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40 Brit. J. Criminology 189 (2000)
Criminology, Social Theory and the Challenge of Our Times

handle is hein.journals/bjcrim40 and id is 195 raw text is: BRIT.J. CRIMINOL. (2000) 40,189-204 CRIMINOLOGY, SOCIAL THEORY AND THE CHALLENGE OF OUR TIMES DAVID GARLANI) and RICHARD SPARKS* Contemporary criminology inhabits a rapidly changing world. The speed and profundity of these changes are echoed in the rapidly changing character of criminology's subject matter-in crime rates, in crime policy, and in the practices of policing, prevention and punishment. And if we look beyond the immediate data of crime and punishment to the processes that underpin them-to routines of social life and social control, the circulation of goods and persons, the organization of families and households, the spatial ecology of cities, the character of work and labour markets, the power of state authorities-it becomes apparent that criminology's subject matter is centrally implicated in the major transformations of our time. The questions that animate this collection of essays concern the challenges that are posed for criminology by the economic, cultural, and political transformations that have marked late twentieth-century social life. The restructuring of social and economic relations, the fluidity of social process, the speed of technological change, and the remarkable cultural heterogeneity that constitute 'late modernity' pose intellectual challenges for criminology that are difficult and sometimes discomfiting but which are ultimately too insistent to ignore. To wish them away, to carry on regardless, to pursue the conventional agendas of criminological enquiry in the accustomed way, would be to turn away from some of the most important issues that face contemporary social thought and public policy. It would also be to depart from the canons of clarity, perspicacity and relevance that worthwhile criminological work has always observed. Ever since its emer- gence in the industrialized, urbanized world of the mid-nineteenth century, criminology has been, or has sought to be, a contemporary, timely, worldly subject. Criminol- ogists-particularly those who draw upon a sociological tradition-have always sought to ground their analyses in a nuanced sense of the world as it is, and as it is becoming, not least because the phenomena of crime and disorder have so regularly been traced to the effects of social upheaval and dislocation. As the essays in this collection demonstrate, the social transformations of late modernity pose new problems of criminological understanding and relevance, and have definite implications for the intellectual disposi- tions, strategic aims and political commitments that criminology inevitably entails. How then might criminologists come to terms with the kinds of variation and change that characterize their twenty-first century world? Are criminology's frameworks of explanation adequate to the changing realities of crime and criminal justice and to the expansive hinterland of political, economic and regulatory activity that encircles them? * Respectively, School of Law and Deparmnent ofSociolog%. New York Universitv; Department ofCrininology, Keele UniN'ersiL. This collection results from a series of conversations between us over several years and rept esenLs outr concern to contibute 1o discussion of the con tern por. situation ofrci-iniolog,, its politicil espon sibilities. aid its relation to otiet fields of social scien tific inquirv. We are grateful to the editorial board of the BritishJournal of Criminolg for their enthusiastic support and especially o the conitributors for their hard work. insight. collegiality and patience. 189 © ISTD: The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies 2000

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