Without Place, Is It Real?

Abstract

This article reviews Matthews' (2014) Realist Criminology as an opportunity to address larger shortcomings within critical criminology, which is the failure to develop an alternative theory of crime and place to the mainstream theories of social disorganisation and collective efficacy. It uses rural criminological work related to violence against women and substance use, production and trafficking to illustrate the importance of place for development of a realist criminology that can consider localised expressions of power and inequality, and the multiplicity of networks and roles by which people can simultaneously be involved in both conforming and deviant/criminal behaviours. The article also suggests that a critical theory of crime and place would be useful to the synthesis and re-interpretation of criminological literature that is either theory-less or lacks a critical perspective. KeywordsCollective efficacy; gemeinschaft; Left Realism; rural criminology; social disorganisation. Please cite this as:

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

“…Somehow, no matter how international in orientation some attempts to critique and revise criminological theory and research claim to be, the ones that possess the most potential to advance scholarship and be more than simply another expression of opposition to mainstream theories are those that recognize, ironically, the importance of the local. In fact, a strong case can be made that without the local, the advancement of almost any kind of criminological theory is impossible (Donnermeyer, 2016a), because it is there that real people experience the anxieties and insecurities associated with crime and injustice, and it is there that some people learn and then actualize their criminal behaviors. Perhaps this is nowhere more true than in the criminological subfield of rural criminology.…”

The Place of Rural in a Southern Criminology

“…That is the prime lesson from the African studies: context (Donnermeyer 2016c). In turn, the highly situational nature of farm crime in the global South can help produce new 'middle range' theories (Merton 1957) about how the physical, social and cultural characteristics of place create conditions that either enable or constrain crime and how change on a global scale creates change at specific localities, and it is there that the realities of crime take on a human face (Donnermeyer 2016d).…”