AANA18108U Ethnographic Criminology: novel insights

In many ways, crime and deviance defined the very onset of the anthropological inquiry. Emerging as a study of alterity anthropology was, initially, divided between a focus on the exotic and on the intimate Other: that is, the external outsider versus the internal outsider. This interest in the internal other became the very centre of ‘criminal anthropology’, a sub-discipline that, in its time, became almost as big as the mother discipline itself. Since then, the focus on crime and criminalization has changed dramatically. Instead of being criminal anthropology the subfield is currently defined by ethnographic criminology, that is, by an insight into processes of criminalization as well as the social logics and everyday lives of criminal figures and formations.

This course looks at current studies in ethnographic criminology. As we shall see, the sub-discipline is once again gaining ground and yielding an abundance of fascinating insights. Building on recent works, the course will explore the ways crime and criminalization are tied to power and politics. It will look at drug trade, human trafficking, prostitution, violence, deviance and white-collar crime. More generally, the course investigates the ways that crime and the study thereof has developed – becoming increasingly transnational and multi-modal – and the manner in which policing is seeking to keep up with and combat novel kinds of crime and deviance.

The course will enable students to look critically at crime and criminalization as well as to ponder novel developments and future possibilities within ethnographic criminology. It will look at the way crime challenges and is challenged by formations of power and contemplate what this might tell us about larger social, political and global change.