Fritz Sack Conflicts and Convergences of Theoretical And

Fritz Sack

Conflicts and Convergences of Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives in Criminology

1. INTRODUCTION

It means carrying owls to Athens to call to memory the precarious and vulnerable status criminology has always been exposed to during all its existence. Its claim to be an ordinary and respected member of the family of scientific disciplines has been contested again and again and continues to be so to the present day. This is true despite all indications to the con- trary. To doubt, however, the existence of criminology in view of a congress like this here in beautiful Budapest is hazardous, if only in the sense that congresses and its participants do not mean to organize or participate in an obituary or a self-denial but have the function of en- hancing their self-repect, strengthening and reinforcing their identity and ensuring their survi- val and their future. I will, therefore, choose a more benevolent view of criticism of the state of the discipline. Criminology does not lend itself to a handy and neat definition and description of its profile. It seems hardly possible and moreover less reasonable to me, to talk about and discuss criminology in the singular mode anymore. To use a concept that has not yet gained much famili- arity in criminology, several criminological discourses exist in our discipline. I prefer the concept of 'discourse' which I take, of course, from Michel Foucault to that of 'perspective' which is used in the programme announcement of my talk. The underlying sense of 'perspective' is based on a specific understanding that I would like to challenge rather than to share. Talking about different perspectives implies an epistemological orientation that assumes the identity and the 'reality' of the object of crime that can be treated and analyzed from different perspectives while retaining its true, real and unchangeable essence. Precisely this assumption seems to me at issue in criminology and merits discussion not on the margins of the discipline, but in the center of it.

. ta I--. i ;.. I. Professorof Criminology,University of Hamburg.This is a slightlychanged and edited versionof a paperI gave at the 11theInternational Congress on Criminologyin Budapest,22-27 August, 1993.Special thanks for helping me to transformmy text into a linguisticallymore correct and readableEnglish and to avoid some inconclusivearguments I owe to Tony Jeffersonfrom the Universityof Sheffield.Of course, I assumefull responsibilityfor what still invitesto criticismin this article whichcertainly is partlydue to my reluctanceto followall his proposalsfor changeand correction.

2 , I have organized my arguments in four steps: ..

Firstly, by detailing my epistemological remarks I will propose two fundamental orientations in criminological reasoning; . Secondly, I will discuss the relationship between criminology and penal policy; My third point will deal with crime and politics; .. Finally I will treat the relationship between economics and crime.

In other words, I have chosen to treat the topic which I was asked by the programme commit- tee to talk about and which appears in the title of this article less on a formal and abstract level rather than on a more substantive level.

2. EPISTIJMOLOGICAL OPTIONS

Let me start by emphasizing that despite wide-spread neglect, if not ignorance of epistemological questions in empirical disciplines I would agree with the English sociologist A. Gid- dens and the French sociologist P. Bourdieu that no empirical science can dispense with philosophical roots and assumptions. This is true not only in the trivial sense that philosophical assumptions and presuppositions are 'ultimately' and 'irreversibly' implicated in all human existence, but it means that they are an integrated part and aspect of all human and so- cial activity. They, therefore, cannot be segregated and treated in a specific scientific discipline - like philosophy - but have to be taken into account by the theoretical and empirical instruments that are used for studying a specific subject-area. However, this is not to say, that every empirical science has its own philosophical structure and orientation according to its own field of research. Philosophical and epistemological conceptions about the ways to define, to produce and to 'accept' human knowledge claim to apply to the theoretical and methodological strategies of all the different empirical areas of research, notwithstanding their substantive specificities. Even the long held dualistic epistemology that separates the natural sciences from their human counterparts tends to collapse in view of constructionist and deconstructionist philosophical positions and chaos theory as the latest development in philosophical reasoning. Indeed, there have been dramatic and far-reaching developments and evolutions in the area of epistemology and the philosophy and theory of science. The most fundamental attack on the basis of modem science and all its branches surely aims at the conception of the relationship between human knowledge on the one hand and the object of this knowledge on the other hand. It has almost become scientific commonsense that the neat idea of an objective reality that can be grasped and made visible in its pure and uncompromised virginity, belongs to those goods in the business of science that have tremendously lost their value. All human knowledge - and science in its most 'objectified' and 'modem' version cannot be excluded from this philosophical finding - is ultimately and irreversibly stained and impregnated with human interests, goals, values and metaphysical assumptions. So, of course, is criminology, though one can find a widespread reluctance in the field to accept this epistemological position. Despite this aversion, however, criminology need not be studied too closely or borrow to much from the empire of philosophy to realize that the discipline at least in some parts is also haunted - even more: has been shaken in some periods -