Cultural criminology

Question 1

What is cultural criminology ?

Answer 1

• a post-modern view to understanding delinquent subculture

Question 2

What does Katz say about cultural criminology ?

Answer 2

• understanding criminality
• understand why people give into temptations
• reason for fighting is to show dominance
• crime is selfish

Question 3

What does Lyng say about cultural criminology ?

Answer 3

• explains risk taking through edge-work
• exploring the edges that exist along cultural boundaries and activities that test the boundaries
• creates feelings of fear, anxiety and exhilaration
• An escape from the constraints of society as a way of coping in a complex post-modern society

Question 4

What is the role of the media in cultural criminology ?

Answer 4

• the media plays a large influence in a post-modern society
• moral panics

Question 5

What does Young say about cultural criminology ?

Answer 5

• working class deviance is a result of the bulimic society
• uses Merton’s idea of anomie to describe the contradictory feeling created by society
• expression of exclusion and desire for inclusion

Question 6

What does Presdee say about cultural criminology ?

Answer 6

• carnival of crime
• carnivals celebrate deviance
• a need to let off steam
• provides one of the functions of crime: necessary safety of value
• government try to limit it because they see it as a threat
• says people break the rules because the rules are there
• risk-taking and danger gives a thrill
• If the activity can’t be regulated by laws then it still dies out as it become mainstreamed