![handle is hein.journals/crmlsc54 and id is 1 raw text is: Crime Law Soc Change (2010) 54:1-19
DOI 10.1007/s10611-010-9241-x
Crime or social harm? A dialectical perspective
Kristian Lasslett
Published online: 3 June 2010
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V 2010
Abstract This paper proposes to examine some of the core philosophical issues to have
arisen out of the recent calls to move beyond criminology. It will be claimed that the
dismissal of crime as a fictive event is premature, as crime does indeed have an
ontological reality. Nevertheless, it will be asserted that the relation between harm and
crime is contingent rather than necessary. Accordingly, this paper will argue that there is
merit to the claim that we should unify research on social harm through the creation of a
new field, a step which would have the added benefit of constructing an alternative venue
for crimes of the powerful scholars who wish to explore the destructive practices of states
and corporations unconstrained. This paper, therefore, will also offer a dialectical
definition of social harm based upon classical Marxist strains of ontological thought.
Introduction
Ever since Edwin Sutherland's groundbreaking research into the crimes of the powerful,
criminologists interested in explaining the harmful conduct of states and corporations
have suffered a crisis of disciplinary identity. The principle focus of this crisis has been
on the category of crime and whether it constitutes an adequate foundation for this
research program; or on the other hand, have scholars been forced to do a certain amount
of abstractive violence to the category of crime in order to artificially fit such research
within the boundaries of criminology. Indeed, Tappan [37] in a celebrated article warns:
A special hazard exists in the employment of the term, 'white-collar criminal',
in that it invites individual systems of private values to run riot in an area
(economic ethics) where gross variation exists among criminologists as well as
others. The rebel may enjoy a veritable orgy of delight in damning as criminal
almost anyone he pleases ... Vague, omnibus concepts defining crime are a
blight upon either a legal system or a system of sociology that strives to be
objective (p.99).
K. Lasslett (E)
University of Ulster, Jordanstown, Northern Ireland
e-mail: kak.lasslett(iaulster.ac.uk
4L Springer](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/crmlsc54&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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