Postmodernist school
Encyclopedia
In criminology
the Postmodernist School applies postmodernism
to the study of crime and criminals, and understands "criminality" as a product of the power
to limit the behaviour of those individuals excluded from power, but who try to overcome social inequality and behave in ways which the power structure prohibits. It focuses on the identity
of the human subject, multiculturalism
, feminism
, and human relationships to deal with the concepts of "difference" and "otherness" without essentialism
or reductionism
, but its contributions are not always appreciated (Carrington: 1998). Postmodernists shift attention from Marxist concerns of economic and social oppression to linguistic production, arguing that criminal law
is a language
to create dominance relationships. For example, the language of courts (the so-called "legalese") expresses and institutionalises the domination of the individual, whether accused or accuser, criminal or victim, by social institutions. According to postmodernist criminology, the discourse
of criminal law is dominant, exclusive and rejecting, less diverse, and culturally
not pluralistic, exaggerating narrowly defined rules for the exclusion of others.
and it is designated as such in the penal code (nullum crimen sine lege the Latin
presumption that there can be no crime without a law defining it as such). Human activity extends its range as society develops, and any of these activities (with or without reason) may be considered harmful for people and are therefore “extinguished” by society either through informal moral
condemnation or by the state
when formal legal restrictions are infringed. There are overlapping explanations of criminality:
This difficulty in defining the basic concept of criminality applies equally to questions concerning its causes; even in physical and biological systems it is difficult, although not impossible, to isolate the cause-effect link from its context of interrelationships. It is more difficult for social systems. Indeed, some argue that Chaos Theory
may provide a more appropriate model for what is termed the "social sciences". Thus, for postmodernism, the key “criminogenic” factor is the change in society from hierarchical relationships to ones based on differentiation with the meta-codes for identity as the determinant for social inclusion/exclusion (Gilinskiy: 2001).
derived their philosophical foundation from the Enlightenment
. Postmodernism is a critique of the Enlightenment and of scientific positivism
which has argued that the world can be understood and both "truth
" and "justice
" can be discovered by applying the universal linear principle of reason (see Milovanovic who describes the shift from Hegelian
to Nietzschean
and Lacanian
thought). The idea that the application of scientific principles to social life will uncover the laws of society, making human life predictable and social engineering practical and possible, is discounted. Postmodernists argue that this claim for the universality of reason was ethnocentric in that it privileged one Western view of the world while discounting other views (Kiely, 1995: 153-154). and truth claims were part of a relationship of domination, a claim to power. Given the history of colonialism
and globalisation in both the physical and the intellectual world, this critique asserts righteous indignation and moral superiority. In postmodernism, "truth" and "falsity" are purely relative; each culture has its own standard for judging truth that is not inherently superior to any other. Postmodernist analysis is a method to uncover how the world is made to appear real, "thereby questioning that it is real in truth or fact, or that there is any way of making such judgements". No truth claim, and certainly not Enlightenment scientism, rests on any more secure foundation than any other. No knowledge claim is privileged.
The main weakness of relativism
is that it offers no basis for evaluation. Henry and Milovanovic (1996) posit that all claims are to be considered valid, all social practices merely cultural variations, neither inherently inferior nor superior to any other. This may be potentially progressive because it challenges the absolutist assumptions of the superiority of, for example, Western economics
and capitalism
. But it does not challenge the status quo. On the contrary, as Kiely (1995: 155) argues, appeals for tolerance and pluralism "at its worse . . . simply ignores, or even becomes an apology for, all kinds of oppressive practices" that violate any sense of human
and social rights
.
constructions which are transient, multifaceted works-in-process. The discourse has the power to create a convincing truth claim about the reality of any subject that is historically conditioned, particularly when depicting human action. Subjects are continually recreating themselves while simultaneously continually recreating the social context that shapes their identity and potential for action as well as the identity and potential of others to act. Human agents are all "investors" in constructing their version of reality. Praxis is defined as purposive social activity born of human agents' consciousness of their world, and mediated through the social groups to which they belong". It assumes dualistic forms, such as negation/affirmation. Hierarchies are often reconstituted through negation; they are subject to deconstruction through affirmation.
, postmodernism, considers structural contexts to be constituted by the discourse to produce culturally and historically specific representations which are imbued with object-like reality and attain relative stability. In this process, other representations are silenced or denied and the human agency that constituted the contingent and transitory "reality" may be hidden. At any instance, however, certain depiction's gain ascendancy and are strengthened by social action which is undertaken in relation to them. Social actors "invest" in these depictions; they organise action to defend specific representations, giving them the appearance of stability and producing the dynamics of subordination and oppression. Social change creates competing discourses and, for a time, alternative realities. When change begins, initial states are always uncertain and through iteration over time, produce outcomes. Inevitably, as change is occurring, cracks and slippage exist, providing the basis for strategic intervention. Action is then organised to defend or deny the representation. In the end, structures as well as subjects possess "relative autonomy" while being co-dependent.
Criminology
Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, causes, and control of criminal behavior in both the individual and in society...
the Postmodernist School applies postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
to the study of crime and criminals, and understands "criminality" as a product of the power
Power (sociology)
Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to...
to limit the behaviour of those individuals excluded from power, but who try to overcome social inequality and behave in ways which the power structure prohibits. It focuses on the identity
Identity (social science)
Identity is a term used to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations . The term is used more specifically in psychology and sociology, and is given a great deal of attention in social psychology...
of the human subject, multiculturalism
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
, feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, and human relationships to deal with the concepts of "difference" and "otherness" without essentialism
Essentialism
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
or reductionism
Reductionism
Reductionism can mean either an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can...
, but its contributions are not always appreciated (Carrington: 1998). Postmodernists shift attention from Marxist concerns of economic and social oppression to linguistic production, arguing that criminal law
Criminal law
Criminal law, is the body of law that relates to crime. It might be defined as the body of rules that defines conduct that is not allowed because it is held to threaten, harm or endanger the safety and welfare of people, and that sets out the punishment to be imposed on people who do not obey...
is a language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
to create dominance relationships. For example, the language of courts (the so-called "legalese") expresses and institutionalises the domination of the individual, whether accused or accuser, criminal or victim, by social institutions. According to postmodernist criminology, the discourse
Discourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
of criminal law is dominant, exclusive and rejecting, less diverse, and culturally
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
not pluralistic, exaggerating narrowly defined rules for the exclusion of others.
Definitional issues
A crime might be defined on the basis that the behaviour represents a danger to societySociety
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
and it is designated as such in the penal code (nullum crimen sine lege the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
presumption that there can be no crime without a law defining it as such). Human activity extends its range as society develops, and any of these activities (with or without reason) may be considered harmful for people and are therefore “extinguished” by society either through informal moral
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
condemnation or by the state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
when formal legal restrictions are infringed. There are overlapping explanations of criminality:
- There is nothing inherently "criminal" in any given act; crime and criminality are relative terms, social constructs reflecting diachronicDiachronicDiachronic or Diachronous,from the Greek word Διαχρονικός , is a term for something happening over time. It is used in several fields of research.*Diachronic linguistics : see Historical linguistics...
social policies, e.g. one killing may be murderMurderMurder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
, another justifiable homicideJustifiable homicideThe United States' concept of justifiable homicide in criminal law stands on the dividing line between an excuse, justification and an exculpation. It is different from other forms of homicide in that due to certain circumstances the homicide is justified as preventing greater harm to innocents...
. - Hess and Scheerer (1997) suggest that criminality is not so much an ontologicalOntologyOntology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
phenomenon as a mental construct having an historical and protean character. - Society “constructs” its elements on the basis of ontological realities. Thus, in reality certain types of human activity are harmful and damaging, and are understood and judged so by others, by society as a whole. But it is also true that other forms of criminal behaviour do not harm others and are therefore criminalised without sufficient ontological grounds (see public order crimePublic order crimeIn criminology, public-order crime is defined by Siegel as "...crime which involves acts that interfere with the operations of society and the ability of people to function efficiently", i.e. it is behaviour that has been labelled criminal because it is contrary to shared norms, social values, and...
). - Criminality is almost completely constructed by the controlling institutions which establish norms and attribute determinate meanings to certain acts; criminality is thus a social and linguistic construct.
This difficulty in defining the basic concept of criminality applies equally to questions concerning its causes; even in physical and biological systems it is difficult, although not impossible, to isolate the cause-effect link from its context of interrelationships. It is more difficult for social systems. Indeed, some argue that Chaos Theory
Chaos theory
Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...
may provide a more appropriate model for what is termed the "social sciences". Thus, for postmodernism, the key “criminogenic” factor is the change in society from hierarchical relationships to ones based on differentiation with the meta-codes for identity as the determinant for social inclusion/exclusion (Gilinskiy: 2001).
Theoretical concerns
Postmodernism is associated with the decline of the left's credibility, specifically in the failure of state socialism to offer an attractive and, later, even a viable alternative to western capitalism. Both Marxism and SocialismSocialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
derived their philosophical foundation from the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
. Postmodernism is a critique of the Enlightenment and of scientific positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
which has argued that the world can be understood and both "truth
Truth
Truth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...
" and "justice
Justice
Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...
" can be discovered by applying the universal linear principle of reason (see Milovanovic who describes the shift from Hegelian
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
to Nietzschean
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
and Lacanian
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
thought). The idea that the application of scientific principles to social life will uncover the laws of society, making human life predictable and social engineering practical and possible, is discounted. Postmodernists argue that this claim for the universality of reason was ethnocentric in that it privileged one Western view of the world while discounting other views (Kiely, 1995: 153-154). and truth claims were part of a relationship of domination, a claim to power. Given the history of colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
and globalisation in both the physical and the intellectual world, this critique asserts righteous indignation and moral superiority. In postmodernism, "truth" and "falsity" are purely relative; each culture has its own standard for judging truth that is not inherently superior to any other. Postmodernist analysis is a method to uncover how the world is made to appear real, "thereby questioning that it is real in truth or fact, or that there is any way of making such judgements". No truth claim, and certainly not Enlightenment scientism, rests on any more secure foundation than any other. No knowledge claim is privileged.
The main weakness of relativism
Relativism
Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration....
is that it offers no basis for evaluation. Henry and Milovanovic (1996) posit that all claims are to be considered valid, all social practices merely cultural variations, neither inherently inferior nor superior to any other. This may be potentially progressive because it challenges the absolutist assumptions of the superiority of, for example, Western economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
and capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
. But it does not challenge the status quo. On the contrary, as Kiely (1995: 155) argues, appeals for tolerance and pluralism "at its worse . . . simply ignores, or even becomes an apology for, all kinds of oppressive practices" that violate any sense of human
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
and social rights
Social rights
Economic, social and cultural rights are socio-economic human rights, such as the right to education, right to housing, right to adequate standard of living and the right to health. Economic, social and cultural rights are recognised and protected in international and regional human rights...
.
The human subject
The human subject is said to be one or a number of ideologicalIdeology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
constructions which are transient, multifaceted works-in-process. The discourse has the power to create a convincing truth claim about the reality of any subject that is historically conditioned, particularly when depicting human action. Subjects are continually recreating themselves while simultaneously continually recreating the social context that shapes their identity and potential for action as well as the identity and potential of others to act. Human agents are all "investors" in constructing their version of reality. Praxis is defined as purposive social activity born of human agents' consciousness of their world, and mediated through the social groups to which they belong". It assumes dualistic forms, such as negation/affirmation. Hierarchies are often reconstituted through negation; they are subject to deconstruction through affirmation.
Structure
The human subject is a "role-maker", an agent who can occupy situations and may act contingently in relation to others to affirm or negate their representations. Whereas early conceptions of structure posited an underlying "reality" which could be understood empiricallyEmpiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
, postmodernism, considers structural contexts to be constituted by the discourse to produce culturally and historically specific representations which are imbued with object-like reality and attain relative stability. In this process, other representations are silenced or denied and the human agency that constituted the contingent and transitory "reality" may be hidden. At any instance, however, certain depiction's gain ascendancy and are strengthened by social action which is undertaken in relation to them. Social actors "invest" in these depictions; they organise action to defend specific representations, giving them the appearance of stability and producing the dynamics of subordination and oppression. Social change creates competing discourses and, for a time, alternative realities. When change begins, initial states are always uncertain and through iteration over time, produce outcomes. Inevitably, as change is occurring, cracks and slippage exist, providing the basis for strategic intervention. Action is then organised to defend or deny the representation. In the end, structures as well as subjects possess "relative autonomy" while being co-dependent.