Towards Culture-Inclusive Criminology in Asia

International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2017

In their recent seminal paper ‘Southern Criminology’, Carrington, Hogg and Sozzo (2016) address the issue of the global divide between South/North relations in the hierarchal production of criminological knowledge. They point out that the divide privileges theories, assumptions and methods that are largely based on the empirical specificities of the global North. Carrington et al. contend that the dominance of global North criminology has led to a severe underdevelopment of criminology in the global South, except ‘in Asia, with the establishment of the Asian Criminological Society and its journal’ (Liu 2009, in Carrington et al. 2016: 3). Carrington et al. propose an important task of bridging the global divide through further developing criminology in the global South. My present paper reviews the development of Asian criminology under the framework of the Asian Criminological Paradigm (Liu 2009). I primarily review the conceptual and theoretical developments, to suggest strategies...

Comparative Criminology in Asia

The series publishes both theoretical and empirical work in Asian Criminology, with a focus on research-level monographs and edited volumes. It aims to cover three main themes: the adaptations and elaborations of established theories and research models (mainly by Western scholarship) to Asian contexts; an introduction of innovative concepts, theories and policies originating in Asian societies to Western audiences; and in-depth studies of particular Asian countries, as they reflect local traditions and cultures on the one hand, and a general understanding of criminal behavior or criminal justice, on the other. It will feature authors from any country of origin doing research about or pertaining to Asian countries. The series encourages submissions of both quantitative and qualitative research approaches, and mixed methods, as well as comparative approaches, with an emphasis on studies using rigorous methods and presenting new research results. It will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, as well as related fields such as sociology, political science, comparative law.

It ought to be possible to accept that societies are also incontrovertibly different but still to include them within our intellectual universe. In stressing the differences rather than the similarities in people's arrangements, one would challenge that monstrous ethnocentrism that extends understanding only so far as the observer is prepared to recognize in the devices of others similarities and parallels to devices of his or her own (Strathern 1988:32-3).

Asian Journal of Criminology, 2009

Despite considerable advances in the field of criminology in Asia over the past few decades, the pace of growth has been quite slow compared with the rapid development of the field in North America and Europe. This paper discusses key features of the Asian context as they are related to the development of criminology in Asia. The paper examines the major challenges that Asia's diverse culture, legal traditions, crimes, and crime control pose for development of criminology in Asia. It also discusses the opportunities afforded by the Asian context. The paper proposes general strategies in response to the challenges. The author suggests the importance of moving towards a unified paradigm of Asian Criminology. The Asian Journal of Criminology aims to play an instrumental role in this process of advancing Asian criminology.

Crime, Law and Social Change, 2001

Globalization will intensify contacts-and perhaps conflicts-between cultures more than ever in the history of humankind. The flow of migrants around the world, global business and global consumption provide us with new experiences of difference and diversity as well as of common ground. As in other social sciences, the concept of culture has recently emerged on centre stage in criminology. Western criminologists look in awe to Asia, and try to solve the enigma of modern, affluent societies with low rates especially of violent crimes. Asian criminologists warn of an impact of Western culture that might cause rising crime rates. Asian models of social control are studied and adopted in Australia, Europe and the US, and vice versa. Crime and social control are social and cultural phenomena. Therefore, comparing cultures and comparing crime will offer new insights, fresh theories and chances of innovative perspectives. What is to learn from cultural differences, what from universals in crime and social control? What will be the fate of "general theories of crime" in different cultures? Will practices of criminal justice be efficient when transported to another social and cultural environment? Criminologists should develop a clear notion of the problems that are related to comparing cultures and crime. Cultures are not monolithic. Cultural comparisons often suffer from exaggerations of differences, and produce exaggerated predictions and expectations. On its way into the globalized 21st century, criminology will have to develop strategies to meet the challenge of comparing cultures, to avoid former errors, and to solve the problems that lie ahead.

Asian Journal of Criminology, 2018

Empirical work on criminological theories in Asia has been increasing. However, few comprehensive and systematic reviews on the application of criminological theories in Asia have been conducted. Using a systematic quantitative literature review method on peer-reviewed English-language journal articles, we aim to provide an overview of the use of five major criminological theories in Asia: (1) strain; (2) social learning; (3) control; (4) routine activity; and (5) developmental and life-course. In particular, we address the following four questions: (1) how often are these theories tested in which region of Asia?; (2) what methodology is used to test these theories?; (3) to what extent are these theories supported in the Asian context?; and (4) what cultural uniqueness in the Asian context is taken into account in testing these theories, and what role and effect do they play in analysis and outcome? Findings indicate that the relationship between these theories and the Asian regions is skewed; many studies do not employ rigorous methodologies; these theories are either fully or partially supported in the Asian context; and only a few studies have analyzed the cultural uniqueness of the Asian context, and no effect of cultural uniqueness of the Asian context was found. Research implications for developing criminology in Asia are discussed.

Critical Criminology

Since the mid 1990s, a strand of criminology emerged that is concerned with the co-constitution of crime and culture under the general rubric of 'cultural criminology'. In the titles Cultural Criminology Unleashed and Cultural Criminology: An Invitation, criminologists spearheading this brand of criminology make claims for its originality and its status as a subversive alternative to conventional criminological approaches to studies of crime and deviance. The basis for the 'new' cultural criminology is its ostensible ability to account for the culture and subcultures of crime, the criminalization of cultural and subcultural activities, and the politics of criminalization. This paper offers a comparison of cultural criminology to 1960s and 1970s labeling theory to assess whether or not cultural criminology has developed a grammar of critique capable of resolving fundamental contradictions that haunt critical criminology and contesting contemporary administrative criminology. Points of comparison are made through ontological categories of power and criminal identity and a consideration of the epistemological categories of the respective bodies of literature.

The Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment, 2015

The dominance of Western models of crime and criminal justice and the nascent emergence of "borderless" criminological insights precipitated by forces of globalization and transnationalization raises serious questions about their universal applicability to explain crime across time and space. Amidst the dearth of criminological work on Asia, this introduction to the Special Issue on "Crime and Punishment in Asia" commits itself to developing and honing the frontiers of an "Asian criminology" by drawing scholarly attention to the empirical and contextual specificities of the region. Such an effort is not directed towards demarcating "Asia" as a socially and culturally distinct geopolitical entity from the "West". Rather, it is to critically reflect upon the alleged and actual variances between Asian and Western societies including the broader differences in social orientation-collectivism vs individualism and duty-based moral obligations vs rights-based beliefs respectively as well as documenting the heterogeneity and particularities within Asia. To that end, crime in South Asian and Southeast Asian contexts and political and economic changes which have given rise to novel "strains" of crime and newer criminal opportunities, remain under theorized. Ultimately, the advancement of an Asian criminological discourse in this special issue is not to merely acknowledge scholarly attempts that transpose current Anglo-Saxon models onto Asian empirical contexts or reject them, but transform existing theories and develop regional alternatives that are validated by and arise from particular empirical investigations into crime and criminal justice across Asia.

This paper addresses the role of cultural criminology as a subfield in academic criminology. Herein, I examine the different ways in which “culture” has been conceptualized in criminology and the relation of those conceptualizations to that of cultural criminology. I go on to trace the main theoretical and methodological approaches that have informed this relatively new subfield of criminological inquiry and briefly discuss some of the perceived limitations of cultural criminology as well as important areas for future inquiry.

This books draws together the work of the three leading international figures in cultural criminology today. The book traces the history, current configuration, methodological innovations and future trajectories of cultural criminology, mapping its terrain for students and academics in this exciting field. Praise from Professor Zygmunt Bauman: "This is not just a book on the present state and possible prospects of our understanding of crime, criminals and our responses to both. However greatly the professional criminologists might benefit from the authors' illuminating insights and the new cognitive vistas their investigations have opened, the impact of this book may well stretch far beyond the realm of criminology proper and mark a watershed in the progress of social study as such. This book, after all, brings into the open the irremediable unclarity, endemic contentiousness and the resulting frailty of the line dividing deviance from the norm of social life - that line being simultaneously a weapon and the prime stake in the construction and servicing of social order."