The Criminological Imagination - Softcover

Young, Jock

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745641075 ISBN 13: 9780745641072

Publisher: Polity Press, 2011

Synopsis

For the last three decades Jock Young's work has had a profound impact on criminology. Yet, in this provocative new book, Young rejects much of what criminology has become. His erudite and entertaining examination of what's gone wrong with criminology is accompanied by a passionate case for a return to criminology's creative and critical potential.

About this title

Review:

"Great teachers like Young translate between cultural forms and fields of knowledge."
Kriminologisches Journal

'The terms "criminology" and "imagination" do not naturally belong together. Jock Young's singular achievement is to apply a fine "criminological imagination", exposing the soulless discourse of mainstream criminology and reflecting upon the alternative critical tradition in which he himself played such a central role.'
Stan Cohen, London School of Economics and Political Science

'If reading a clever and consequential book were a crime, you would get arrested and hauled straight to jail for picking up The Criminological Imagination. Adapting and deepening C.-Wright Mills's classic critique of the foibles of sociology, Young not only offers a razor-sharp diagnosis of how criminology lost its way in a funny-mirror house of methodological fetishism, empirical legerdemain, conceptual confusion and policy subservience. He also clears a path toward rescue and renewal: criminology can regain its analytic poise and civic relevance by embracing its sociological grounding and by reconnecting crime to formations of meaning and power. This book will energize all those who wish to free the craft from the clutches of the profession, and it is sure to fire up vigorous debate between and among partisans of mainstream and critical criminology.'
Loïc Wacquant, author of Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality and Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity.

From the Back Cover:

For the last three decades Jock Young's work has had a profound impact on criminology. In this provocative new book, Young rejects much of what criminology has become, criticizing the rigid determinism and rampant positivism that dominate the discipline today. His erudite and entertaining examination of what's gone wrong with criminology draws on a range of research - from urban ethnography to sexology and criminal victimization studies - to illustrate its failings.

Young makes a passionate case for a return to criminology's creative and critical potential, partly informed by the new developments in cultural criminology. A late-modern counterpart to C. Wright Mills' classic The Sociological Imagination, this inspirational piece of writing from one of the most brilliant voices in contemporary criminology will command widespread attention. The concluding part of the author's trilogy of influential texts including The Vertigo of Late Modernity and The Exclusive Society, it will be essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of criminology, and the social sciences more generally.

About this edition

• Publisher: Polity Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0745641075
• ISBN 13: 9780745641072
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224