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Existentialist Criminology by R. Lippens and D. Crewe (Eds.)

2009; Wiley; Volume: 48; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1468-2311.2009.00594_1.x

1468-2311

Nic Groombridge,

Law in Society and Culture

Abingdon : Routledge-Cavendish ( 2009 ) 300pp. £70.00hb ISBN 978-0-41546-771-1 At the time of writing, Beckett's Waiting for Godot is touring England with a starry cast. Apart from a fug of Gauloise smoke and a general sense of La Rive Gauche most people's idea of existentialism comes from art, or possibly the British writer Colin Wilson, sometimes described as a criminologist. Such avenues are largely eschewed for discussion of the philosophical antecedents to Sartre. The introduction, first and last chapters by the editors concentrate on these. Using Nietzsche, Pavlich looks at the complexity of ‘becoming’ criminal rather than ‘being’ criminal. Shinkel dives into the violence debate (both over- and under-explained/theorised) with the assistance of Husserl and Heidegger to reflect on the legitimation of state violence. Lyng, Matthews and Miller use the ‘edgework’ approach to examine Ultimate Fighting to argue for the importance of the body. Mickey Rourke's portrayal of The Wrestler came too late to illustrate this. Jeff Ferrell offers an ‘existential ethnography’ of his Zen scrounging. The banking crisis comes too late to back Hunter's work on autobiographies and desistance by white-collar offenders. Sartre penned a biography of Jean Genet and Farrall uses Angela Canning's account of her wrongful conviction to examine her ‘assumptive world’. McKenzie's attempts to produce civility should have the ASBO-mongers foxed; and Arrigo and Williams offer a psychoanalytic adjunct to Garland's work that challenges ‘evidence-based’ and actuarial penologies and policing (the ‘criminology of the shadow’). Maruna, Matza and Katz are seen to be practising a form of existentialist criminology avant la lettre. Connections with Gadd and Jefferson's (2007)Psychosocial Criminology, zemiology and cultural criminology can be seen but some specifics might have been helpful. Tough but thought-provoking.