing whereas biopower is “massifying” (Foucault, 2003, 243); the former is directed at “man-as-body” while the latter is directed at “man-as-species” (Foucault, 2003, 243). Foucault distinguishes between discipline and biopower by looking at their objects (see particularly 2003, 249–50). It is these objects of management—whether of the human body or of the human race— that condition or govern how they are to be managed: through a combination of disciplinary mechanisms and regulatory mechanisms (2003, 251). A biopolitical normalizing society is one wherein “the norm of discipline and the norm of regulation intersect” (Foucault 2003, 253). Fordism is a good example of this intersection. Through the management principles outlined by Frederick Taylor, which became “the bureaucratization of the structure of control” (Littler 1978, 185) known as Taylorism, Henry Ford was able to discipline labor and regularize production toward generating vast amounts of profit: mass production of standardized goods through breaking down production into “specialized and discrete tasks” and through structuring these tasks via the “formal study of time motion within the factory” (Allen 1996, 283). The technology itself used in the plant that ensured the regularizing of production of standardized parts also ensured labor discipline. At the risk of overextending this analogy, we might also look to the genetics lab as a factory that regularizes the production of standardized goods: genetic capital embedded in the body and population of the valid. It is useful to consider Foucault’s early writings for what they can tell us about the articulation of disciplinary power (that prominent form of power relation discussed in Discipline and Punish) with governmental biopower (the form that Foucault focused on in the first volume of the History of Sexuality and his recently translated lectures, “Society Must be Defended” [2003]). This provides us with a fruitful way of framing the policing of genetic capital; the managing of the risk posed by in-valids; the pervasive understanding of social problems such as poverty and unemployment as technical, scientific, or biological problems; and the black market in genetic capital (and emergence of what are called “borrowed ladders,” discussed later in this chapter). 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley



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Foucault provides us with many descriptions of the qualities and characteristics of this modality of power in writings such as The History of Sexuality (1978a), “Two Lectures” (1980d), and Discipline and Punish (1977). This type of power is sometimes referred to as “royal” power, “juridical” power, or the “juridico-discursive.” Sovereignty as a model of power is the most established and is dominant today in Western liberal democracies. Extrapolating from Foucault’s texts, this model most accurately describes the operation of power in Western society from roughly the twelfth century to the second half of the eighteenth century. This takes us from feudalism to merchant capitalism to the rise of industrial capitalism (see Hunt 1993; Tadros 1998). As a form of rule, sovereignty is characterized first by despotism and then later by the rule of law and the social contract “represented by Rousseau and his contemporaries” (Foucault 1980d, 102). Law is regarded as the dominant mechanism of governance. Power is understood in zero-sum terms (e.g., rights may give liberties to some but then liberties must be taken from others). This mode of power is about the state’s capacity to directly engage in repression through the display and use of force (e.g., military might and state police). However, in the end such repression is limited by individual rights and the rule of law; thus “formalism” (universal norms such as “procedural fairness” or “equality”) is characteristic of liberal rule. A main focus is on punishment of the body with an emphasis on general deterrence. According to Foucault, this model for understanding power is so dominant today that even divergent political theories such as liberalism and Marxism characterize power in the same way: as “deeply economistic in nature” (Foucault 1980d; Leonard 1995, 134, 137). For Foucault, these dominant but seemingly opposed political theories conceive power as a quantum of force to be used as an instrument or possession: something “modelled upon the commodity,” which was “always in a subordinate position relative to the economy” (1980d, 89). Foucault argued that despite the dominance of this model for visualizing power, it simply does not adequately capture how power operates within modern Western societies. This does not mean sovereignty and centralized apparatuses of control such as the police and military or criminal law are not important; simply that there are features about the contemporary nature, operation and effects of power, domination, and control that cannot be visualized through this model. The “norm,” according to Foucault, comes to displace law as the major mechanism of control, but this escapes the model 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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of sovereignty. In GATTACA, for example, law is present but the biological norm is clearly central for assessing, evaluating, classifying, and acting upon the population. Hence with disciplinary power, the emerging human sciences become more important than law for public administration. It is in this context that Foucault has commented on the “overvaluing” of the problem of the state and the need to “cut of the king’s head” in political theory (1991b, 102; see also Foucault 1980d and 1978b). This challenge to move beyond the model of sovereignty is necessary, Foucault argued, because “the way in which power is exercised and functions in a society like ours is little understood” (1988a, 103). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a new mode of power emerged—one that was “absolutely incompatible with the relations of sovereignty” (Foucault 1980d, 104). As Tadros (1998) and Palmer and Pearce (1983) show, what is at stake here is both the conceptual model of theorizing power’s operation as well as how it actually works as a material and productive force. As a model for conceptualizing power, sovereignty cannot explain new developments in the character and actual operation of “disciplinary power.” Foucault writes, “We must eschew the model of Leviathan in the study of power. We must escape from the limited field of juridical sovereignty and State institutions, and instead base our analysis of power on the study of the techniques and tactics of domination” (Foucault 1980d, 102). He does not dismiss the role of the state in what he calls “the era of governmentality” (1991b, 103), which is arguably our current period, but he does downgrade the role of the state, especially law, as the dominant agent and site of governance. The state today is central, according to Foucault, but not in the way that most people think “thanks to this governmentality” (Foucault, 1991b, 103). I believe there is good reason to hold that Foucault believed that the state had been, at least since the rise of capitalism, “hollowed out” (Jessop 1993; see Walters 1997). It is this hollowed out or “more limited” state that is held up as being central, but it really does not play the role that many think it does: “But the state, no more probably today than at any other time in its history, does not have this unity, this individuality, this rigorous functionality, nor, to speak frankly, this importance; maybe, after all, the state is no more than a composite reality and a mythicized abstraction, whose importance is a lot more limited than many of us think” (Foucault, 1991b, 103). This, however, should not be taken as an imperative to displace the state from studies of power, domination, and governance, as some have argued (e.g., Rose and Miller 1992). As Palmer and Pearce (1983) and 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




Tadros (1998) demonstrate, although the “code” or discourse on sovereignty is not compatible with that of disciplinary power on a theoretical level, empirically both forms of power operate together, reinforcing one another (see Foucault 1980d, 106, 108). Law, for example, still plays an important role in contemporary governance, but it operates in the service of “normalization” and follows the imperatives of discipline. In this sense, law has been “disciplined” or “governmentalized”: “We need to see things not in terms of the replacement of a society of sovereignty by a disciplinary society and the subsequent replacement of a disciplinary society by a society of government: in reality one has a triangle, sovereignty-discipline-government, which has as its primary target the population and as its essential mechanism the apparatuses of security” (Foucault 1991b, 102).

D isc ipl inary Power Disciplinary power can be conceived as a mutation of “sovereign” or “juridical” power. The central mechanism for the application of sovereign power, criminal law, could not adequately grapple with epidemics like the plague or rise of the “dangerous classes.” Foucault outlines a gradual mutation into a “disciplinary power” that takes regulatory law and policy to be an instrument of governance and is more adequate to control and ameliorate epidemics. This is clear in his work “The Rise of Social Medicine,” Madness and Civilization, and the Birth of the Clinic—which are synthesized in Discipline and Punish (notably in the section, “Panopticism”). Although this is discussed to varying degrees in various writings and interviews including, inter alia, “Two Lectures” (1980d), “Power and Sex” (1988b), “Body/ Power” (1980a), “The Confession of the Flesh” (1980b), and “The Discourse on Power” (1991a), it is Discipline and Punish (1977) that contains the most nuanced treatment of the inadequacies of sovereignty and control through the criminal law (i.e., “command and control” strategies). This is also to say that sovereignty’s corresponding reductionist conception of society as a collection of individuals contractually bound to one another is challenged and ultimately rejected by Foucault. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault puts forth a rich description of a “disciplinary society.” According to Foucault, the characteristics of “disciplinary power”—that it is relational, dispersed, and constitutive—distinguish it from power as it is conceived through the theory of sovereignty (1978a, 145). Through his attention to “penality” as an apparatus of security and his descriptions of various technologies, 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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techniques, and tactics of exercising disciplinary power, Foucault illustrates why sovereignty is an inadequate model for identifying and explaining the regulation and control of complex social phenomena in advanced capitalist societies. The History of Sexuality takes up these themes and discusses one apparatus of security in detail. Here, Foucault discusses how “sexuality” became an apparatus of security that made possible an array of social practices concerned with the production and application of knowledges in the search for and production of “truth” about human subjects. His discussion of sexuality as a mechanism of governance leads to the advancement of the idea of a “normalizing society.” Whereas the social technology of the “panopticon” was central to penality, the “confessional” is key to sexuality. These technologies of the surveillance, examination, correction, and modification of human subjectivities and capacities serve as models for the human sciences’ treatment of human beings as both objects of knowledge and knowing subjects. Disciplinary techniques of regulation, according to Foucault, owe their emergence to the epidemics of the eighteenth century and a system of social medicine that began to be implemented in Europe in the seventeenth century to manage pathologies of a social and biological nature (Foucault 1965, 2000a, 1977). Disciplinary techniques, however, were not adept at managing or regulating endemics, “illnesses that were difficult to eradicate and that were not regarded as epidemics . . . but as permanent factors which . . . sapped the population’s strength, shortened the working week, wasted energy, and cost money” (Foucault 2003, 244). Social problems such as crime, poverty, and unemployment are today treated as “permanent factors”—problems of control and management. In GATTACA, the persistence of the in-valid underclass and the threat it poses to the perfection of humankind situates “faith births” and “god children” as endemics or permanent factors that weaken the population. As “new standards” of excellence are set, the growth of the underclass will continue to threaten existence of the “valid” class. As Director Josef (Gore Vidal) states, where Gattaca Aerospace once recruited from those with “minor shortcomings,” there are now “enough of the right kind of people to warrant a new measuring stick . . . bodies with minds to match.” Factors in the emergence of new objects of regulation, according to Foucault, include the increase in population and process of industrialization (2003, 248). Industrial capitalism required “the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




the adjustment of the phenomena of population to economic processes . . . The adjustment of the accumulation of men to that of capital, the joining of the growth of human groups to the expansion of productive forces and the differential allocation of profit, were made possible in part by the exercise of bio-power and its many forms and modes of application” (Foucault 1978a, 141). In other words, factors contributing to the emergence of capitalism are conditions that made possible disciplinary and regulatory power—the “great biopolar technology” of the nineteenth century (Foucault 1978b, 141).

Bio power Foucault explains that the operation of biopower is via a “biopolar technology” that has “two axes” of social management: “the disciplines of the body” and the “regulation of the population” (1978b, 145). The disciplining and production of knowledge of the body is extensively detailed in Discipline and Punish and the regulation of the population outlined in the final pages of the History of Sexuality. Biopower developed as a counterpart to “sovereign power” or the right of the king or state “to take life or let live” (1978b, 136). This right to take life or let live is also referred to as “right of the sword” (Foucault 1978b, 136, 137, 144).3 Foucault observes, “Now I think we see something new emerging in the second half of the eighteenth century: a new technology of power, but this time it is not disciplinary. The technology of power does not exclude the former, does not exclude disciplinary technology, but it does dovetail into it, integrate it, modify it some extent, and above all, use it by sort of infiltrating it, embedding itself in existing disciplinary techniques” (Foucault 2003, 242). In the eighteenth century, population emerges as an object of intervention because it “no longer lives and dies, but has a birth rate and a death rate—at the very heart, then of this problem of population, there is a preoccupation which makes itself felt with growing force, that of health . . . The health of the population thus becomes a value, a new object of analysis and intervention” (Pasquino 1991, 115). The population, then, can be regulated not simply by concentrating on the training and correction of the individual but through attending to matters of health that pertain to the human species: “The biological traits of a population become relevant factors for economic management, and it becomes necessary to organise around them an apparatus which will ensure not only their subjection but the constant increase in their utility” (Foucault 2000, 172). As a power concerned with 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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the management and fostering of life that “has to qualify, measure, appraise, and hierarchize, rather than display itself in its murderous splendor” (Foucault 1978b, 144), the production, distribution, and application of norms are crucial and become important features of governance. Attention to sexual norms, for instance, makes possible both a micropower focused on detecting and correcting “perverse” sexual practices as well as a modality of power focused on the reproduction of the population and society more generally. This is a “regulatory disciplinary power” (Foucault 2003, 254) in which “two techniques of power” are joined (Foucault 1978b, 140; see also 2003, 241). In GATTACA governance of the population and the individual is organized around biological, genetic norms. These norms are produced, diffused, and enforced through the combination of these two techniques of power, which operate within the family, workplace, and community. Brought together are an “anatomo-politics of the human body” (developed in the eighteenth century; Foucault 2003, 243) and “a bio-politics of the population” (1978b, 139) or “human race” (2003, 243). “The disciplines of the body [as machine] and the regulations of the [biological processes of the] population constituted the two poles” of biopower (1978b, 139). The era of biopolitics, taking off in the nineteenth century, is marked by the emergence of “numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations” (Foucault 1978b, 140). Biopolitical techniques developed in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries absorb not only the techniques of discipline but also those of sovereignty. Biopower is concerned with the internal aspects of population and is similar to disciplinary power’s concern with the internal aspects of individual bodies (e.g., subjectivity). According to Foucault, biopower is a mode of power and regulation that works toward ensuring order, growth of wealth, and preservation of general health (Foucault 1991a, 170). It “protects the security of the whole from internal dangers . . . [It is] a technology of security . . . a reassuring or regulatory technology” (Foucault 2003, 249). Biopolitics concerns both the normalizing and regularizing of singular and collective bodies. In GATTACA biopolitics is underwritten by the disciplines of genetics and genomics, the expertise of the geneticist, the ideology and governing rationale of geneticism, and the practices of eugenics and genoism. These elements form a regulatory-disciplinary apparatus concerned with security and “internal dangers”: those internal to the population (having to do with the reproduction and growth of the in-valids) and those internal to the 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




body (such as “bad” genes). Thus a biopolitics of population, broadly speaking, concerns the policing of societal health and welfare. Evolutionary and biological racism operate in the film as what Foucault has described as “social medicine.” The discussion of social medicine—the diffusion of medical knowledge and practices as well as the objectifying of society-as-patient—is exemplified in Madness and Civilization (1965), The Birth of the Clinic (1973), “The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth Century” (2000b), and “The Birth of Social Medicine” (2000a). Social medicine is accomplished in part by what Foucault (1965, 39–40; 2000a; 2000b) terms “medical police.” This is a system of inspection made up of health inspectors as well as other experts (e.g., geneticists) who are charged with looking after state health and welfare—including the health and welfare of the general “species.” Medical police operate as part of the regulatory-disciplinary apparatus of security set out above. Thus Osborne stipulates: “One cannot speak of a policy specifically directed at ‘health’ here as such; rather police—and medical police specifically—focused upon a whole range of variables that would need regulation in pursuit of the health of the state. Policy here means those actions one takes to augment a population and its productivity in the state” (Osborne 1997, 177). As Osborne observes, to speak of policy is to speak of the act and the means of policing. Biopolitical governance thus operates via policies that conceive of security in terms of health. Biopolitical policies are “related to health, in so far as the health of a population is considered a value” (Osborne 1997, 178). In GATTACA policies derived from geneticism, the official rationality of governance in that society, are tasked with distributing social entitlements through the distribution and policing of genetic capital. Genoism is one such policy. Although unofficial, genoism is ubiquitous. The dividing line between health and illness is partly defined “by the subject’s lifestyle and activity” (Foucault 1988c, 170). In this way, the term “in-valid” does not simply refer to an underclass within the population but is a classification of illness, “un-fitness,” and unproductiveness. This “health norm”—the division between invalid and valid—is a “moving line” (Foucault 1988c, 170, 191) in that new biological and social norms continue to be created and imposed. With these shifting health norms mechanisms and techniques for the policing—disciplining and regularizing—of health and welfare are continually developed: “It can probably be said that certain phenomena of marginalisation are bound up with factors of separation between an ‘assured’ population and an ‘exposed’ population . . . Our systems of social security impose a particular way of life to which individuals are 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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Bi o p o l itic s, G enetic ism, and GAT TACA The exercise of power consists in guiding the possibility of conduct and putting in order the possible outcome. Basically power is less a confrontation between two adversaries or the linking of one to the other than a question of government . . . modes of action, more or less considered and calculated, which were destined to act upon the possibilities of action of other people. To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of others. —Foucault, “The Subject and Power”

The biopolitics of population is about governing. The regulatorydisciplinary apparatus of security described in the previous section is a governmental apparatus. In the film, this governmental apparatus is that of geneticism. This governing, according to Foucault, concerns not simply forbidding conduct but fostering conduct. It is about attending to the conditions that will foster and promote certain forms of conduct while not supporting others. To “structure the possible field of action of others,” as Foucault (1983, 221) suggests governing entails, involves less a concern with social action (as in the “interaction of human beings”) than the capacity, characteristics, and potential of categories of persons making up the population. Two such categories of person found in GATTACA are the “valid” and “in-valid”. To “structure the possible field of action” does not refer only to overt or direct intervention. It concerns to a greater degree a more tacit, indirect, approach to shaping conditions “at a distance.” This shaping of structural conditions or situational factors is an indirect means of making possible desired outcomes and impugning undersired outcomes. Shaping the conditions for life is thus an indirect and subtle form of governance on a different level than direct and overt intevention to prohibit already existing outcomes. Intervening in the genetic conditions for life is an example of structuring a field of possible actions, shaping subjects as well as the characteristics of the population. Governing concerns not simply management but a whole range of techniques and instruments (e.g., genome sequencing, actuarialism) employed in strategies (eugenics, genoism) derived from and indebted to forms of expertise and scientific knowledge (e.g., genetics, genomics). Thus genetics and genomics operate as a form of what 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


subjected, and any person or group that, for one reason or another, will not or cannot embrace that way of life is marginalized by the very operation of the institutions” (Foucault 1988d, 164–65).


Foucault (1980d) called “power/knowledge.” Practices of producing and applying scientific knowledge are exercises of power, and power is thus exercised through the expertise and practices (including examination, observation, testing, and division) characteristic of genetics and genomics. Foucault suggests “the finality of government resides in the things it manages and in the pursuit of the perfection and intensification of the processes which it directs; and the instruments of government, instead of being laws, now come to be a range of multiform tactics” (1991b, 95, emphasis added). Thus in GATTACA, geneticism consists of a range of multiform tactics, including the use of the police and law to legitimate the biological standard and the genetic capital that operates to exclude and manage an underclass of in-valids. Eugenic practices are geared toward perfecting the population, and although they are part of social policy, they are ultimately authorized by “the norm” and not “the law”; that is, genetics and genomics authorize eugenics through the rationality of geneticism, and although law is important, law is simply a means used to implement and enforce but not direct eugenic practices. Within GATTACA, “an actuarial language of probabilistic calculations and statistical distributions [are] applied to populations,” rather than a discourse oriented toward “moral or clinical description of the individual” (Feeley and Simon 1992, 452). This is an important feature of biopolitics, along with what Feeley and Simon call the “new penology”; both are concerned with systems of management. Statistical norms are established by genetics and genomics. One of the major objectives of governance in GATTACA is “identifying and managing unruly groups” (Feeley and Simon 1992, 435). Feeley and Simon have also discussed contemporary trends in Western penal systems to “target categories and subpopulations rather than individuals” (1992, 453). This approach to management “sorts individuals into groups according to the degree of control warranted by their risk profiles” (Feeley and Simon 1992, 459). This is the idea behind the classifications of “valid” and “in-valid.” “In-valid” is an underclass that is “also a dangerous class . . . for collective potential misbehavior. It is treated as a high-risk group that must be managed for the protection of the rest of society” (Feeley and Simon 1992, 443). Within GATTACA, the discipline of genetics is utilized to identify, classify, and assess risk factors and manipulate human characteristics and capacities. Stigmatization is also an important technique of management at an individual level (via genoism). The governing of social mobility and social power in GATTACA is undertaken through this form of biological and evolutionary racism. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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The science of genetics is like the “technological knowledge such as medicine, or rather some combination of medicine and hygiene” that is discussed by Foucault (2003, 252). Genetics establishes a link between knowledge of the individual and the population. Genetics (and genomics) “becomes a political intervention-technique with specific [disciplinary and regulatory] power-effects” (Foucault 2003, 252). Policies rooted in geneticism (including the illegal but tolerated practice of genoism) specify entitlements including upward mobility, status, and prestige by linking these to genetic capital. “Biopolitics,” as Foucault describes it, captures the complex system of governance operating in GATTACA: an organized scientific racism on a mass scale. Genetics, genomics, geneticism, eugenics, genoism, and geneticists are the key constituents of the system of social medicine (societal management, governance, and reproduction) depicted in GATTACA. Geneticism, the rationality of rule underpinning policy and by implication the social process of policing, indicates the prominence of the science and discourse of genetics and genomics and the associated practices of eugenics, genoism, and genome sequencing. This suggests a technologically advanced society; perhaps a liberal democracy or an authoritarian regime. Regardless of political formation, it is likely we are dealing with a postindustrial society that embraces technological solutions to social problems: a technocracy (Haggerty 2004; Postman 1993). “Consequently,” according to Haggerty (2004, 222), “police, correction officials and probation officers, among others, now find themselves deploying assorted technologies that draw from expertise in the physical sciences.” This has a transformative impact on the traditional work of policing and especially the formulation of questions about compliance, capability, and potential. Feeley and Simon’s discussion of the “new penology” helps us to see that techniques and technologies of control in the film mirror trends in contemporary Western states. There is good reason, especially given the themes addressed in our discussion of criminology and illiberalism, to conclude that Niccol’s film depicts a dystopian future that is driven by advances in the sciences. For example, sanctions under the “new penology” follow the logic of risk management, utilizing frequent drug testing, and people are managed through “aggregation” rather than individual treatment and intervention (Feeley and Simon 1992, 461). Drug tests under the “new penology” treat drug use as a “risk indicator,” used for “classifying the offender within a risk group” (Feeley and Simon 1992, 462). In GATTACA, risk factors are identified and subjects classified. Urine analysis, for 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




instance, reads “normal” or “no” to indicate alcohol content. Vincent, in preparing for his interview at Gattaca Aerospace must give a urine sample. Only a “0.00” alcohol content will qualify as “norm”; all others fail. GATTACA depicts a society obsessed with testing for risk factors, which begins before one’s birth and continues until death. There is little interest in treatment, mirroring the new penology (Feeley and Simon 1992, 462). A particularly telling scene depicts Vincent’s parents consulting a geneticist, who tells them that they ought to consider eradicating “prejudicial conditions” to reduce premature baldness, obesity, myopia, and other conditions that will saddle their second child, Anton, with “additional burdens.” Genetics and genomics here are not sciences concerned with rehabilitation or training individuals but with producing “valid” populations with a “genetic quotient” that “virtually guarantees” success, according to Vincent’s voiceover. Blind faith in science and technology can lead to perilous outcomes as technology and science have transformative effects on human relations (Haggerty 2004; Heidegger 1975; McCormick 1996; Postman 1993). For example, within the current justice system with advances in forensics, DNA is regarded as “a form of scientific triumphalism, where science thwarts human prejudices” (Haggerty 2004, 224). It is well known that the new “technoscientific” knowledge that has been slowly displacing social science knowledge, especially the policy-relevance of criminological knowledge, is fallible even if it is routinely taken in practice to be unproblematic. GATTACA most clearly demonstrates this and shows how scientific knowledge is used to improve the population yet underwrite marginalization, exclusion, and domination. The “in-valid” class is a working-class of manual laborers, distinguished from the middle and upper “valid” class. Vincent has aspirations but only illegitimate means for realizing these. Thus he becomes part of a despised but “elite” criminal class. He is what is known as a “borrowed ladder.” This “ladder” is a “valid” DNA helix purchased from a DNA broker (Tony Shalhoub) on the black market. By rigorously managing his virtual social identity of Jerome Morrow and “passing” himself off as a normal, valid member of society, Vincent is not only committing a fraud but also availing himself of prestige and status to which he is not entitled. One’s “genetic quotient” we learn is one’s resume. Blood is the ultimate “prestige symbol.” Most of the literature on “governmentality”—which Foucault described as that form of biopolitical rule characteristic of advanced capitalist societies—concentrates on liberal democratic forms of rule. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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In these societies, governance operates through freedom and choice: one’s capacity to make decisions and act is “governmentalized” or made into an instrument of governance, utilized strategically for aligning personal aspirations with political agendas (Rose and Miller 1992). We see in GATTACA not simply population management or a type of public administration wherein personal aspirations are subtly aligned with political agendas, but an overt authoritarian form of policing wherein categories of person are produced, imposed, and managed through an evolutionary and biological racism. Vincent is managed as an “in-valid” until he assumes the virtual social identity of Jerome Morrow, at which time he is managed as a “valid.” However, he must self-regulate as an invalid to keep from being exposed. Valids do not escape governance; they are simply subjected to different techniques and strategies. Vincent does not change; his category of person does and so does his access to social entitlements. A type of racism informs the social policy portrayed in GATTACA, which is similar to that of the Fascist Nazi Party: a “policy that was concerned with the elimination of all those who deviated from an ever more detailed set of norms and the reshaping of society” (Dean 1999, 143). Dean explains, The series, “population, evolution and race” is not simply a way of thinking about the superiority of the “white races” or of justifying colonialism, but also a way of thinking about how to treat the degenerates and the abnormal within one’s own population and prevent the further degeneration of the race . . . The life of the population, its vigour, its health, its capacity to survive, becomes necessarily linked to the elimination of internal and external threats. This power to disallow life is perhaps best encapsulated in the injunctions of the eugenic project: identify those who are degenerate, abnormal, feeble-minded or of an inferior race, and subject them to forced sterilization; encourage those who are superior, fit and intelligent to propagate . . . the elimination of other races is only one face of the purification of one’s own race. The other part is to expose the latter to a universal and absolute danger, to expose it to the risk of death and total destruction. (Dean 1999, 140–41)

In GATTACA, Niccol explores past, present, and a potential future and leads us to explore contemporary dilemmas such as the ethical, moral, and political good of stem-cell research, cloning, and genetic selection of offspring, among other things. This “political discourse that divides populations on the basis of race . . . makes the welfare and life of a racialized population the basis for national sovereignty and political community” (Dean 1999, 144). The perils of organizing 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley




the nation-state and political life around such a biological politics is well known. The science of genetics and genomics is no neutral biological or evolutionary science; it is political. It underpins the techniques of control and the governmental mechanism of racism, the policy of eugenics, the rationality of geneticism, and the genomic discrimination of genoism. All inform what is a complex matrix of social management and security: a broad social process of policing in an illiberal and authoritarian manner.

Co nc lusion GATTACA can be viewed fruitfully at a social-structural level with the help of Foucault, illustrating how the biopolitical apparatus of evolutionary and biological racism—one utilized in the twentieth century—operates as a regulatory-disciplinary apparatus of social management and security. In many ways, GATTACA is an analysis of contemporary conditions that could, if left unchecked, lead to a dystopian outcome. It offers us a way of pondering the fine line between liberalism and authoritarianism, and it makes much of the contemporary faith in science and the wrongheaded technocratic belief that scientific knowledge is value neutral and offers solutions for a wide variety of social problems. It politicizes science as a force of domination and begs us to ponder some very big ethical and moral dilemmas. It raises some well-known themes from our past (i.e., eugenics) and uses these to help us rethink the present and potential future. It offers a view on the growing “governmentalization” and “rationalization” of not just social life but life itself (Foucault 1991b; Spitzer 1979). It offers us some insight into the implications of currently employed control strategies and what a society organized around something like the “new penology” might look like (Feeley and Simon 1992; Garland 2001). It helps us visualize “the power of normalization,” how the object “population” is distinct from that of the “individual,” the imbrications of power and knowledge in modern societies, and the role of the norm in strategies of governance and marginalization. Particularly useful is how this film highlights a biological politics of life that resonates with contemporary social life.



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C hapter 1 1. See Bryman (1988) and Sayer (1992) on scientism and the social sciences. 2. This pertains to how theory is packaged for consumption rather than use. A great many social theory texts relay in narrative format an account of the development of the major ideas of particular thinkers. See Downes and Rock (2003), Morrison (1995), Ritzer and Goodman (2004), and Seidman (2007). The issue is not the accuracy of the content but the format and what this implicitly communicates about the nature and operation of theoretical concepts. Contrast these accounts of theory with that of Mills (1959), Layder (1993), Bourdieu (1992), Pearce (1989), Woodiwiss (2001, 2005), and Einstadter and Henry (2006). 3. Theoreticism, according to Pearce (1989, 14), occurs when theories are developed in a manner apart from any reference to an empirical referent; in turn empirical examples are marshalled only to illustrate concepts. The problem, according to Pearce, is that this form of theory construction and subsequent manner of illustrating concepts amounts to a substitute for investigating or exploring the complexity of social phenomena. Bourdieu has suggested that such a process is one of “theoretical compilation,” which is “entirely foreign to any application” (1992, 224). Important for the current discussion of pedagogy is Bourdieu’s provocative assertion that theoreticism is “born of the necessities of teaching, such eclectic classificatory compilations are good for teaching, but for no other purpose” (1992, 224). Related to this is what Woodiwiss has termed “representationalism” (1990, 6–11; 2001). Representationalist theory attempts to reduce what Woodiwiss calls the “irreducible” things of social science (i.e., the concepts and categories worked with) to their referents (i.e., the material that exists independently of the concept and the process of reference). This is to say that a representationalist theory conflates knowledge of reality and reality itself. This happens when social scientists erroneously hold that theories and concepts correspond to their object of analysis instead of understanding that theories are used to make (an only ever partial) reference to their object. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Notes

Notes

4. See Ericson (1998) for a more nuanced discussion of the sites of criminology. 5. “Coercive facticities” are discussed later in this chapter. The term refers to constructs that exist whether we want them to or not. They are generalized throughout our culture, and they shape our perceptions and in this case our analytical narratives. 6. My understanding of habitus derives from Bourdieu (1973, 1977, 1990a, 1981, 1990b, 1998). 7. See Blaikie (2000), Bryman (1988), and Sayer (1992) for discussions of the different conceptions of the nature and role of concepts within positivism, interpretivism, and realism. 8. Woodiwiss gets at this when he states that “knowledge as a set of discourses is as much a social fact and thus as much a material ‘thing’ as any of the objects to which we may suppose it to refer” (1998, 7). 9. Imagination is argued by Williams to be the central factor in the production of knowledge. Without it, social science is no more than a series of observations or descriptions. He asks, “Why should we pursue imagination now? An overweening emphasis on technique and empiricism has done more than simply decrease our sense of the real world. The raw empiricism of much of today’s published literature is producing a wealth of articles that are atheoretical, use poor data, are conceptually inadequate, and statistically indefensible. In short, the articles are meaningless to others and picayune; they do not contribute to knowledge” (1999, 5).

Chapter 2 1. It is worth noting that cultural criminology seems to forcefully delineate itself from the field of “moral panic” research as well as “media studies.” Cultural criminology is explicit that “low” culture as a form of expression that is often criminalized must be given a central place within criminology. 2. This point is especially valuable for my argument that fictional realities can be enlisted as both analytical and pedagogical tools. Although Rafter does not develop this, this is present in a minimalist fashion in her text and thus can be drawn on and developed further. 3. This is why both Potter and Ruggiero do not distinguish reading from “analytical” reading. Both are largely the same process but with different expressed aims.



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1. Mills refers to “physical science” (1959, 15) and the way it is practiced as an “intellectual style” (1959, 13); there is nothing in Mills’s work that suggests the social sciences could not also be characterized as an intellectual style or by different varying styles. There are obvious parallels here with cultural criminology, and this theme could be developed further in the future. 2. International Sociological Association, “Books of the Century,” http://www.isa-sociology.org/books/vt/bkv_000.htm.

C hapter 4 1. Katz distinguishes between “sadistic” and “ritualistic” killings, arguing that death or the prolonged suffering of the victim is not usually the aim of ritualistic killings. With ritualistic killings such as those caused by “stomping” (repeatedly striking a victim with the heel of one’s boot), one is symbolically excising an offence against moral order by attempting to erase all signs of its presence. A body beaten beyond the point of death may be an indication not necessarily of sadism but of a ritualistic effort to kill the consciousness of the individual.

Chapter 5 1. As Lee Harvey (1987) has pointed out, the notion of a uniform Chicago “school” collapses many different perspectives (both qualitative and quantitative) that were pioneered by Chicago sociology. For an example, see Smith and White (1929). Similarly, Stuart Hall (1990) has suggested that there was no Birmingham “school,” but I will use this term for convenience to encompass representative texts. 2. See Cohen (1972), Hall and Jefferson (1976), Hall et al. (1978), and Hebdige (1979). 3. Ritzer (1994a, 67) and Seidman (1994, 95) suggest that the University of Kansas was the first university to establish a sociology department, but given the influence of Chicago sociology the latter is considered the birthplace of sociology in North America. 4. Ritzer gives an interesting account of Max Weber’s visit to Chicago in 1904, suggesting that this “influenced his thinking about the spirit of capitalism” (1994a, 68). Subsequent to a passage by Weber taken from Marianne Weber’s biography, Ritzer comments, with reference to the Chicago school of sociology, “In his casual observations about Chicago, Weber anticipated many of the concerns of the Chicago School, including the city itself; its neighbourhoods; its racial and ethnic diversity; its problems, such as pollution, crime, and violence; its work settings . . . Weber even anticipated the Chicago School’s 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Chapter 3

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• “As a matter of fact civilization and social progress have assumed in our modern cities something of the character of a controlled experiment” (Park 1929, 1). • “As a matter of fact, most of our ordinary behavior problems are actually solved, if solved at all, by transferring the individual from an environment in which he behaves badly to one in which he behaves well. Here, again, social science has achieved something that approaches in character a laboratory experiment. For the purpose of these experiments the city, with its natural regions, becomes a ‘frame of reference,’ i.e., a device for controlling our observations of social conditions in their relation to human behavior” (Park 1929, 11). • “The metropolis is, it seems, a great sifting and sorting mechanism, which, in ways that are not yet wholly understood, infallibly selects out of the population as a whole the individuals best suited to live in a particular region and a particular milieu. The larger the city, the more numerous and the more completely characterized its suburbs will be. The city grows by expansion, but it gets its character by the selection and aggregation of its population, so that every individual finds, eventually, either the place where he can, or the place where he must, live” (Park 1929, 9). • “People live together on the whole, not because they are alike, but because they are useful to one another . . . and where every community is likely to be composed of people who live together in relations that can best be described as symbiotic rather than social” (Park 1929, 10). • “In a perfectly stable society where man has achieved a complete biological and social equilibrium, social problems are not likely to arise, and the anxieties, mental conflicts, and ambitions which stimulate the energies of civilized man, and incidentally make him a problem to himself and to society, are lacking” (Park 1929, 12). • “[The city’s] component elements, institutions and persons are so intimately bound up that the whole tends to assume the character of an organism, or to use Herbert Spencer’s term, a super-organism . . . The biotic community, as described by plant and animal ecologists, is an example of what one means by the term super-organism . . . Competition, which is the fundamental organizing principle in the plant and animal community, plays a scarcely less important role in the human community. In the plant and animal community it has tended to bring about (1) an orderly distribution of the population, and (2) a differentiation 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


later interest in using the city as a laboratory to get at basic human processes.” 5. Examples of Park’s influential views on the city and society (which evince a Meadian interactionism) are as follows:

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of the species within the habitat . . . The same principles operate in the case of human population, with the exception of the latter case the habitat is the economic region and competition achieves and maintains a relatively stable equilibrium, not by a differentiation of the species, but by a division of labor and a differentiation of function or of occupation among individual organisms” (Park 1952a, 118–19). • “Society is everywhere a control organization. Its function is to organize, integrate, and direct the energies resident in the individuals of which it is composed. One might, perhaps, say that the function of society was everywhere to restrict competition and by so doing bring about a more effective co-operation of the organic units of which society is composed” (Park 1952c, 157). • “The life of the community therefore involves a kind of metabolism. It is constantly assimilating new individuals, and just as steadily, by death or otherwise, eliminating older ones” (Park 1952e, 169). • “[Cities] bring together, to be sure, the ends of the earth, all the breeds and types and classes; but having brought them together, the cities sift and sort and redistribute their ill-assorted populations into new groups and classes, according to new and unexpected patterns. The explanation is that competition, the sheer struggle for existence, finally compels each individual to seek and find the task that he can best perform, and the ever-widening division of labor multiplies his opportunities to find a vocation for which he is suited. This sifting-sorting process undermines old associations, takes individuals out of their inherited and racial groups, breaks up families; loosens all ties, in fact. And this is part of, or at leas an incident and by-product of, the process of social metabolism” (Park 1952d, 184, emphasis added). 6. On his environmental determinism, see Park (1952b), especially part II. An example of his notion of disorganization is provided by way of a brief essay on the hobo, wherein he comments, “The hobo, who begins his career by breaking the local ties that bound him to his family and his neighbourhood, has ended by breaking all other associations. He is not only a ‘homeless man,’ but a man without a cause and without a country” (Park 1925, 159). “He has sacrificed the human need of association and organisation to a romantic passion for individual freedom . . . But in order that there may be permanence and progress in society the individuals who compose it must be located; they must be located, for one thing, in order to maintain communication, for it is only through communication that the moving equilibrium which we call society can be maintained” (Park 1925, 158–59, emphasis added). This “wanderlust,” according to Park, “has assumed for him [the hobo], as for so many others, the character of a vice. He has 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Notes

7.

8. 9. 10.

Notes gained his freedom but he has lost his direction . . . The hobo seeks change solely for the sake of change; it is a habit, and like the drug habit, moves in a vicious circle” (Park 1925, 158). It is interesting to contrast this view and others like it (see Smith and White 1929) with Alvin Gouldner’s romanticized view of a Chicago school that made no value judgments about the “deviants” they studied, as expressed in his preface to Taylor, Walton, and Young’s (1973) influential assault on positivistic criminology. Here it is stated that “the richness of their [Chicago] researches derives in some part from the fact that they never had to liberate themselves from viewing deviants as a kind of political low-life” (Taylor, Walton, and Young, 1973, xii). Although speaking mainly of the later period that Harvey (1987, 264) refers to as third- and fourth-generation Chicagoans of the 1950s and 1960s characterized in part by Blumerian interactionism, it seems unlikely, given Park’s and others’ moral bent and uncritical acceptance of the then current moral order as unproblematic, that later generations of Chicago sociologists would not be influenced by these attitudes. The latter suggestion by Gouldner that “the Meadian view of the Chicogoans . . . is internal, and timeless, and without any impulse to moralize” (Taylor, Walton, and Young, 1973, xiii) is suspect, to say the least. According to Park, “the essential characteristics of community . . . are those of: (1) a population, territorially organized, (2) more or less completely rooted in the soil it occupies, (3) its individual units living in a relationship of mutual interdependence that is symbiotic rather than societal, in the sense in which that term applies to human beings” (1952c, 148). This “human ecology” based on “competition rather than consensus, is identical, in principle at least, with plant and animal ecology.”(1952c, 148–49) Park goes on to suggest that “when . . . sudden and catastrophic change occurs—it may be a war, a famine, or pestilence” (1952c, 149) or “an epidemic or an invasion of the habitat by some alien species” resulting in the “decline” or “destruction of the original population” (1952c, 148), “it upsets the biotic balance, breaks the ’cake of custom,’ and releases energies up to that time held in check. A series of rapid and even violent changes may ensure which profoundly alter the existing organisation of communal life and give a new direction to the future course of events” (1952c, 149). This “concentric circles” model was also employed by CCCS researchers Rachel Powell and John Clarke (1976). See Snodgrass (1983). Although Whyte does not use this terminology, his formulation nevertheless bears striking resemblance to the formulation employed by Birmingham researchers, especially Phil Cohen (1997) and Paul Willis (1977). 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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11. The turn toward an analysis of the role of ideology in “deviant politics” can be linked back to the later works of Chicago sociologist Louis Wirth who, according to Sumner (1994, 91), “did more than most in American sociology to establish its [ideology] significance for the emergent sociology of deviation.” With a new-found affinity with German intellectuals, Wirth wrote the introduction to the English translation of Mannheim’s, Ideology and Utopia. 12. For Park it seems as though the city acted as the frame of reference that organized the researcher’s view of things. Whereas Cohen and others seemed to believe that one’s frame of reference was subjective and that this had the effect of ordering the material world. 13. The work of Paul Willis (1977) exemplifies this view. 14. The dialectic here is Meadian “self-interaction” and “symbolic interaction” with meaningful objects including other “selves,” as discussed in Chapter 4. 15. Merton holds innovation to be an acceptance of culture goals but rejection of legitimate means for attaining those goals. Instead one adopts illegitimate means. Cohen, however, holds innovation as a replacement of the dominant culture goals precisely so that one can attain them. 16. This same concern would be taken up by the CCCS, who suggested that such nonutilitarian acts could be viewed as expressions of “style” (Hebdige 1979). Stan Cohen (1972) speaks of the vandalism by the Mods and Rockers in the 1960s as reported in the newspapers. Here such acts are also seen to be expressive of identity and values different from mainstream culture. 17. The work of the CCCS is referred to as the “new subcultural theory” by Cohen (1980) and Clarke (1997). 18. At this point it is important and necessary to acknowledge the pivotal contributions to cultural studies by cultural historians and critics such as Raymond Williams, Edward Thompson, and William Hoggart, the first director of the CCCS. Their works predated the rise of contemporary cultural studies in Britain and set the stage for the emergence of such studies. To do more than mention their importance is beyond the scope of this chapter. I mention their endeavors to acknowledge their unique contributions but maintain that it was primarily the U.S. sociological endeavors that, when appropriated by the CCCS, gave the ideas behind the works of Williams, Thompson, and Hoggart some empirical and expanded theoretical dimension as well as contemporary relevance well beyond their initial scope. 19. Hebdige’s 1979 cultural studies classic, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, which had been reprinted ten times by 1996, is a version of his MA thesis completed at the CCCS and originally titled, “Aspects of Style in the Deviant Sub-Cultures of the 1960s.” Note that the revised title conveys a slightly different perspective; The original title 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Notes

Notes

situates the study and Hebdige’s influences within the context of those sociologies of deviance and delinquency of 1950s and 1960s United States. More importantly, it also situates his work within an already established tradition and suggests a “social problems” orientation. The published title, I suspect, was updated to invoke notions of an original and pioneering study within the fledgling “interdiscipline” of cultural studies. The bibliography is filled with studies on American delinquency; notably Chicago and neo-Chicagoan studies such as Whyte’s Street Corner Society, Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Cohen’s Delinquent Boys, and Becker’s The Other Side. Referring to Becker’s (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance in an appendix, Hebdige states that it is “an acknowledged ‘classic’ in the field of deviancy studies and still stands as one of the best examples of the transactional method” (1979, 178). Further on in his bibliographic essay, he acknowledges the Chicago school and suggests that “the analysis of subculture grew in large part directly out of the [American] study of delinquent street gangs” (1979, 180–81). 20. Argot is the French for “slang.” It is interesting to note that “argot,” which Phil Cohen and others use to characterize subcultural “style,” “was the jargon of the criminal underworld, characterized by colourful images and distinctive intonation and designed to confuse the outsider. Some French writers write in argot and contribute to its diffusion and development. More generally, the special vocabulary used by any social or professional group is also known as argot” (Cousin 1995, 27). The influence of semiotics, which has become so important for British cultural studies, was anticipated by Park and Burgess some 50 years prior to the rise of the Birmingham CCCS. As Sumner (1994, 86) suggests, a distinct dialect or argot was seen by Chicagoans as a distinctive characteristic of every social group. Following Sumner’s stipulation that “the sociological study of argot was a major theme within the Chicago school” (1994, 87), Anderson (1962a) provides an excellent example of this in what I call his “hobo taxonomy”: See part I for his description of “Hobohemia” and his use of a particularized jargon; see part II, especially pages 100 to 101, for the hobo’s own complex “insider” language used in daily intercourse. 21. Cohen echoes the American Oscar Newman’s (1972) work on urban space and crime prevention with his suggestion that changes in urban housing policy severed kinship networks and created isolating, anonymous space that lacked the informal social controls that had until that time been immanent in the physical and social structure of the neighborhood. 22. Gordon asks, “What are the most indicative indices of participation in a particular subculture? If any one had to be singled out, the writer would offer speech patterns (particularly pronunciation and inflection) as at once the easiest to ‘observe’ and the most revealing. Clothes 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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would probably rank next in indicativeness and ease of discernability— contrary to casual opinion, for men as well as women” (1997, 43). 23. Evidence of this comes when Derek is raped in prison by a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang. It is Derek’s former black high school principal, Dr. Robert Sweeney, who comes to his aid. Sweeney helps Derek realize that nothing he has done has made his life better. This is pivotal moment for Derek, a turning point. Sweeney states, “There was a moment . . . like this. When I used to blame everything and everyone . . . for all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to me, that I saw happen to my people. I used to blame everybody. Blamed white people, blamed society, blamed God. I didn’t get no answers ‘cause I was asking the wrong questions. You have to ask the right questions.” Derek asks, “Like what?” Sweeney replies, “Has anything you’ve done made your life better?” 24. Upon release from prison Derek adopts middle-class values. He insists his sister Danica stay in school and not take a job to help the family. He encourages Dan to let his hair grow and is angry that he has been tattooed. He tells him to listen to Bob Sweeney and do “whatever he tells you to do.” He wants nothing to do with his former friends. He now understands that Cameron Alexander was using him to promote white-power ideology and recruited him when he was vulnerable. He is reluctant but willing to help the police with their investigation of Cam Alexander. He shows concern for his mother’s health. For his first day at work, he sports a tie and white-collared shirt, not only hiding his tattoos but indicating his acceptance of conformity.

Chapter 6 1. This painting is also known as “The Stone of Folly” and “The Cure of Folly.” It hangs in the Museo Nacional Del Prado (see http://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/online-gallery/ on-line-gallery/obra/extracting-the-stone-of-madness). 2. This is described by Mills as a “fetishism of method.” See Chapter 3. 3. A similar point is made by scholars of governance and regulation (e.g., Garland 2001; Hunt 1993; Rose 1999). 4. For Foucault, discourses are not simply statements or a language but include practices, structured institutional fields, norms and values, and a distinctive set of objects. See Foucault (1972a). 5. According to the World Health Organization (2001, 1),“allopathic medicine . . . refers to the broad category of medical practice that is sometimes called Western medicine, biomedicine, scientific medicine, or modern medicine.” 6. For example, there is presently a debate over the expansion of the range of classifications of mental disorder to be contained in the new, 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


Notes

7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

Notes forthcoming edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). See Kirkey (2010a; 2010b). See also Bielski (2010), especially on implications of official classification for the pharmaceutical industry. Direct marketing of pharmaceuticals to consumer–patients is illegal in Canada. What is particularly interesting about medicalization, especially in terms of embitterment and apathy, is the utter disregard for social scientific knowledge that might explain such behavior in social terms. The social psychology of symbolic interactionism and the theorizing of resentment by Cohen (1955) and others offer more adequate analysis of the production of embitterment and apathy than a highly individualistic psychology or neurochemical conceptualization. Social science has long had a language for describing the social nature of what today are more often thought of as individual, psychiatric problems (or problems of individual rather than social pathology). One explanation as to why sociology and criminology are often overlooked is because they have not been professionalized as medicine, psychology, and psychiatry have been. Several critical histories of psychiatry and medicine suggest that their monopoly today over matters of health is due in large part to their gradual organization as a professional field and the strategic claiming of jurisdiction over particular kinds of problems at politically opportune times (Treacher and Baruch 1980). The case is almost identical for “hypersexuality,” proposed also for the fifth edition of the DSM (Bielski 2010). In his discussion of “antipsychiatry” (the movement to “de-psychiatrise” medicine and challenge the “receiving structure” of the asylum), Foucault states, “Now it is clearly the institution—as a place, a form of distribution, and a mechanism of these power relations—that antipsychiatry attacks. Beneath the rationale of an internment that would make it possible, in a purified place, to determine what’s what and to intervene when, where, and however necessary, it gives rise to the relations of domination that characterise the institutional setup” (1997, 48).

Chapter 7 1. Pierre Bourdieu has identified several types of “capital” and equates capital to social or symbolic power. One form of capital in GATTACA is what I call “genetic capital,” which gives one the capacity for social mobility, status, and prestige and the exercise of social power. According to Bourdieu (1986, 248), “social capital” refers to “actual or potential resources which are linked to . . . membership in a group.” The association of some genome sequences with social power is indebted to the social and political role played in the 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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society by genetic knowledge and expertise, shaped by the ideology of geneticism. In Goffman’s (1963, 43) terms, genetic markers operate as “prestige symbols” (in the case of “valids”) or “stigma symbols” (in the case of “in-valids”). 2. It is especially useful to contemplate such issues in our present era, one marked by the decline of social welfare and rise of a “postsocial” politics (Larner 2000; O’Malley 1996; Rose 1996), an era marred by mass privatization of public welfare provision wherein people are encouraged “to see themselves as individualized and active subjects responsible for enhancing their own well being . . . the citizen is re-specified as an active agent both able and obliged to exercise autonomous choices” (Larner 2000, 13; see O’Malley 1996, 28; Rose 1996, 330). In this political and economic environment we can see the prominence of illiberalism exemplified by the normalizing of a punishment-for-profit-industry. (Christie 2000; Feeley 2002; Lilly and Knepper 1993; Schlosser 1998; Sheldon and Brown 2000; Snider 1998). 3. Elsewhere in Foucault (2003, 241) this is formulated somewhat differently. Biopower is a manifestation of a right to “‘make’ live and ‘let’ die.” While “fostering” and “making” denote active intervention to promote life, “disallowing” seems much more active than simply to “let die” (or allowing life to not be fostered or promoted).



Notes




Adler, Freda, Gerhard Mueller, William Laufer, and Jana Grekul. 2009. Criminology. Toronto: McGraw-Hill. Allemang, John. 2010. A rose, by any other name, is still a rose. But impotence is now a disorder. Globe and Mail, January 23. Althusser, Louis. 1971. Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In Lenin and Philosophy, 123–73 London: New Left Books. Alvesson, Mats, and Kaj Skoldberg. 2009. Reflexive methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Anderson, Karen. 1996. Sociology: A critical introduction. Toronto: Nelson. Anderson, Nels. 1962a. The hobo: The sociology of the homeless man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Orig. pub. 1923.) ———. 1962b. Introduction to the Phoenix edition. In The hobo: The sociology of the homeless man, v–xxi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1983. A stranger at the gates: Reflections on the Chicago school of sociology. Urban Life 11 (4): 396–406. Archer, Margaret S. 1995. Realist social theory: The morphogenetic approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bagnall, Janet. 2010. Helping the most vulnerable? Ottawa Citizen, February 2. Bailey, Ian. 2010. Injection site can stay open, BC court rules. Globe and Mail, January 15. Barton, Alana, Scott Corteen, and Dave Whyte. 2007a. Introduction: Developing a criminological imagination. In Expanding the criminological imagination: Critical readings in criminology, ed. A. Barton, S. Corteen, and D. Whyte, 1–14. Portland: Willan. ———. 2007b. Conclusion: Expanding the criminological imagination. In Expanding the criminological imagination: Critical readings in criminology, ed. A. Barton, S. Corteen, and D. Whyte, 198–214. Portland: Willan. Bayley, David, and Clifford Shearing. 1996. The future of policing. Law and Society Review 30 (3): 585–606. Becker, Howard. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. New York: Free Press. Beirne, Piers, and James Messerschmidt. 2006. Criminology. 4th ed. Los Angeles: Roxbury. Bennett, Andy. 1999. Subcultures or neo-tribes? Rethinking the relationship between youth, style, and musical taste. Sociology 33 (3): 599–617. 10.1057/9780230115361 - Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen, Jon Frauley


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allegory, 57, 62–65 analysis, xi, 1, 2, 5, 7, 12, 14–18, 27–29, 31–33, 36, 37, 39, 43, 51, 54, 60–62, 67, 68, 73, 101, 111, 113, 128, 129, 131, 139–42, 146, 169, 201, 205, 208, 213, 216, 217n3, 223n11, 224n19, 226n9 analytical narrative, xii, 3, 7, 8, 28, 51, 52, 54, 55, 59, 61–67, 80 analytic concepts, 2–5, 7, 12–15, 18, 20, 21, 24–28, 37, 49, 50, 52, 58, 59, 61, 63–65, 79, 80, 83, 85–92, 97 analytic framework, 8, 7–14, 28, 74 See also theory analytic language, xi, xii, 7, 8, 12, 14, 16, 17, 26, 29, 39, 41, 51, 23–62, 66, 73, 80 See also theory analytic practice, 2, 4, 6, 13–15, 18, 19, 26, 31, 51–53, 55, 59, 60–62, 64, 66–72, 83 See also craft enterprise Anderson, Nels, 127, 128, 133, 134, 224n20 authoritarianism, 195, 200, 201, 213, 215, 216 Becker, Howard, 8, 34, 38, 40, 104, 107, 129, 130, 132, 139, 141, 142–44, 172, 175, 224n19 Bhaskar, Roy, 16

biography, 76, 77, 81, 82, 86–89, 94, 95, 100, 102, 175, 191 biopolitics, 197–99, 201, 203, 209–14, 276 biopower. See under power Birmingham School of Contemporary Cultural Studies, 34, 37, 124–26, 128, 131, 133, 136–44, 147–51, 219n1, 222n8, 222n10, 223nn16–19, 224n20 Blumer, Herbert, 102–4, 112, 222n20 Bosch, Hieronymus, 60, 161, 162 Bourdieu, Pierre, 4, 16, 22, 23, 69, 178, 217nn2–3, 218n6, 226n1 Box, Steven, 136, 137, 144 Burgess, Ernest, 127, 130, 131, 133, 146, 224n20 capital, 196, 197, 200, 203, 208, 210, 212, 213, 226n1 See also power CCCS. See Birmingham School of Contemporary Cultural Studies Chicago school of sociology, 34, 46, 75, 101, 123–38, 140–43, 147, 148, 219nn3–n4, 222n6, 223n11, 224nn19–20 coercive facticity, 22, 24–27, 57, 218n5 Cohen, Albert, 39, 125, 129, 130, 132, 135–39, 141–44, 146, 148, 150, 223n12, 223n15, 224n19, 226n9



Index

Index

Cohen, Phil, 139, 145–47, 222n10, 224nn20–21 Cohen, Stan, 138, 140–42, 219n2, 223nn16–17 concept. See analytic concepts conceptual system. See analytic framework Conrad, Peter, 158, 159, 161–65, 167, 170–77, 189–92 Cotterrell, Roger, 174 craft enterprise, ix, xi, 1–3, 5, 14, 15, 18–22, 24–27, 29, 67, 71, 75, 76, 18, 19, 86, 121 See also analytic practice creative, xi, 5, 8–13, 15, 28, 29, 35, 36, 38, 41, 52, 59, 60, 62, 66–70, 72, 75, 76, 78, 102, 117, 142 crime, 3, 6, 10, 11, 13, 16, 19, 25, 28 criminological imagination, 3, 7–8, 12–17, 28, 29, 32, 33, 42, 47, 49–52, 57, 62, 67–70, 72–97 criminological narrative. See analytical narrative criminology, xi, 1, 2, 4–14, 17–26, 28, 29, 31–72 critical criminology, 24, 54, 67, 75, 82, 94 cultural criminology, 32–42, 44, 47, 49, 50, 52–55, 61, 62, 68, 79, 123, 125, 128, 138, 139, 142, 143, 147, 148, 218n1, 219n1 cultural enterprise, 38, 40–42, 62, 72, 75 cultural expression, 37, 38, 40, 55, 151 culture, 13, 18, 22, 27, 28, 32–38, 40–42, 49, 50, 57, 68, 72, 79, 89, 125, 127, 129, 130–32, 162, 218n1, 218n5, 223nn15–16

deviation primary, 104–6, 108, 117 secondary, 104, 106, 107, 110, 118, 119–21, 130 discipline. See under power discourse, 19, 37, 49, 54, 59, 62, 112, 159, 161, 162, 164, 171, 172, 175, 176, 178, 179, 184, 196, 187–90, 198, 206, 212, 213, 215, 218n8, 225n4 domination, 44, 150, 159, 172, 173, 175, 176, 186, 188, 190–92, 202, 204, 205, 214, 216, 226n11 exclusion, 44, 45, 75, 123, 164, 170, 172, 173, 177, 186, 188, 189, 214 marginalization, 4, 38, 52, 172, 189, 214, 216

Datta, Ronjon Paul ix, 4 Dean, Mitchell, 11, 199, 200, 215 delinquency, 16, 29, 37, 52, 79, 126, 131, 135–37, 139, 142, 143, 146, 148, 150, 153, 224n19

Garland, David, 10, 11, 22, 23, 49, 69, 71, 91, 163, 174, 216, 225n3 genetic capital, 196, 197, 200, 203, 210, 212, 213, 226n1 See also capital

encyclopedic-consumptive approach, 1–3, 8, 14, 18–222, 26 See also history of ideas eugenics, 197, 199, 200, 209, 211–13, 215, 216 Feeley, Malcolm, 90, 163, 212, 213, 214, 216, 227n2 Ferrell, Jeff, 8, 32–39, 41, 77 film knowledge in, 45–47 social roles, 43–45 types of, 47–50 Foucault, Michel, 8, 27, 50, 159, 164, 169, 172, 173, 176–93, 197, 198, 201–14, 225n4, 226n11, 227n3 Frauley, Jon, 4, 9, 13, 21, 71, 77, 173



246

Index

Hall, Stuart, 37, 40, 138–43, 147, 171, 219nn1–2 Hebdige, Dick, 37, 139–42, 145, 146, 219n2, 223n16, 223n19, 224n19 history of ideas, 1–3, 8, 14, 18–22, 26 Hunt, Alan ix, 2, 4, 11, 18, 174, 181, 204, 225n3 ideological, 11, 42, 47, 48, 53, 55, 65, 144, 149–51, 155, 161 ideology, 18, 43–45, 136, 146, 149, 153, 154, 177, 196, 197, 199, 200, 209, 223n11, 225n24, 227n1 Imagination, xi, xii, 3, 6–10, 12–18, 28, 29, 31–33, 35, 42, 45, 47, 49, 50–52, 57, 58, 60–62, 67–97, 102, 125, 145, 148, 155, 167, 218n9 Insite (safe injection site), 171 interactionism, 34, 38, 100–102, 136, 139, 220n5, 222n6, 226n9 Kant, Immanuel, 22, 23, 84 Katz, Jack, 31, 38, 100, 104, 107, 108–18, 120, 121, 219n1

Kraska, Peter, ix, 4, 21 Kuhn, Thomas, 27 language. See analytic language Layder, Derek, 5, 8, 16, 17, 79, 84, 94–97, 175, 176, 217n2 Lemert, Edwin, 40, 100, 101, 103–8, 110, 112, 114, 119–21, 125, 129, 130, 134–36, 138, 139, 141, 143, 144 liberalism, 149, 150, 152–54, 172, 179, 188, 198, 200, 201, 204, 213, 214, 216 illiberalism, 198, 200, 213, 216, 227n2 madness, 159, 160, 162, 176, 178, 183, 184, 185, 189, 202, 206, 210, 225n1 Marx, Karl, 9, 34, 54, 85, 87, 136, 139, 172, 204 Mead, G. H., 100–106, 108, 110, 112, 113, 118, 120, 128, 130, 135, 136, 141, 220n5, 223n14, 225n6, medicalization, 46, 158–76, 183– 86, 188–91, 193, 226n9 medical police. See police mental illness, 44, 46, 47, 160, 173, 178, 179, 183, 184, 189 Merton, Robert, 47, 79, 89, 131, 132, 135–37, 142, 146, 223n15 methodology, 5, 70, 74, 76, 82, 84, 92, 93, 96, 111 milieu, 76, 77, 86–91, 99–101, 103, 125, 126, 128, 129, 132, 134, 135–37, 141, 142, 154, 155, 169, 191, 193, 220n5 Mills, C Wright, 8, 12, 16, 17, 29, 74–81, 83–97, 100–103, 163, 167, 217n2, 219n1, 225n2 moral transcendence, 111–14, 117, 119, 120 mutation, 193, 184, 185, 189, 203, 206



geneticism, 196, 197, 199, 202, 209–13, 216, 227n1 genetics, 197, 202, 203, 209, 211, 214, 216 genomics, 197, 202, 209, 211–14, 216 Goffman, Erving, 8, 34, 38, 104, 129, 139, 140, 143, 175, 195–97, 224n19, 227n1 Gordon, Milton, 136, 129, 132–36, 140, 145, 147, 224n22 governance, 10, 71, 167, 176, 188, 191, 196–98, 200, 201, 204–7, 209–13, 215, 216, 225n3 government, 22, 171, 174, 198, 200, 201, 203, 205, 206, 211, 212, 214–16

247

Index

normalization. See under social control norms, 21, 22, 27, 48, 65, 72, 87, 106, 110, 119, 129, 131, 145, 146, 158, 159, 162, 164, 177, 181, 183, 192, 196, 197, 201–5, 209, 210, 212, 214, 215–16, 225n4 O’Malley, Pat, 11, 227n2 ontology, 74, 93, 95, 96 Park, Robert, 127, 129–36, 143, 220n5, 221n6, 222n7, 223n12, 224n20 pathology, 46, 103, 106, 107, 119, 121, 165, 167, 168–70, 178, 207, 226n9 Pearce, Frank, ix, 4, 11, 27, 32, 57, 60, 63, 173, 205, 217nn2–3 pedagogy, xii, 2, 12, 19, 24, 217n3 personal troubles, 78, 86–92, 100, 123, 154, 155, 169 police, 11, 16, 17, 38, 89, 91, 99, 105, 118, 142, 157, 165, 168, 200, 202–4, 210, 212, 215, 216, 225n24 policy, 9, 11, 27, 36, 46, 49, 71, 121, 131, 214–16, 224n21 See also biopolitics politics, 11, 36, 37, 49, 54, 86, 88, 89, 95, 96, 102, 125, 143, 170, 172, 175, 177, 190, 191, 197, 201, 202, 209, 223n11, 227n2 definition, 170–76, 186, 190 designation, 170–76, 186, 190 of scientific knowledge, 172, 177, 179, 186, 187, 188, 190 See also biopolitics; power/ knowledge population, 43, 177, 180, 186, 189, 192, 196–203, 205–16, 220n5, 222n7 power biopower, 201, 203, 208–11, 227n3

discipline, 50, 58, 59, 164, 173, 176–83, 185, 186, 188–92, 196–98, 201–3, 205–13, 216 sovereignty, 179, 188, 204–7, 209, 215 See also domination; governance; government; social control power formation. See reception structure power/knowledge, 164, 172, 173, 178–80, 183, 185–90, 192, 202, 207, 212 Pratt, John, 200 Presdee, Mike, 22, 35, 36, 38 problems of milieu. See personal troubles psychiatrization, 159, 179, 184, 185, 189, 193 public issues, 78, 81, 86–91, 100, 123, 128, 154, 155, 162, 163, 169, 170 racism, 52, 60, 150, 153, 154, 195, 197, 201, 202, 210, 212, 213, 215, 216 Rafter, Nicole, 8, 13, 32, 33, 34, 41, 42–55, 60–62, 68, 72, 73, 77, 79, 113, 218n2 rationality of rule, 196, 197, 199, 209, 210, 212, 213, 216, 226n11 reception structure, 177–79, 183–92 reflexive realism, elements of, 25, 50–67 reflexivity, xii, 28, 50, 67–72, 77, 86, 92, 94, 97, 102, 104, 112, 118 regime of truth. See power/ knowledge resistance, 36, 39, 70, 137, 142, 146, 149, 150, 187 righteous slaughter, 108, 109, 111, 116–19, 121 Ruggiero, Vincenzo, 8, 13, 25, 27, 32–35, 50–68, 70–73, 77, 79, 218n3



248

security, 26, 27, 89, 145, 202, 206, 207, 209, 210, 211, 216 social control, 11, 28, 35, 41, 46, 55, 94, 130, 131, 141, 158, 189, 162–64, 169, 171, 172, 174–77, 183, 186, 188, 191, 193, 200, 201, 224n21 deviance as sickness, 158, 159 moral-religious, 158–61, 178, 183 normalization, 134, 159, 176, 179–82, 185, 188, 193, 195, 198, 200–203, 206, 207, 209, 216, 227n2 science-medicine, 157–61, 163, 165, 166, 169, 177, 179, 186, 190, 192 state-law, 158, 159, 161, 163, 177, 178 See also power social identity, 9, 29, 36, 39, 40, 41, 55, 99, 107, 115, 116, 119, 121, 144, 148, 178, 195, 169, 223n16 actual, 196 virtual, 195, 196, 214, 215 social issues. See social problems social power. See power social problems, 6, 10, 23, 24, 49, 55, 61, 66, 74, 76, 81, 86, 87, 89, 92, 93, 100, 130, 151, 160, 161, 165, 170, 202, 203, 207, 213, 216, 220n5, 224n19 social structure, 16, 25, 34, 76, 86–89, 91, 92, 95, 100, 131, 136, 174, 175, 191, 193, 224n21 societal reaction, 40, 100, 104–7, 119, 120, 138, 148 sociological imagination, 12, 74–76, 78, 80, 81, 83–96, 145, 167 stigma, 106, 119, 139, 152, 161, 196, 212, 227n1 style, 1, 35–40, 75, 76, 86, 87, 92, 102, 107, 110, 126, 137,

249

139–46, 149, 152, 210, 219n1, 223n16, 223n19, 224n20 subculture, 29, 36–41, 49, 106, 123–55, 223n19, 224n22 subject, 23, 26, 27, 29, 40, 75, 86, 96, 99, 104–6, 145, 150, 157–59, 164, 173, 175, 177, 179, 181, 183, 185, 186, 187, 189, 191, 192, 196, 198, 201, 206, 207, 209–11, 213, 215, 223n12, 227n2 subjectivity. See subject Sutherland, Edwin, 79, 129–31, 133–35, 139, 143, 145 symbolic interactionism. See interactionism theoreticism, 217n3 theorizing, ix, xi, xii, 1–6, 8–13, 15–21, 24, 26, 28, 31, 60, 67, 68, 71, 74, 86, 113, 114, 121, 124, 129, 205, 226n9 See also analysis theory, xi, xii, 1–6, 8–13, 16–21, 24, 26, 27, 28, 32, 34, 39, 42, 46, 47, 53, 63, 69, 71, 72, 75–79, 82, 88, 92, 94–96, 103, 104, 107, 111, 123–25, 130–35, 138, 139, 141, 142, 145, 146, 190, 204, 205, 206, 217nn2–3 See also analytic framework; analytic language theorizing, ix, xi, xii, 1–6, 8–13, 15–21, 24, 26, 28, 31, 60, 67, 68, 71, 74, 86, 113, 114, 121, 124, 129, 205, 226n9 See also analysis Williams, Frank, 8, 9, 12, 74, 75, 77–80, 83, 84, 218n9 Woodiwiss, Anthony, 2, 4, 63, 67, 217nn2–3, 218n8



Index

Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen: The Fictional Reality and the Criminological Imagination

Silver Screen

Silver Screen

Silver Screen

The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination

English Online: The Silver Screen, Proficiency 1

Image and Reality: Kekule, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination

English Online: The Silver Screen, Proficiency 1

Image and Reality: Kekule, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination (Synthesis)

English Online: The Silver Screen, Proficiency 1

Geometry and the imagination

Mathematics and the imagination

Geometry and the Imagination

Geometry and the Imagination

Geometry And The Imagination

Body Politics and the Fictional Double

The Challenge of the Silver Screen (Studies in Religion and the Arts)

Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts

Literature and the Political Imagination

Archimedes and the Roman Imagination

Ethnography And The Historical Imagination (Studies in the Ethnographic Imagination)

Platonism and the English Imagination

Ethnography And The Historical Imagination (Studies in the Ethnographic Imagination)

Vietnam and the southern imagination

Waterloo and the Romantic Imagination

Kitty and the Silver Bullet

Criminology, Deviance, and the Silver Screen: The Fictional Reality and the Criminological Imagination

Silver Screen

Silver Screen

Silver Screen

The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination

English Online: The Silver Screen, Proficiency 1

Image and Reality: Kekule, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination

English Online: The Silver Screen, Proficiency 1

Image and Reality: Kekule, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination (Synthesis)

English Online: The Silver Screen, Proficiency 1

Geometry and the imagination

Mathematics and the imagination

Geometry and the Imagination

Geometry and the Imagination

Geometry And The Imagination

Body Politics and the Fictional Double

The Challenge of the Silver Screen (Studies in Religion and the Arts)

Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts

Literature and the Political Imagination

Archimedes and the Roman Imagination

Ethnography And The Historical Imagination (Studies in the Ethnographic Imagination)

Platonism and the English Imagination

Ethnography And The Historical Imagination (Studies in the Ethnographic Imagination)

Vietnam and the southern imagination

Waterloo and the Romantic Imagination

Kitty and the Silver Bullet

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