Postmodern Criminology

ERIC MADFIS

Historically, postmodernism is best understoodas a rejection of eighteenth-century Enlight-

enmentideals,particularlynotionsofrationalthought and the scienti c method (Best &Kellner, 1991).
at modern period asserted thatscience, through objectivity and rational thought,could reveal truth and
knowledge. rough sci-ence, humanity would be able to resolve socialproblems. Postmodern theory
questions theseassumptions and critiques the racism, sexism,imperialism, and class exploitation that
havearisen from modern “progress;” modern
sciencehasresultedinnewdevastationslikenuclearwar,pollution, and the Holocaust (Lanier & Henry,2004,
p. 319). Accordingly, postmodern thinkers began to question the validity of scienti c knowl-edge and
authority. Michel Foucault (1980)argues that so-called objective science – and knowledge more
generally–are controlled by powerful experts who make claims to possess special knowledge and thus
make decisions for the less powerful and well educated. To Foucault(1977, 1980), all knowledge is
merely claims oftruth shaped by personal, cultural, or political views. us, the postmodern solution is
to favor aplurality of perspectives and subjectivity (Best &Kellner, 1991).Operating under the
assumption that evenknowledge is socially constructed, the postmod-ern development of discursive
analysis stressesthat society’s major harms and con icts resultfrom the creation of “discursive
distinctions,”whereby an individual or group makes inroads toimpose their own reality onto others
Moral entrepreneurship isextended to encompass scienti c claims, and falsedistinctions (such as
gender dichotomy, mentalillness, etc.) serve to exclude and marginalizeindividualsandgroups.A
errejectingthesedis-tinctions, postmodernism suggests that scholarsought to concentrate their energy
instead uponexposing the social construction and dominationof privileged knowledge (Lanier & Henry,
2004).Derrida (1970) called this procedure “decon-struction,” but it is also o en referred to as
a“critique.

Henry and Milovanovic (1991) rede ne crimeto better t a postmodern conception.

Becausepostmodernists understand knowledge claims asdomination, crime must be broadened to
encom-pass all forms of injury and injustice. Crime,in this conceptualization, means any harm thatresults
from investing human time or energy intopower relations (Barak, Henry, & Milovanovic,1997). Harm
comes from myriad unequalrelationships where people are fundamentallydisrespected or prevented
from becoming fullysocial beings (Henry & Milovanovic 1996). eyfurther separate crime into two
types. e rstare crimes of reduction, which signify any lossrelative to one’s previous standing (Henry
&Milovanovic, 1996). ese crimes may be lossesof property such as the , losses of health or lifesuch
as assault or homicide, or losses of dignitysuch as rape or hate crime. e second type arecrimes of
repression, which occur when peopleare limited in their humanity and full potential

One stream of postmodern thought to recentlyemerge in criminology is that of constitutivecriminology.

Milovanovic (1996) rejects the lin-ear systems and correlation models dominantin criminological
thought. Borrowing insightsfrom chaos theory in the physical sciences, hesuggests using nonlinear
models and maps inorder to demonstrate “disproportional e ects”and the various periodicities and
bifurcationswhich arise even for the same parameter value(Milovanovic, 1996). rough this new,
multi-dimensional model, vertical white bands appearand may be utilized to reveal “order out of disor-
der”