NCJ Number
158685
Editor(s)
J Ferrell,
C R Sanders
Date Published
1995
Length
375 pages
Annotation
These 13 papers examine the relationship between culture and criminality, focusing on collective behaviors organized around imagery, style, and symbolic meaning and considering the ways in which legal and political authorities define these behaviors as criminal.
Abstract
Topics include the subcultures of youth gangs and outlaw biker groups, mass media representations of drug- related violence and serial murders, the meanings of urban graffiti, and the connections between violence committed by skinheads and musical styles. Individual papers examine the process by which the media constructed and politicians used images of random drug violence in New York City, film representations of serial killers, the themes of murder and other crimes in bluegrass music, and surveillance imagery in popular media and its implications for understanding new forms of social control and social conflict. Additional papers discuss the ways in which legal authorities come to understand and evaluate gang style in their exercise of legal control and illegal art and graffiti worldwide in terms of subcultural style, cultural production, and legal control. The authors argue for the development of a new cultural criminology. Chapter reference notes, index, and approximately 500 references