Postmodernism, Cultural Criminology

Question 1

What came after Pluralism?

Answer 1

Postmodernism, Cultural Criminology (from mid 1990s)

Question 2

Postmodernism proposes that crime is a social construction because:

Answer 2

Postmodernists believe that society is diverse, fragmented and ever changing, therefore the term ‘crime’ is a social construction based on a narrow set of legal definitions. Therefore what we perceive crime to be is often an outdated metanarrative of the law.

Question 3

Cultural criminology places criminality

Answer 3

and its control in the context of culture

Question 4

What does postmodernism and cultural criminology say about the excess of information?

Answer 4

That because media market now saturated goal is to attract attention, and there’s a desire to go to the extreme to evince a reaction (shcoking, sexual, disgusitng adverts)

Question 5

Postmodernism and cultural criminology: Hyperreality

Answer 5

process of the evolution of notions of reality, leading to a cultural state of confusion between signs and symbols invented to stand in for reality, and direct perceptions of consensus reality

Question 6

Postmodernism and cultural criminology: Carnival of Crime observes what about daily life?

Answer 6

daily life is becoming increasingly filled with violence, cruelty, hate, and humiliation

Question 7

According to the Carnival of Crime, the over-organised, economic world has provoked a widespread desire for:

Answer 7

extreme, oppositional forms of popular and personal pleasure. This desire has resulted in a cathartic “second life” of illicit pleasures often deemed criminal by those in power.

Question 8

cultural criminology: Voyuerism, eg

Answer 8

gaining sexual pleasure from watching others naked/engaged in sexual activity