Sociology & Criminology for a Changing World
Stephen Graham’s „Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism“ (2010) is a disturbing yet influential work that analyzes the creeping militarization of urban spaces. Against the backdrop of the “War on Terror” and a globalized security architecture, Graham shows how military logics, technologies, and control practices increasingly permeate everyday life in Western cities. The book
Cultural Criminology: An Invitation Cultural Criminology: An Invitation, first published in 2008 by Jeff Ferrell, Keith J. Hayward, and Jock Young, represents the first comprehensive foundational work on cultural criminology. The book functions as a programmatic introduction, a theoretical systematization, and an academic manifesto of a perspective that views crime not merely as a rule
With City Limits, British cultural criminologist Keith J. Hayward published an innovative work at the intersection of crime, consumer culture, and urban space. Building on the theoretical foundations of Cultural Criminology, Hayward analyzes how neoliberal notions of order, media imagery, and deviant appropriation converge in the late modern city. He calls for an expanded understanding
With his work Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime (2000), Mike Presdee established a radical perspective within Cultural Criminology. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnival theory, Presdee interprets crime not just as a rule violation but as a cultural expression—a subversive ritual, symbolic protest, and form of resistance against social control. Having worked as both
In her book Security (2009), British legal scholar and criminologist Lucia Zedner offers a normatively sensitive, interdisciplinary, and conceptually precise analysis of the notion of security. She shows that “security” is not an objective or neutral good, but rather a complex social construction that is mobilized differently in politics, criminal law, and society. Zedner’s work
In Surveillance Studies: An Overview, Canadian sociologist David Lyon presents a comprehensive introduction to the field of surveillance studies. The book is both a synthesis and a call to take surveillance seriously as a social phenomenon. Lyon argues that surveillance is no longer merely a specialized instrument of intelligence services or criminal justice but has