NCJ Number
99452
Journal
Crime and Social Justice Issue: 23 Dated: (1985) Pages: 101-128
Date Published
1985
Length
28 pages
Annotation
This article discusses the ideological development and implications of two opposing world views: one society is highly technical, competitive, centralized, and dependent on big government and big business, while the other is characterized by individualized markets, an information-dominated society, decentralization, deurbanization, and decisionmaking by small entities linked by flexible networks.
Abstract
Focusing on Thomas Kuhn, Alvin Gouldner, Fernand Braudel, and Immanuel Wallerstein, the paper reviews the intellectual heritage of the reformist capitalist view of the past and future which questions the industrial paradigm. Also discussed are writers who brought the ideas of these scholars to popular literature. The author states that criminal justice research has been based on an industrial view of reality and is flawed by a lack of long range theory, little historical depth, a narrowly utilitarian focus, and a neglect of important questions of power. It also has been unrelated to popular culture and technically rather than value-oriented. The paper explores the implications of these competing paradigms for criminal justice research and suggests that leftists should turn their attention to the internal dynamics of the neighborhood community and reevaluate its potential as an agent of social change. Such research should target the reconceptualization of the American community, the underground economy, and a resurgence of community organizing and networking. In particular, leftists can help reconstruct inner city neighborhoods by turning jobs into work and reforming fragments into social relational wholes. This view suggests that orthodox political solutions as a means of neighborhood rejuvenation should be replaced by reliance on the neighborhood's own inner resources. Footnotes and approximately 75 references are included.