Sociology & Criminology for a Changing World
Social and Academic Context Emerging during a period of massive societal upheaval—including civil rights movements, anti-colonial struggles, and student protests—The New Criminology reflects the desire for a sociology that not only explains but also transforms the world. The authors take a clear stance against the dominant American sociology of the 1960s and advocate for a
With Tearing Down the Streets, American sociologist and criminologist Jeff Ferrell published a work in 2001 that is exemplary of Cultural Criminology. In this book, Ferrell examines how urban spaces are transformed into zones of conflict through practices like graffiti, skateboarding, and punk music—spaces where state control, economic interests, and subcultural resistance collide. The book
With his work Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), Stanley Cohen created a classic of critical criminology and media analysis. Building on the Labelling Approach, he examines how societies, in times of perceived threat, symbolically charge, demonize in the media, and politically combat certain groups. Cohen describes these processes as “moral panics” – collective reactions
Theories within this category approach crime as a culturally and emotionally meaningful form of social action. Rejecting explanations that reduce crime to structural deprivation, individual pathology, or rational calculation, these perspectives emphasize the situated meanings, symbolic dimensions, and affective dynamics that shape both criminal behaviour and the societal responses to it. Crime is thus understood
Subcultural theory, developed by Albert K. Cohen in the 1950s, explains juvenile delinquency as a collective response to status frustration in a class-stratified society. It argues that marginalized youth form subcultures with alternative norms and values that reject those of mainstream society. These subcultures provide an alternative system of status and recognition, often encouraging deviant
Edgework is not a single, unified crime theory but a sociological concept developed by Stephen Lyng to analyze voluntary risk-taking as a meaningful, culturally constructed practice. Rather than seeing risk solely as pathology or individual thrill-seeking, Edgework explores how people actively seek out „the edge“—moments of controlled chaos, danger, and boundary-testing—as a response to the