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British Journal of Criminology Advance Access originally published online on May 26, 2005
British Journal of Criminology 2005 45(5):599-612; doi:10.1093/bjc/azi045
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The British Journal of Criminology 45:599-612 (2005)
© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

What is Cultural About Cultural Criminology?

Martin O’Brien*

* Martin O’Brien is a tutor in criminology in the Department of Applied Social Science, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4YD, UK; email: m.a.obrien{at}lancaster.ac.uk.

In this paper, I undertake a critical evaluation of the central claims of cultural criminology. In particular, I argue that the project is characterized by important confusions over what is meant by ‘culture’ in the analysis of deviant and criminal activity. These confusions are found both in cultural criminology’s key empirical works and in the emerging theoretical frameworks that seek to interpret crime through the lens of culture. I suggest that the absence of detailed engagement with classic debates in social anthropology serves to undermine cultural criminology’s assertion that the lens of culture provides a critical tool for understanding criminal acts and note that the project is characterized by a contradiction between its ethnographic imagination and its anthropological imagination. The absence of a detailed theoretical account of culture renders cultural criminology vulnerable to Gouldner’s (1975) charge that its practitioners represent contemporary ‘zoo-keepers’ of deviance.


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