Don’t look up,don’t look down: Liberal criminology’s fear of the supreme and the subterranean

Abstract

Criminology is ideally placed to examine the late-capitalist subjectivities now appearing before us in stark relief as the current economic crises deepen. However, to do so it must come of age as a producer discipline, exporting and exchanging its empirical findings and theoretical formulations with its former parent disciplines on equal terms. Only then can it equip itself to analyse the reality of a present and a future characterised by inevitable socioeconomic turmoil, and thus make a full and active contribution to intellectual and political life. To do this effectively criminology must first throw off the repressive control of post-war catastrophism, which, ironically, fixed criminology’s gaze on systems of social control and neglected that which elicits the perceived need for control.