Abstract
Is theory necessary? Is reductionism in any form moving us away from “the truth”? Don Crewe offers a sharp account of critical criminology. Crewe begins Becoming Criminal discussing the nature of heliocentrism and the battle of accepting and rejecting ideas. It is evident that the author’s intent is to force the reader to think carefully about whether or not the earth really does travel around the sun. Crewe spends much of his text explaining fatal flaws in numerous philosophical suppositions and theories about the sociology of knowledge. He dismisses each theory in a concise and clear manner, so it is hard to argue with him, but his continuous arguments about why these theories fail to explain social-scientific phenomena become exhausting. While he wins all arguments on the technical merits of his rebuttals to many of the great philosophers, he fails to acknowledge that some traditional social science research merits some increased precision over chance predictions of behavior.
Crewe explains that we often seek convenience in describing social phenomena more than truth. Of course, theories must make sense. However, the problem with ontology is that making sense overrides the “truth” behind norms. While one may call an act deviant, it does not necessarily offer any real explanation in the terms. For so many years social science scholars have been taught that correlation does not necessarily mean causality—and even if it did imply causality, rarely can we explain the processes and workings of the cause.
Chapter One explains what theory is not. It does not explain processes or functions of items. It is not a product of reason. Crewe claims that we live for convenient explanations rather than explanations of society that speak “the truth.” However, these explanations do not serve us well at explaining the real phenomena.
Chapter Two critiques Comte’s contention that theory constitutes causal explanations. Crewe explains that theory is not a description of causality. He offers the critique that Einstein’s relativity theory is only true in closed systems that do not exist outside of theoretical models. Of course, as modern theorists use the phrase “ceteris paribus,” they also concede that conditions are very rarely equal among any groups being studied. For this reason, we truly do not know why or how any model works, regardless of the correlation. This leads to a dismissive critique of two commonly used research methodologies: deductive statistical models and inductive statistical models. Crewe implies that even if there are statistics which show a strong relationship, there may be faulty logic (such as, no men taking this wonder drug developed ovarian cancer). Therefore, we may conclude that we live in a world of imperfect systems. Causality is difficult because motives are difficult to understand. Similarly, concepts like social bonds are difficult to measure, as well as whether those bonds are with conformists or deviants. Therefore, the notion of cause is ambiguous. Crewe frequently offers witty and entertaining examples to illustrate his points.
Chapter Three describes theories as metaphors filtered by an observer’s perception of a specific phenomenon. Note that the observer’s perception fits their own individual biases. It does not necessarily translate to any other audience member. Therefore, what makes sense to one person may or may not make sense to another person. Any explanation of criminology must avoid being reductive if it is to be accurate.
Crewe begins his first assertion of how to explain phenomena by discussing Deleuze and Guattari’s contention that there is no such thing as a simple concept. For example, race is actually a process of racialization between the internal feelings of actors and their external expressions to others as well as all subsequent reactions. Concepts follow visions and images of what is criminal and what is not.
Chapter Four analyzes the concept of will. Does pure free will exist or do influences exist? This chapter first addresses the complexity of defining crime. This leads to the question of an individual’s will to commit crimes. Already, the acknowledgement that there are numerous factors influencing behavior counters the argument that free will exists. Therefore, we do not truly know the actual level of commitment individuals will have to societal norms.
Chapter Five digs even deeper to our level of cognitive awareness by questioning how people know that they, and others, exist. Crewe links criminality to being human because non-humans are never labeled criminal for their actions. This is explained by the concept of dualism, where actions are separate from thoughts. Choices may be unconscious or subconscious. It is difficult to understand how others experience similar phenomena. However, we do attempt to communicate a sense of organization of the world with others.
Chapter Six, entitled “Becoming,” clarifies Crewe’s symbolic interactionist approach by stating that intentionality and self-concept interact with social conditioning to produce behavior. Researchers must deal with the idea that only a small part of a person’s thoughts and actions are visible. Constraints are only understood at the individual level because humans each have their own unique set of perceptions.
Chapter Seven offers a critique of the term power. Power is difficult to measure, but human beings do not have absolute power over all actions of all people. Human beings may influence or be influenced to some degree by certain people and circumstances, but there is a significant degree of variability in these actions. Building on this concept, there are questions about the degree of external control or guardians providing protection from crime.
Chapter Eight is entitled “Constraint.” Individuals vary in their level of conformity. Once again, Crewe draws from the work of Deleuze and Guattari by stating that actions are products of assemblages acting on a constantly changing environment of knowledge and identities. One example is of the man and hammer. Neither may complete a job independently, but under certain circumstances they perform a specific action.
Chapter Nine, “Change and Complexity,” bows to the idea that all knowledge is subject to change and all behavior the product of a complex assemblage of interacting forces. Individuals are nodes that react to specific attractors, and only through the study of complex systems can we understand how they coalesce.
One of my primary critiques of this text is that while Crewe takes great pains to detail where various theories fail to explain phenomena, he gives almost no credit to the advances of past research based on the numerous theories that have been used to study society. This bias of pursuing a perfect truth leads to a demand for an “all or nothing” type of theory. Explaining just a portion of the variance through correlation is not pure enough to make a quality theory. In the end, Crewe’s development of his theory does not break significant new ground, but it does offer a detailed explanation of the situational aspects of criminality that has already been put forth by Lonnie Athens in his work describing the creation of violent actors as situational products.