Sociology & Criminology for a Changing World
Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (1978) by Stuart Hall and his co-authors is a groundbreaking work in critical criminology and cultural studies. In their analysis of the “mugging” discourse in 1970s Britain, the authors compellingly demonstrate how crime operates as a social construct—politically manufactured, amplified by the media, and ideologically
Class, State, and Crime: On the Theory and Practice of Criminal Justice (1977) by Richard Quinney is one of the most influential Marxist analyses of crime and social control in the United States. The book combines a materialist analysis of society with a radical critique of the state’s penal system and is a key text
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
Visions of Social Control: Crime, Punishment and Classification (1985) by Stanley Cohen provides a profound analysis of the transformations in social control in the late 20th century. While his earlier work, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), focused on media discourses and moral reactions to deviance, Visions of Social Control turns to institutional, political, and
The Social Organization of Juvenile Justice (1968) by Aaron V. Cicourel is a groundbreaking study that reveals how juvenile delinquency is socially constructed within the everyday practices of legal and welfare institutions. Rooted in the traditions of ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism, Cicourel demonstrates that youth crime is not an objective reality but the product of
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates by Erving Goffman is one of the most influential sociological works of the 20th century. Originally published in 1961, the book presents a powerful analysis of psychiatric hospitals and similar institutions, which Goffman defines as total institutions. These settings, according to Goffman, profoundly