The Rural Dimensions of a Southern Criminology: Selected Topics and General Processes

Reasons Why Crime and Safety in Rural Areas Matter

“…Brisman et al (2014, p. 482) suggest, for example, that the study of the rural and the subject of rural criminology create a fertile ground for the development of a "green-cultural criminology of the rural," which could include connections between the global and the rural; agribusiness and the food/profit chain; farming the land and polluting the water and air; the cultural and media images and narratives of rural life; and forms of resistance to environmental damage. For other examples, see, for instance, Donnermeyer (2016).…”

“…While urban areas may provide employment opportunities, development of technology and information systems, almost all societally critical resources are imported from the rural such as water and other raw materials. These interlinkages are also expressed by the way criminality takes place in cities and villages, connected in cyberspace and/or places far away (e.g., Harding 2020), and by the way societies are dealing with these increasing safety challenges (e.g., Donnermeyer 2018;Hodgkinson and Harkness 2020).…”

Southernising Vulnerability

“…In both theory and practice, the large urban town is framed as the site of disorder and crime. Yet, most of the Global South is rural and remote (Carrington et al 2019b;Donnermeyer 2018), and some types of crimes, especially violence against women, are more prevalent in these rural locales (McIlwaine 2013). In relation to policing in Trinidad and Tobago, Watson argues that the 'geography' of policing in the Global South is difficult because of the '…many well-known escape routes, poor road surface conditions and open drainage that hampers policing … presenting a problem for police access during acts of policing, specifically search and rescue or high-speed chases or pursuits' (Watson 2018, 31-32).…”

The international emergence of rural criminology: Implications for the development and revision of criminological theory for rural contexts

“…It would seem that a criminology of the global south should have much potential for advancing rural criminological scholarship because countries that straddle or are south of the equator (to use a strictly geographic demarcation) possess much larger (proportionately) rural populations and are more likely to be areas with long histories of colonial and post-colonial exploitation by countries from the north (Donnermeyer, 2018). But, so long as it is expressed in dichotomous terms, without elucidation of its theoretical premises or of healthy theoretical critique and debate (Moosavi, 2019), the limitations of a global southern criminology for informing rural criminological scholarship are insurmountable.…”

“…But, so long as it is expressed in dichotomous terms, without elucidation of its theoretical premises or of healthy theoretical critique and debate (Moosavi, 2019), the limitations of a global southern criminology for informing rural criminological scholarship are insurmountable. What remains, ironically, is the greater potential of rural criminology to advance southern criminology because as rural criminology develops, more research in countries included under the 'global south' rubric will take place (Donnermeyer, 2018).…”