Cultural Criminology:

Abstract

This article will offer a thumbnail sketch of some of the key theoretical antecedents that have underscored the cultural analysis of crime and criminality in both the United States and Britain. It traces the origins of the ‘cultural tradition’, from its beginnings in turn of the 20th-century American sociology to the flowering of radical British criminology with the National Deviancy conferences of the 1960s. It will then move on to consider the contemporary resurgence of cultural criminology and its attempts to once again prioritize the experiences of everyday life within the processes of crime and criminality. It will be argued that this approach offers a more viable and effective account of crime than that currently offered by the dominant discourse of administrative criminology as favoured by Blair’s New Labour approach to bureaucratic Britain.