Editor’s Address

THE ONLINE QUARTERLY REVUE OF CRIME, ETHICS AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY.

AN ADVOCACY FOR INVESTIGATION AND FUNDAMENTAL THEORETICAL DISCUSSION OF THE COMPLEX RELATIONS BETWEEN CRIME, ETHICS AND SOCIAL & POLITICAL PHILPOSOPHY.

 

‘ Virtue being, as we have seen, of two kinds, intellectual and moral; intellectual  virtue is for the most part both produced and increased by instruction , and therefore requires experience and time; whereas moral  or ethical  virtue is  the product of habit (ethos), and has indeed derived its nature, with a slight variation of form, from that word. And therefore it is clear that none of the moral virtues is engendered in us by nature, for no natural property can be altered by habit…..The virtues therefore are engendered in us neither by nature  nor yet in opposition of nature; nature  gives us the  capacity to receive them,  and this capacity is brought to humanity  by habit;

(Aristotle Nicomachean Ethic Book II 1-3)

 

‘ Now we consider that everybody means by Justice  that moral disposition  which renders men  apt to do just things, and which causes them to act justly and to wish what is just, by Injustice that disposition which makes men act injustly and wish what is injust

(Nicomachean Ethic Book V, 3)  

 

Why launch a new journal? The first possible response would acknowledge that this journal is the official organ of the recently founded European Research Group Crime Ethics and Social Philosophy (ERCES). But this cannot satisfy our curiosity. Why launch this journal? – Look on the journal’s mission statement and you will understand! Here again, those who are curious about the reasons for launching this journal can be reasonably expected to feel disappointed with the acknowledgment of the journal’s dedication to investigation & fundamental theoretical discussion of crime and deviance, providing a focal-centre for ethics, social philosophy and social theory discussion. After all one might ask; ‘What has crime to do with ethics, social philosophy and social theory discussion?’ From the moment on when this question is raised, there is need to clarify this relation. The journal is targeted to this objective, and this target is the reason for which it is launched.

If there is need for investigation, it is because this relation is not o,ly complex, but also because the investigation of this issue has, for reasons which will be discussed later in this essay, received, to a certain degree, less consideration than other issues in social sciences – hardly, if not at all perceptible in criminology; and yet the commitment to investigate this issue, in many, regards, constitutes one of the most crucial challenges social sciences in general, and criminology in particular have to face in order to discuss and resolve the problems of our times.

 

 

I.

The Actuality of the Issue

 

The relation between crime, ethics and social philosophy, is, as I have said before, an issue which has received, to a certain degree, less consideration than others in social sciences and social theory. Indeed, the validity of this observation is depending on our definition and understanding of ‘ethics’. In its most common sense, the word ‘Ethics’ means a broad range of issues concerned with values – good / bad, just / unjust etc – and with those rules which determine our disposition to do right or wrong, behalf in a good/ bad way, act justly / unjustly. In everyday life, the word ‘ethics’ is most often associated with ‘morals’, and all the evidence suggests that the two notions are rarely distinguished; in everyday life much, if not all of us, apply either the one or the other word to express the same concerns.

As far as this most common sense of the word is concerned, everybody understand by ethics (i) the disposition of men and women to do right or wrong, good and bad etc ( for Aristotle this disposition is synonymous with justice) (ii) the rules and costumes which determine that disposition. We find both aspects in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethic where ethics is used as a synonym of morals and where ethic is defined as a virtue engendered in us by habit.

 

1.- Values, Norms and Facts: Strange bedfellows

 

‘Doing this or that is a morally deplorable act’ – the person who enounces this proposal appreciates or evaluates human behavior. It is therefore clear that ethical concerns refer to values. For most, if not all of us, crime is a morally deplorable act; it is a morally deplorable act, because it hurts common values and our consciousness.

Social sciences are often dealing with ethical problems, and in modern sociology and social theory the great classics of Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx provide a focal-centre on values, and in these works, social problems are thought and analyzed in association with values. And yet, ethics and social sciences, ethics and criminology and ethics and crime seem to be strange bedfellows. Indeed, social sciences, and in particular criminology are traditionally empirical sciences, in other words they are sciences of observation; their proposals and statements are, from the viewpoint of their logical-semantic structure, genuinely descriptive, whereas ethics, as far as the science which provides for normative statements about morally approved or disapproved human behavior, would rather refer to values and to a system of appreciative and / or prescriptive proposals. For a long period analytical and positivist philosophy has been dominated by the dogma of the impossibility to decide on the validity of appreciative and /or prescriptive proposals. The dominant opinion was that it is impossible to provide for rational assessments about the question whether appreciative and/or prescriptive proposals are true or not true. Closely connected with this opinion is the precept, developed first by Hume and Kant and later by Poincaré, that claims the absolute necessity to separate 'what is' from 'what ought to be’, and highlighters the impossibility to deduce norms and values from facts. And yet in contemporary analytical philosophy, this dogma is no longer thought as from an absolute figure. According to van Wright, Nagel, Putman and Larmore, such proposals can be true or not true. For these authors proposals as ‘Slavery is bad’, ‘Democracy is good’ or ‘Death-penalty is unjust’ are rationally legitimate, if not true proposals. Other who provide for a more anthropological approach to this problem, assess against Hume that the traditional distinction between facts and norms, between axiological and empirical – positivist certainties hurts empirical evidence. (Boudon 1982:417-28)) Raymond Boudon, for example, put in his ‘Le Juste et le Vrai (1995) that empirical and axiological certainties have the same origin if not the same nature. Even Kant, who advocated the impossibility to derive that what ought to be from that what is did not disapprove the inverse case; according to his opinion, that what is can derive from that what ought to be, because norms might engender facts. Hans Kelsen, the inventor of contemporary legal positivism and one of the most categorical opponents of the confusion between facts and norms, legal norms and morals, did so too.

Nonetheless the problem of the validity, as it is raised in positivist philosophy, is not entirely resolved, and empirical social sciences are strongly influenced by Hume’s precept. The problem of the validity is raised otherwise, in particular in anthropology, ethnography, psychology and philosophical and/or historical materialism. In these scientific areas, the problem is no longer defined with reference to the logical– semantic structure of descriptive and normative propositions, not as of the possibility’ impossibility to make rationally legitimate or true proposals about assessments as, for example, ‘slavery is bad’, but as of an artificial or ideological construction. Thus for Freud, Nietzsche and Marx, morals, and in particular morals as inherent part in religion, are devoid of any objective and real reference; for these authors, they are valid, but as ideological figures. In this context facts being associated with norms, empirical certainties to axiological certainties do not serve, as it is for example the case in Raymond Boudon’s works, as support for the empirical, objective and, consequently rational or irrational nature of ‘axiological realities’, but as support for a critique that, by dissolving moral rules into the world of facts, deny their authenticity and objectivity. As for Claude Levi–Strauss, who applied structuralism to ethnography, the rule which provides for the interdiction of incest is determined by the elementary structure of blood-relationship that provides matrimonial relations with normative limits; thus the prohibition of incest is not thought as of a moral state of consciousness, but as from social structure and function (basic condition for exchange and society of exchange), all the more so as for Lévi-Strauss the social structure and real objective significance of social life and organization is not hosted within consciousness.             

Second, as far as crime is defined with reference to the tradition of legal positivism and as far as it is thought as a matter of criminological research ( criminology as empirical science), crime refers to norms, whereas ethics refer to values. Here again we must acknowledge that in both analytical philosophy and legal positivism norms and values are together with their respective referential orders thought as from antagonistic relation ( Wiggins 1991: 95). It is therefore clear that criminology, as far as we understand this discipline as empirical science, provides for objective statements about an issue which shows genuinely a normative, not an axiological nature. On this account  neither the norms of the positive law nor the normative disciplines of social sciences - law in general, criminal law an criminal justice in particular - have concern for ethics.

 

2.- The Legal And the Moral Crime talk: Towards Crime Ethics

 

 Law teachers have no concern for questions about the moral dimension of the law; they do not ask whether this or that legal disposition is morally deplorable or not; they have concern for the conditions under which a legal norm can be thought and be defined as valid; they study the structure of the legal system and when they question the validity of a legal disposition or a judgment, then never with reference to morals, but always with reference to the legal system and the hierarchical order of its norms.  When law teachers and lawyers talk about justice and injustice, then it is always with regards to the question whether a judgment do or do not comply with precept nullum crimen sine lege, nulla poena sine lege both the rules of the civil or criminal procedure and the; analogically a legal disposition is just if it conforms with the Constitution, it is unjust if it do not comply with the Constitution. To resume they talk about justice then it is generally in the same way as the positivist law does. The teacher and the positive law define crime as from norms, not as from values.

 

And yet the same teacher or lawyer, when talking in everyday-life about justice or injustice, does not necessarily refer to this positivist-legal understanding. We have all experienced many situations and many cases where we are well disposed to qualify an act which is legally just as unjust and inversely. And one of the most celebrate crime-talks that have ever been made in 19th century social philosophy – Karl Marx’s talk about the wood-stealers, published in 1842 in the ‘Rheinischen Zeitung’ must be thought as from a real model or even a paradigm for moral crime talk. It constitutes somehow the cardinal philosophical reference for everyday-life crime talk and, given its prominence in and influence on contemporary social theory, but also criminology, the authentic contemporary moral crime talk. By distinguishing formal from material justice / injustice, this ‘crime-talk’ focuses on the conflict between a moral and a positivist legal conception of Law, and of crime. This distinction exists in everyday-life and it is familiar to all of us. When the same law-teacher talks about crime as a private person, then he/she talks about crime as we all do in daily life and as some philosophers, exactly as the young Marx, have done and continue to do. All the evidence suggests that the normative and positivist definition of crime is less prominent in everyday-life crime talk than the axiological, moral one.

 

Talking about crime in everyday-life is, it seems, talking with reference to a certain idea of natural law, rather than with reference to positivist law. This reminiscence to an upper law of the positivist law - to natural law, is one of the reasons for the prominence of Marx’s crime talk. ‘Misery makes crime’ – so far the quintessence of Marx’s story. This slogan is the origin of the economical causes of crime in modern social theory. The paradigm has had a strong influence on criminology and, even in our times, it is very prominent in criminology, but also in actual approaches to anomie – theory, in particular institutional anomie-theory (Bernburg 2002: 729-42). The other important point that we have to acknowledged is the following one: With this slogan, that is familiar to all of us, but also to many criminologists, the legal definition of crime has become a morally deplorable and, given the objective economical circumstances, unjust, if not oppressive. From ‘Misery makes crime’ to ‘misery is criminal’ the shift is quickly done. The think-play is serious and there is an ethical case for it – at least when it culminates in a real ‘ethic of crime’! It is this aspect and the economic conditions for deviant behavior and for its criminalization which make the crime-talk of the young Marx so attractive for both everyday-life crime talk and social scientific and criminological crime talk.

The transfer of this scheme from the discourse of social theory to that of criminology has several important consequences: Crime can no longer be thought and defined with reference to a specific, criminal nature; from now on it is a social construct, the result of its legal qualification. And, secondly, the scientific analysis of crime, instead of being focused on a set of typical and quasi natural and genuinely morally deplorable behavioral and personality characteristics, provides a focal centre on both crime-making of the formal legal social reaction and functional definition of crime; the particular nature of this functional definition consists in this that a neutral connotation is supplanted to the former ‘natural’ negative one. As far as crime is the result of the legal definition or – in other words: as far as the legal definition of crime is concerned, crime can no longer be thought nor be analyzed as a figure that impacts common consciousness. Emphatically, but truly, we might say that that what really affects common consciousness and supra-individual values is in accordance with this scheme the ‘revolting’, ‘immoral’ and unjust criminalization of the ‘real’ non alienated consciousness and (common)values of humanity. Labeling theory and critical radical criminology snatched up this scheme, with slightly variation from and contents; and it continues to play in contemporary sociological deviance-theory a role that – however controversial - cannot be neglected.

In Historical Materialism the primacy of the scientific narrative of Marxism is supplanted to that of a more romantic, humanist and therefore likely more attractive for human rights. Crime as expression of class antagonism’ – in this figure the scheme is reduced to its most radical degree.  In the communist ‘society without social class differences’ it culminated in the totalitarian utopia of a society without crime and without criminology – another case for ethics.

Closely related to this scheme is Critical Theory’s and Marxism’s reminiscence to Theory of tyranticide (Jaszi & Lewis 1958). This reminiscence is the result of a reappraisal of the works of the young Marx[1] that – however controversial it might be, in particular with regards to dogmatic Marxism and historical materialism - was and still is very prominent in critical occidental discourse. By applying it to modern democracy – however problematic such an intellectual operation may be with regards to modern democracy and the law of majority[2] -  neo-Marxism has provided many contemporary social philosophers and social theorists with the advocacy of the ‘just crime’ or ‘crime for the just cause’. By the way, note that this ‘think-figure’ has served for a long time ( and, to a certain degree continues to serve even today) as ‘philosophical-moral’ support for political violence and terrorism, in particular terrorism associated with fundamental human rights such as resistance against oppression, liberty, freedom and equality. Because of its reminiscence to natural law and a transcendental order, this ‘crime-ethic’ – however controversial it may be from an ethical viewpoint, but also with regards to modern political culture and democracy – has marked many areas of our cultural life; and even if it has lost some of its former prominence, today it remains – as the polemics and comments on September 11 has shown, attractive for a large part of the public opinion and a great number of intellectuals.

And yet, given the nature of this key-event, such attraction is together with the corresponding schemes of interpretation devoid of any legitimacy; it cannot be justified neither with reference to reason,  nor ethically ( Adler 2002; Glucksmann 2001. See in this issue the article of Simon Cottee)[3]. If this crime ethic can be justified neither ethically nor with reference to the rationale of modern democracy, what is it then that can explain its attraction and prominence? It is that ‘moral complex’ which is inherent in legal positivism and which has favored the contemporary attempts to get back in touch with the tradition of natural law. By referring to Garland’s and Spark’s terminology ( 2000: 189-204)  ), it can be thought as from a figure of ‘crime complex’, not as Garland and Sparks understand, but as the moral complex that is inherent within positivist-legal definition of crime. The ‘moral complex’ of legal positivism refers to the ‘moral complex’ of modern democracy; it is both the expression of and the disappointment about the tautology of the democratic legality

.By this I understand in accordance with the French historian François Furet (1985) the circumstance that the democratic legality (being based on the rule of majority) refers always to itself and excludes from its rationale the idea of a supra-legality that would refer to a transcendental order. This complex must not always, as it is so often the case and as our example shows, have negative, if not unacceptable consequences. It can also be positive and ethically desirable and necessary, in particular when it figures as a corrector of the positivist law and when it is a principal motor for the reform of the legal system.       

 

3- Moral Consciousness And Moral Complex In Positivist Law – An Ethical Case.

 

The positivist law, as I have said before, has no concern for ethics. - Really? It would be more appropriated to acknowledge that the validity of the positive law has no concern for ethics. If our comments on Marx moral crime talk can teach us something, then that the ethical lecture of law and justice – the supplant of  the ethical or moral validity of law ( of values as a reference for the validity of law) to that of normative ( of the norms of the positivist law as reference for validity) is ethically problematic. The same observation applies to ‘crime - ethics’. What is better, legal positivism Kelsen’s façon or a legal system that receives the validity of its rules not from its own formal legal structure and procedure, but from a moral outworker? Given the experience of the NAZI and Communist totalitarian States - in both cases, the constitutional principles – either formal or material- of the democratic liberal state  was  dissolved into a ‘ legality’ dominated by the totalitarian Communist and NAZI – ethics -, the question should be raised.  

 

The fact is that there is a normative (ethical) case for positivism in national or domestic and international law. By this I mean that ethical considerations might and, as far as Hans Kelsen or Benedict Kingsbury are concerned, effectively have served as ‘rational choice-makers’ providing the primacy of legal positivism upon natural rights with rationally based and convincing legitimization[4].

Human rights, international right, crime against humanity, war-crime are matters that have a very strong ethical coloration. They are altogether incorporated within the broad range of positivist law; but they are transcending altogether a sort of super-legality - a refugee of natural law.  In Human rights, International right, crime against humanity, war-crime the law shows its concern for ethics; historically these figures are indeed the result of the attempt to get back in touch with and to re-invent the concept and the tradition of natural right, but also its traditional role of a critical instance for politics by means of an interpretation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the constitution of the UNO. Because of its universal validity and acceptance, either postulated or real, this particular figure of legality is appropriately represented in the image of a higher instance for legal correctness – the ethical or moral consciousness of positivist law, but also of domestic and international politics. Indeed, human rights are often thought in association with the ‘right of the rights’  (Delmas-Marty 2003:13-25) or even the upper right’s right, international right as the legal means to build on a world-wide universal ethical – security and peace-keeping - policy for politics destined to supplant the sovereignty of the world community to that of the nation (Delmas-Marty 2003:13-25; 2002:1915-29; Cassese2002; 2000.Badie 1993) Human rights and positivist law are often quarrelsome bedfellows; emphatically and schematically the apple of discord is as follows: the former is the idealist who claims for humanism and universal material justice, whereas the latter, more formalist, trust a rather normative conception where the problem of justice and injustice is a question of the formal validity of norms. It is impossible to draw - even in a non exhaustive manner - the list of examples for this quarrelsome couple. A look on the 2004 March issue of the very prestigious Newsletter of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, which, on page 8-9, provides its lectures with a global overview on the projects of the Centre for Penal Theory and Penal Ethics addresses it at length ( von Hirsch 2004: 8-9). As for crime against humanity, it is an exceptional offence that has been created to apply to exceptional situations: its original aim was to provide the victims of the holocaust with justice – not that one that applies to normal situation and is contained within the rules of the positive law, but that which is required by the tragedy of humanity and which therefore requires in turn for a criminal procedure’s state of emergency providing for retro-activity and not time-barred charges (Badinter 1998:i-VIII).

 

Apart from crime against humanity – an issue that cannot be thought as from an ethically controversial figure, in human rights and UN’s security and peace keeping mission, there is good case for ethical debate and controversy, just because the ethical connotation is stronger in this area than it is elsewhere in law. As for the principle, one might ask indeed whether the attempt to re-invent the concept and the tradition of natural right by means of an interpretation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – however legitimate such interpretation might be from an ethical viewpoint, is not worthy of inquiry from an ethical viewpoint.

 

The universality of human rights can be thought and - given multi-cultural and communitarian critics - was and, to a certain degree, is effectively considered an illusion: How is it possible to provide for an ethical legitimization for a universality which is an illusion. The same observation can be made for its application. Is it possible? And even if it is, as some specialists suggest (Delmas-Marty 2003:13-25), possible to provide for such a legitimization, the particular philosophical and cultural background of Human Rights would it not be then a good case for cultural imperialism? We must furthermore acknowledge that human rights are often the stage of controversial interpretation and ethical conflict. All the evidence suggests that human rights and communitarian and multicultural society must not necessarily exclude each other. And a multi-cultural and communitarian conception of human rights obviously exists.

We all know that in some cultures of our world, namely African culture, the excision of the clitoris is frequently practiced. And we have also acknowledged this during the last years increasing all out effort against this cultural habit within NGO, namely human rights’ movement and associations. These NGO claim in the name of human rights, in particular equality of sex and equality of rights for legal prohibition and sanction of these practices. The opponents, providing a focal-centre on the right for cultural difference, refuse the idea that such cultural habit is discriminatory and constitutes an offence against human rights. Let me stress the importance of this ethical case as follows: Is it morally possible to claim In the name of the right for cultural difference the right for women to be devoid of right? Have women the right for an offence against their physical integrity – is it morally justified to deny them the right to be woman and the right to feel pleasure. And; who requires for this right – the women, the men, the abstract subject of a culture? And: are we still moving in ‘multiculturality’ or is it rather ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘cultural essentialism’ that engender such requirement. According to Floya Anthias 1995: 298) and Jock Young (2002: 593-611; see also Bauman: 1995: 188) who have stressed the importance of this difference[5], multiculturalism and cultural essentialism can be hardly associated to human rights, and given the nature and the consequences of such right for cultural difference, there is a case of advocating the ‘multiculturalist’ rather than the ‘multicultural’ nature of this issue.

As far as human right engender ethical conflict, an analogy is easily drawn between that case and the ‘affaire of the headscarf’ which is at the focal-centre of today’s public debate in France, but also in other European nations has shown concern for it, The historical development of this case amply discusses the complexity of this case: Without the acknowledgment of increasing development of Islamic fundamentalism and the growing prominence of headscarf within the Muslim population; without the acknowledgment that Islam’s importance as France’s second religion – without the  progressive disintegration of  significant proportions of second or third generation of north-African immigrants youths; without the radicalization of inter-ethical conflict associated to an extraordinary renewal of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitist violence and crime, most often and in the great majority of the cases committed by young men from this disintegrated population – without the acknowledgment that the French model of integration has felt into a very deep crisis, this case would have hardly developed into a real Affaire of the State. The observation that this case is good illustration of how, in every-day discussions, different ethical talks – equality of rights between men and women, laity, security and ethically inadmissible renewal of anti-Semitism associated with crime - interact, are linked together and confused. As far as the social construction of this case is concerned, the problem of laity came rapidly to the fore of the public debate. At the heart of the ethical conflict is the question how to understand laity? At the first glance the answer is for all of us clear: Laity means the banishment of religion from the political affairs and life of the State; it supposes the liberty to express our religious opinion and conviction liberty. It is therefore clear that the central problem refers to the way of how this liberty expresses concretely and should be practiced. The answer depends on custom and habit – according to Aristotle: on morals.

In the USA and the UK, the moral of laity refers to and is basically engendered in communitarian and multicultural society; there is absolute primacy of a communitarian conception of laity. Due to this tradition, the social identity of individuals results from his or her community membership and it is the community which gives him or her shelter and protection ( even and foremost against the arbitrary power of the State). Community membership is often defined with reference to religion; the members of a community adhere often to the same religious beliefs. In France where the influence of the Catholic Church on political affairs and social life has been very strong during the whole 19th century until the second half of the 20th century, where Post French Revolution political theory and political and social policy are aimed to preserve the public space from any kind of religious invasion and influence and where the postulate of universal emancipation precluded the idea of community-emancipation and privileged the primacy of assimilation rather than of communitarian emancipation, the morals of laity refer to equality ( the equality between all emancipated human being) – one might say also to a normative rather than to an anthropological conception of laity. To stress the difference: it is not community ( and religion as an inherent aspect in it) that shelters the individual and from which derives its social identity, but it is the laic State which provides the citizen with protection and preserves his or her individual liberty and rights from collective pressure, influence and offence – from the factual power of social, economical or religious groups and movements, and from community. It is therefore clear that the communitarian conception of laity supposes a horizontal and inter-communicative laity policy, whereas the normative conception a vertical and rather axiomatic policy structure. By the way note that this scheme is also relevant for security policy; community-policing is not only a genuinely Anglo-American concept, but it has also a tradition that is much more longer and well developed in the US and he UK than elsewhere in Europe. And it is even relevant for international law, wherein the traditional ‘normative’ conception (Oppenheim 1905/1906), by referring to Grotius, provides for a vertical order, whereas a more communitarian conception, by referring to Kant, provides for a horizontal order based on inter-action (Delmas-Marty 2003:13-25; 2002:1915-29).

 

As far as the French case of the headscarf affaire is concerned, it is therefore clear that the ethical conflict must be thought as of the conflict between these two models. The circumstance that the US government has had concern for this affaire supports this observation[6]. With the vote of the law which provides for the interdiction of all religious signs that might present an ostensible character, the conflict has come to an end - preliminary, likely not definitively. There are a lot of arguments that might justify France’s choice; and much speaks for its legitimacy[7]. And yet, given the particular cultural context of this affaire and of the way it was resolved, the observation that this conflict and the way it was experienced and resolved can hardly be dissociated from a deep crisis – not only of the French integration model, but primarily and substantially  of a normative, not communitarian, vertical not horizontal, axiomatic rather than inter-actionist and communicative model of society and social policy is worth to be considered in further debate with more seriousness than it has been the case, all the more so as the crisis of this particular cultural model of society might be associated with the development and increasing importance of, as I said before, a more horizontal inter-actionist international legal order referring to Kant.                                                 

 

 

 

4.- Crime-Talk: From Constructivism To Criminological Deontology: An Innovative Epistemological Program

 

Obviously there is an ethical case for International law. Is there something in recent history that might be a better and clearer piece of evidence than the polemics and controversial debates that preceded, were with and followed the US military intervention In Iraq? We have rarely seen so many celebrate philosophers and social scientists participating in public debates; rarely the ethical case for international law was as querulous as it has been in the public debate about the controversial question whether and to which degree the normative ends and ethical goals of the US intervention could justify and legitimate the means; and rarely both, the left and the right, have been so deeply divided  about the UN peace-and security keeping mission – UN’s incapacity to constraint deviant States to provide their citizens with liberal-democratic constitutions and fundamental rights being put on one side.  Even the question of the legality/illegality of the US-intervention was a matter for controversy.[8] More recently, the affaire of the Israel’s security-wall, being referred to the International Court of justice, is a piece of evidence for a state of international justice where legality is often associated to politics and morals and where these issues are, as the controversy about the competence of the ICJ has clearly shown, often altogether confused[9].

 

Public debate and discussion either preceded or accompanied most, if not all great debates in and reforms of the justice system; abolishment of the death penalty, creation of crime against humanity, abortion, cloning of human cells and bio-genetic research on human embryo, euthanasia, marriage between homosexuals, prostitution etc – all these themes and the problems raised by them are indeed matters of ethics. More recently, growing concern about globalization, about crime and the war against it have favored, in a considerable manner, the renewal of ethical discussion and controversy in all areas of the social and political life. Moreover the increasing role played by human rights and international law in social, political and economical life of our time has, to a very high degree, contributed to the renewal of ethics.

And all these ethical issues are regularly commented and discussed in social sciences - frequently in association with crime, criminal justice, justice and human rights.

How shall we then explain that, as observed earlier in this essay, social sciences would have paid less attention to the relation between ethics and crime than to other issues? The answer is not in an absolute, but a relative response. The proposal is, as mentioned already, valid only to a certain degree. If the preceding observations can teach something, it is that crime and criminal justice and criminal law are issues which escape from the traditional bounds of their original discourse context. Indeed all the evidence suggests that crime is no longer neither the privileged matter of criminological discourse, nor the focal-centre of the of the criminal-legal discourse.

 

There is an increasing concern for these issues in social philosophy, human rights and international law and, in turn that criminology and criminal law are increasingly concerned for ethics, social philosophy, human right issues; that there is an ethical case for matters of law and a legal case for ethics. Furthermore, there is obviously a political case for criminology and a criminological case for politics, either in a negative or positive sense. This is not a new acknowledgement. What is new is that the institutional settings, rationales and discourses of both areas increasingly interact and criminologists show increasing concern for political talk, whereas politicians, governments and political scientists produce discourses which focus more and more on crime and criminological –talk. Indeed, there is a criminological case for corruption, and this case is often associated with morals. And when Gary LaFree, recently elected President of the American Society of Criminology, acknowledges in ‘The Criminologist’ ( Vol 28 No 1 2003, pp 1-5) that criminology requires democratic societies, that, to be prosperous, it require the openness of democratic societies, then democracy has become the reference for a criminological deontology.

in sum the bounds, certainties and sets of identification which have formally provided for disciplinary and institutional identity within sciences and which have determined the self-image of clearly identified and distinguished scientific disciplines and of scientific work, but also the construction of social reality  have obviously become, to a large degree, frail.

 

In Criminology, Social Theory and the Challenge of Our Times’ Garland and Sparks analysis this situation with reference to the constructivist pattern of ‘crime talk’. By  ‘crime-talk’ they understand not a set phrase, but an epistemological pattern that reflects the diversity and heterogeneity, not the homogeneity and uniformity of the talk about crime, and which invites criminologists and social scientists to participate in the constructivist re-conceptualization of both their science and crime. The social significance and empirical relevance of crime-talk reflects the fact that crime is no longer the privileged matter of criminological talk, nor is it the subject of the criminal-legal ‘talk’. As we have seen, the same observation applies to ‘philosophical’, ‘ethical or human rights talk’. Acknowledge with Garland and Sparks that this re-conceptualization

‘take place in parallel with sociology’s re-readings and reappraisals of the contemporary relevance of its founding or ‘classic’ texts (see Sparks 1997, Turner 1996)’[10]

and that the important instance is that

‘ the opposition between (i) a criminology that is interested in social and political theory, in reflexive sociology of criminological knowledge and in the testing or transgressing of disciplinary boundaries and ii) a criminology that has empirical bite and strategic relevance – is an opposition that can no longer be sustained.’

 

Since this new situation has received virtually no consideration no consideration, the assessment that social sciences have shown less concern for  crime being associated to ethics and social philosophy than for other matters is valid. Contemporary social science considers this as one of the most important characters of post-or late-modern society. Insofar the validity of our assessment supposes the complete ignorance of 

‘the transition from modernity to late-modernity’ which ‘is clearly recognized and paralleled by a whole gamut of social commentations from all parts of the political spectrum’ ( Young 2003: 593)[11]

But this is only one of a set of conditions for the validity of our assessment. Let us list them altogether: The observation that crime being associated with ethical considerations has received less consideration in social sciences than other issues is valid at the condition that

(i) crime, instead of being defined as it is currently and traditionally was effectively defined, i.e. as the privileged field of criminological analysis and research ( of criminology and deviancy-theory ), is thought in accordance with the renewal of public concern for ethics and as some social scientists have quite recently suggested to think it: as a complex social problem that ‘has become much more difficult to contain with the traditional bounds of criminological analysis’ ( Garland & Sparks 2000: 199), which escapes from the criminological domination and domestication and which constraints criminologists to re-invent their science as a

‘figure that is located in other contexts and fields of institutional settings’;

(ii) ) we do not acknowledge that crime, being associated to ethics, is an issue which – however controversial the notion and the debate about post-modernity (Young 2002: 593-613; Brodeur 1993: 73-120) in particular post-modern penal policy and criminal justice - has become during the last decades increasingly important in the moralist rhetoric of post or late-modern social sciences literature ( Garland & Sparks 2000:199-201), and that there is an increasingly ethical concern for issues of crime, criminal law and criminal justice, which is strongly associated to the growing importance of human right issues.

(iii) ethics, instead of being thought  as it is currently thought in social sciences, i.e. as of social reality, a sets of social facts – individual and or collective acts/behavior being approved or disapproved and finally defined with reference to good/bad, just/unjust, right/wrong - but as main concerns of a particular branch of social science or philosophy (ethics) which would be aimed to the investigation and analysis of judgments which approve / disapprove human acts / behavior qualified as good/ bad, right / wrong, just /unjust;

(iv) ethics is thought either as of reflexive social science – a meta-discourse of this part of social sciences’ discourse which provides for comments and analysis of practical ethical concerns or as from a deontology of social sciences, in particular criminology and deviance theory; that the meaning of the notion is not reduced to applied or practical ethics (which is only one area of ethics) and that the normative aspect of ethics) and that the normative or prescriptive dimension of ethics is taken under account.  

It is therefore clear that the actuality of ethics and social philosophy is defined with reference to those fundamental processes of social, political, economical – of cultural change which, in contemporary social sciences, are currently thought and analyzed as of post or late-modernity. And it is also obvious that social sciences and  criminology are the children of their times and that the transformations and processes of social production which are characteristic for post-modernity determine, to a very large degree, the institutional settings, the assumptions and paradigms, the intellectual behavior of these sciences and finally the nature of the relation between these sciences and their environment. And there is also evidence in this that this journal, if it is launched, then because it is committed to play an active and constructive role in the scientific - more precisely: the epistemological program which  consists in the invention and construction of new ways and settings to think, reflect and analyze crime and social control, and which is both the product of our times and the result of a new scientific consciousness.

 

Emphatically, but truly: this journal is launched because it is not a criminological journal – better: because it is not a criminological journal in the traditional and current – exclusivist sense of the term. It is launched as a major contribution to the construction and development of post-modern criminological ethics or deontology. According to Garland and Sparks such a program is animated by the postulated shifting from traditional criminology to ‘crime talk’.

As far as the epistemology of the project’s historical dimension and target is concerned, it refers genuinely to Thomas Kuhn’s shift of paradigm from internal to external history (Kuhn 1970) in this that the clash of the bounds of traditional institutional settings and the increasing precariousness and insecurity ‘of the intellectual strategies and institutional assumptions that served earlier generations of criminologists’(Garland & Sparks 2000) that have become less appropriate today, are thought in a positive, constructive rather than negative way. They may be viewed as elements which favor the deconstruction of disciplinary identity and the construction of an epistemology which provides a focus on contextualization – not as piece of evidence for a crisis that is not worth being considered with disagreement, disillusion and complaint.[12] According to Thomas Kuhn, this contextualization is the condition for the transformation of science from a pure object or reality-science to a meta or self-observing science.

Let us now see how Garland and Sparks, in ‘Criminology, Social Theory And the Challenge of Our Times’ apply this program to criminology and how it is engendered in a criminological (deontological) ethics:  

‘Criminology now has an opportunity - and a responsibility - to engage public discourse in order to address a central issue of our time.  If it is to do so, it must understand the terms in which these wider debates and discussions are being discussed and how crime and crime control feature within them. It must also develop self-consciousness about its intellectual assumptions and its social situation, about all about its links to government and to culture. Criminology’s fate is o be re-defined by the political culture of which it forms a part. If it is t play a role in shaping its own future then understanding that political culture will be an important firs step’ ( Garland & Sparks 2000: 202).

And as far as the objective side of the re-conceptualization is concerned:

‘It follows at least some of the intellectual strategies and institutional assumptions that served earlier generations of criminologists well have becoming less appropriate today. As we will discuss in a moment, the social changes of the last few decades have already prompted a rethinking of the assumptions that were characteristic in the middle years of he century when academic criminology first developed as a specialism. But some of our most contemporary habits of thought also need to be reconsidered’ (Garland & Sparks 2000: 191).

 

 

II

The COMPLEXITY OF THE ISSUE:

ETHICS AS SUBJECT AND OBJECT OF ANALYSIS

 

 Let us now try to see how such an epistemological program, how such a criminological ethic or deontology can apply to practical and theoretical issues. The best way to do so is to apply this deontology to some key-proposals and core ideas inherent within the analysis of post-modern society. In other words we will try to show the extent to which this program applies to phenomena considered typical of post-modernity. But we will also focus on the extent to which this program applies to its original discursive context; in other words we will show the extant to which this program may be viewed as Meta-critic. The articles published in this first issue of our journal will be contextualized.

 

1. Re-Conceptualization And Loss of Certainties, Erosion of oppositions And the Frailty of Limits

 

 We have already acknowledged that for Garland and Sparks the re-conceptualization of criminology is the epistemological answer to a situation where the traditional opposition within criminology between reflexive sociology of criminological knowledge and empirical criminology can no longer be sustained; and that this process take place in parallel with sociology’s re-readings and reappraisal of the contemporary relevance of its founding or ‘classics’. And we have noted that this re-conceptualization is thought by those who advocate its necessity as from constructivism. On this account, the concept of crime talk would apply not only to other institutional settings and assumptions than that of criminology (e.g. public opinion, government, etc), but also to criminology itself. This means in other words that the constructivist nature of this concept cannot be defined exclusively with reference to other than criminology, but it must also be defined with reference to criminology and its traditional academic setting and talk itself.

Garland and Sparks are aware about this; in accordance with the postulated self-observing science, they apply this concept to criminology by distinguishing between a modernist and a post-modern criminology.  By the way, a constructivist approach to crime-discourse that would apply exclusively to other settings and talks than that of criminology, would ignore the fact that criminology and its history is  

‘a sequences of relatively disconnected episodes’ (Vold and Bernhard 1986: 344. see also Young 1986: 4 - 310).

If there is need to apply the constructivist approach to criminology, then this advocacy is valid not only for criminology in general, but also for specific streams, schools or areas that were traditionally distinguished and even for those figures of crime-talk which developed within a specific stream, school or area –discourse and which were traditionally thought as opposite or antagonistic talks.

 

 

 

1.-1 Criminology’s re-invention and reappraisal of the contemporary relevance of its classic texts. 

Among the articles published in this first issue of our journal, there art two that are major contributions to the re-invention and re-conceptualization of criminology:

By analogy to sociology’s ‘re-reading and reappraisal of the contemporary relevance of its founding and classic texts’ (Sparks 1997, Turner 1996), Nicole Rafter provides our lectures with re- reading and reappraisal of the contemporary relevance of criminology’s founding or ‘classic’ text.. That what is re-thought and re-invented here is not only the traditional lecture of Cesare Lombroso’s and his works, not only the settings of understanding and interpretation that traditionally prevailed, but also the relevance of Lombroso’s works to contemporary criminological issues and finally the origins of criminology and its history. As for the relevance of Lombroso for contemporary criminology, acknowledge with Nicole Rafter that this pioneer of criminology, in many regards, is also the pioneer and future-thinker of contemporary biological criminology, of the process that, either in criminology or criminal justice and criminal procedure, tends to supplant scientific, namely biological and genetic certainties to that referring to norms and’ or to social theory. There is increase in prison sur-population and we have all acknowledged that prison administration is disappointed with this situation and that there is a real requirement for a solution that advocates the need for progressive ‘medicalization’ within the execution of the sanction; thus slogans like ‘ put the (‘real’) criminals into prison and the pathological cases into hospital’ or ‘ crime – prevention, to be successful, can no longer put aside biological and medical means’ or even ‘ policing must more than ever before focus on ethnicity and race’ has become during the last years increasingly prominent. It is therefore clear that there is an ethical case for this issue and this part of re-thinking; and there is an ethical case for the advantages ( for example the development of a more scientific and therefore more objective within taking of evidence) and the disadvantages (dissolution of normative legal certainties and guarantees of liberty into scientific certainties) of the increasing importance of science and technology within the criminal procedure as well as for race-policing – not only because moral talk, by referring to human rights, shows concern for this issue, but also because this moral- talk might be irrelevant to the methods and proceedings of contemporary community policing.

By providing our lectures with a more contemporary lecture of Lombroso’s works, Nicole Rafter provides  historical discussion of criminology that is deviant in this that it supplants the concept of a narrative and chronological talk of history to that of structure. But it is not only in this point where she has snatched up the deontological part of this program: by inventing a lecture of Lombroso that focuses rather on his complex personality rather than on a stereo-typical interpretation of his personal  character and by re-thinking the origins of criminology as from Lombroso and not as sociologists and modern deviance-theorists use to do it – as from Quetelet and the ‘social hygiene movement’ she demonstrates a persuasive case for a program within which intellectual deviance and deviant talk is per definition a positive and constructive element.   

 

What have we got to lose by stepping outside the box?’ According to Randy Martin and his coauthors there is only one answer to this question and this answer is clear: Nothing.  This question is not a simple conclusion of a substantial contribution to theoretical criminology; it is at the same time the request rather than the invitation to go ahead with the re-invention of criminology, not with its disinvention; and it is the peak of an intellectual enterprise which, by referring to Wilber provides criminology with a radical and original application of the new epistemological program. Both the radical nature and the originality of this constructivist deontology consist in the application of the postmodern epistemological program to criminology. This is realized with reference and in accordance with Wilber’s definition of the universe as being hierarchically arranged into four intrinsic quadrants. Given the empirical premises of this major contribution to theoretical criminology, it is clear that the radical nature and the originality of this contribution derives at least from the practical consequences of this deontology; it is both the substantial condition and the means to finish with the biggest problems in contemporary criminology.

 

1.-2 Social change, transition and the culture of criminology

Miroslav Scheinost’s ‘Criminology in the Czech Republic’ provides our lectures with a precious analysis of the historical development of criminology in the Czech Republic during the last century. It is the first contribution to an innovative ERCES publication program of a series of articles providing a focal center on the historical development of criminology in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. This program is dedicated to investigation and fundamental discussion of the state of criminology in periods of political, social and economical transition. At its heart is the relation between the development of criminological research and teaching and the development of democracy. It is therefore clear that such program is a major contribution to a criminological deontology that, in accordance with to Gary LaFree and as already mentioned at the beginning of this essay, is defined with reference to democracy – here: the state of democracy in societies of transition.

 

As for Diana Fenton, in her writing, she proposes a general overview of deviance and she shows how deviance is influences by race, ethnicity, culture and socio-economic status. The reappraisal of contemporary approaches to crime and deviance is not only the means of the investigation of this issue; it is also the epistemological condition for the acknowledgment of the relation between crime talk and talks dealing with other issues, and of the way these different  talks interact.  The interest of her investigation consists in this that the analysis of this influence shows that and to which high degree race, ethnicity and culture-talk has become inherent part in crime talk, in particular criminological crime talk.  

 

2. Crime-Complex And Renewal of Moralist Rhetoric: A Meta-Critic

 

In ‘Criminology, Social Theory And The Challenge of Our Time’, Garland and Sparks acknowledge that crime-talk, in post-modernity, can be thought as of ‘crime-complex’. They are somehow disappointed about the renewal of moral rhetoric, the letter being thought either as an inherent aspect within this complex or as a derivation.

This acknowledgment requires for several observations:

1) For Garland and Sparks ‘crime complex’ is a social phenomenon that, despite its psychological nature, can neither be thought nor be defined independently from its social environment and the objective social and economical conditions of its production. As far as the notion of ‘crime complex’ expresses a mental state of society or state of collective consciousness, it refers always to the objective environment and conditions: on this account ‘crime-complex’ is defined with reference to its social context and its objective conditions rather than with reference to its subjective and psychological connotation. Thus Garland & Sparks acknowledge that

‘the combination of high rates of crime and the failure of the criminal justice state produced a predicament for government that has promoted the volatile and contradictory policies of the last two decades. But more importantly, the experience of high crime rates as a normal social fact has led to the formation of a distinctive culture that has grown up around crime- a culture that changed the conditions in, which criminology and criminal policy operate; This cultural formation which – might be called the ‘crime complex’ of late modernity – is characterized by a distinctive cluster of attitudes, beliefs and practices. High crime rates are regarded as a normal social fact and crime-avoidance becomes an organizing principle of everyday life. Fear of crime is sufficiently widespread to become a political reference point and crime issues are generally politicized and represented in motive terms…This enforced engagement with crime and crime prevention tends to produce an ambivalent reaction. On the one hand, a stoical adaptation that prompts the development of new habits of avoidance and crime prevention routines. On the other, a measure of irritation and frustration that prompts a more hostile response to the danger and nuisance that crime represents in daily life’ (2000:200)

The circumstance that Garland and Sparks show disappointment about the renewal of moral rhetoric being put aside, what can we learn from their acknowledgment? – First, that, contrary to our current understanding of morals, morals cannot be reduced to a psychological or behavioral disposition to do good/bad, act justly/unjustly etc; morals cannot be thought as they used to be thought: either from an ideal (idealist sense) or of a moral philosophy - a doctrine providing us with moral rules, that could exist or might be thought independently from the material and objective conditions of its production. Secondly, that our journal, because of its commitment, can be thought as from such crime-complex and that it is launched because the objective conditions require for its creation, not because we want to do so.

 

2.-1 From Garland& Sparks back to Aristotle

The first advantage of Garland(s and Spark’s ‘crime-complex talk’ consists in this that its re-lecture provides us with the possibility to link together the subjective aspect of morals with the objective and material conditions of its production; to clarify the relation between both and by doing this, to refer to Aristotle and to show the actuality of his Nicomachean Ethics, but also its relevance for the acknowledgment of the complex nature between ethics, philosophy and crime. Thus we will understand why Aristotle is quoted at the beginning of this essay.

 

Let us here come back to our quote from Book II 1-3 NE. By acknowledging that

‘moral or ethical virtue is the product of habit (ethos), and has indeed derived its nature, with a slight variation of form, from that word’.

Aristotle stresses the material and objective aspect of morals. According to its original understanding of the notion of ‘ethos’, three different meanings can e distinguished: The notion denotes first the habitual and usual place of residence or residence; second the customs and habits and finally the moral conscience. At its origin the notion denotes the usual place of residence; it is this original meaning of the notion. As for the two other significations, they develop later. Indeed these three meanings reflect different periods in the history of humanity, in particular the history of human society. According to its authentic and original meaning, the word ‘ethos’, by denoting the usual residence, refers to the material relations between humans; they are living in a certain area or place and their social life is closely connected with and determined by this common area of residence. In archaic societies there is lack of a morals (as a state of collective consciousness) or of morally deplorable or desirable behavior. This understanding of morals which is to all of us familiar develops later as the result of a long process that is both the case and the principal motor for the progressive detachment of morals from its original material context and embedment. By the way note that the Greek words syn-ethis and ‘syn-ethia denote the same original material relation that exists between living together in a certain place or area, habit and social custom can. Without the progressive detachment of morals from their material and practical context, morals would not have developed into a specific and autonomous area or category of social life; by supplanting a theoretical understanding of morals to a more practical one, by supplanting the embedment of morals in theory and philosophy to that of material relation, this process can be thought as of the classic parade-example for the social and objective conditions of the production of ethics: the social understanding and conception of morals varies, and these variation and change depends on the material conditions. The motto ‘every époque has its own morals’ is indeed familiar to all of us; it shows to which high degree the acknowledgment of this relation is part of our collective consciousness. Here is not the place to discuss in a detailed manner this issue; it will be the focal center in upcoming issues of this revue. Let us simply acknowledge that the history of ethics confirms the preceding observation. Thus the word ‘ethics’, being used as a synonym of moral philosophy or a specific part inherent within philosophy, developed a result of the academic classification of Aristotle’s texts; that Aristotle’s ethics, because of its practical targets, must be thought as of the original discourse of practical philosophy and that is both determined by and targeted to the development of the Greek police; that the acknowledgment of justice and the education for justice is according to Aristotle the focus and motor of such development and that it is therefore clear that ethics as practical philosophy shows a major concern for crime: that this original practical philosophy reflect the classical Greek class–society based on slavery and that there is, from a modern ethical viewpoint, obviously an ethical case for ethics based on the exclusion of social classes from the life of the polis; that the idea of the equality of all human beings, of the unity and universality of the human gender, of a universal figure of right and of a world-citizenship – that the development of this modern and top-actual issue in classical philosophy is simultaneous with the progressive decline of the police-state and with the development of the Alexandrian world-empire and that for Xenon, the most important protagonist of this discourse, this empire is precisely the base and the objective condition for the development of these ethics; that the shift of the ethical focal centre from the political organization and structure of society ( polis and later the Alexandrian Empire)  to the human ego, the individual consciousness, or even to a abstract reason (‘cosmos’) or a transcendental divinity, clearly identified within skepticism and the later Stoa (Epictect) and in ancient Christianity (strongly influenced by ‘late Stoa’ and Platonism) is simultaneous with the decline of the classical antique social order and the corresponding rational conception of ethics.

 

On this account the acknowledgment that the renewal of ethics is together with the journal’s contribution to this renewal somehow the ‘child’ of post-modern society is a quite banal observation. And when, as Garland and Sparks suggest, crime complex’ is genuinely inherent within this society, then our journal is also somehow the reflection and the product of this complex. But it is neither the reflect nor the product of that renewal of ‘moral rhetoric’ which in Garlands and Spark’s critical talk on post-modern political and everyday-life speech( Garland & Sparks 2000:199-200), but also in Jock Young’s discourse on cultural essentialism(2002) is thought in negative terms rather than neutrally – if only because such interpretation and such a pejorative understanding of morals is in the light of our deontological program and in accordance with a consequent application of Garland’s & Spark’s epistemology to sociological crime-talk easily identified as from…: another moral or ethical crime talk.

 

In all accounts there is an ethical case for the talk which things morals as of a simple figure of rhetoric and for which ‘renewal of moral rhetoric’ has become an ethically problematic case.

 

Let us first of all discover the nature of ethics to which this scientific moral talk about post-modern crime, penal policy and politics belong and refer. According to Garland & Sparks late modernity

‘also brought in its wake new disorders and dislocations – above all new levels of crime and insecurity. The political reaction of the 1980 and 1990s has shaped the public perception of the troubling issues, persuading us to think of them as problems of control rather than welfare: as the outcome of misguided social programs, as result of an amoral permissiveness and lax family discipline encouraged by liberal elites who were sheltered from their worst consequences; as the irresponsible behavior of a dangerous and undeserving underclass – people who abused the new freedom and made life impossible for the rest of us’( 2000:199).

 

2.-2 The morals pf modern criticism. Advantages, Disadvantages and Disappointment

The moral of this passage is that the political reaction of the 1980s and 1990s has provided public opinion with a ‘moralist’ superficial construction of crime and insecurity. The talk of moral breakdown is the ‘, falsely represented by this reaction as the invention of liberal elites, is part of the hypocrite and superficial reactionary ideology.

On what side are the criticizers of this reactionary ideological are? – Obviously not in the reactionary camp, but on the side of the enlightened and humanist liberal elites, the same which are the proud fabricants and the certain defenders of liberal, humanist discourse – the aware protectors and diligent administrators of tolerance, liberty, equality and freedom, those who have the moral obligation to demonstrate disappointment about

‘the dramatic change of the rules of political speech and of the relationship between politicians, the public and the system’s professionals’ (2000:200);

 who feel that they have the moral duty to acknowledge that

‘the primary themes of the new penal politics – the expression of punitive sentiment

concern for victims, public protection, exclusion enhanced control – are also routed in a reactionary thematisation of ‘late modernity’, prompted not just by rising crime, but by the whole reactionary current of recent politics (2000:200),

and who are revolted against a current that

‘characterizes the present in terms of moral breakdown, incivility and decline of the family, and urges the reversal of the ‘Sixties’ revolution and the cultural and political liberation that it ushered in (2000:200).

 

On all these’ accounts, this moral talk can hardly be thought as of a master-piece of post-modern thought; rather it is a brilliant advocacy for modern ethics. And given the actual state of society and penal politic, it is difficult to disagree with Garlands & Sparks inventory of facts. Nevertheless the interpretation of these facts might provoke some irritation and hesitation. Indeed such interpretation – however legitimate it may be with regards to the situation in the US, but also from the viewpoint of its discursive and cultural reference and background – raises some major questions. First, can this interpretation be applied without hesitation to the European context? Can we seriously think it as the result of a consequent application of the epistemological program to which it refers? And is there not a moral case for the morals of the moral of this interpretation – in other words this interpretation is it not itself ethically problematic? 

.

As we have noted before the epistemological program of Garland & Sparks refers to the acknowledgment that criminology is no longer the privileged and exclusivist institutional setting of crime talk. According to these authors crime talk has become a focus in politics, the media and the public opinion. Crime complex means also that there is a real crime consciousness in public opinion and the citizen’s concern for crime shows a strong emotional coloration. The epistemological program requires per definition for an equal consideration of all these settings of crime talk and none of these settings can be neglected. This means that crime talk in public opinion is an issue that – however emotionally colored – is an issue that must receive consideration not only in social sciences and criminology, but also in politics and crime politics, all the more so as it is obviously associated with concerns for security, for victims and public protection; as it is favors the  requirement for more punishment and as it refers to both high crime rates and is grounded in the experience of high crime rate as a socially normal situation.

 

Why should governments and penal-politicians be concerned with public crime talk and all these issues? Principally for two major reasons. And these two reasons are opposite, and in this opposition is engendered an ethical conflict. The first reason is that governments and penal-politicians must be concerned with such issues in order to prevent themselves from dealing with them I an irrational, emotional rather than rational manner, and from making populist (crime) politics; this first reason refers to a modern conception of legitimacy and legitimization of governance, law making and penal politics. This conception is, accordingly to Habermas (1978: 1981; 1984) a rational conception, And they must show concern for these issues just because otherwise their decision-making would be devoid of any rationality and objectivity. Insofar the rational conception of legitimacy and legitimization is also and always a scientific conception. The second reason is that governmental institutions must show concern for these issues because the population itself has increasing concern for them, because citizens are really concerned with these issues, not because there is need for populist politics prevention. Both reasons can be thought as  the narrative of modern democracy, and they are both legitimate with regards to modern democracy. Moreover in both cases the rationales are inherent within a discourse where security and liberty are closely connected one to each other. Emphatically we can stress their difference as follows: the second reason would refer to a discourse that provides for the primacy of security upon liberty – security is here the condition for liberty (Hobbes) -, whereas the first one would rather provide for the inverse case (Rousseau).

 

It is therefore clear that those who emphasize the first rationale would automatically de-emphasize the second, and inversely. As we have seen already Garland & Sparks are among those scholars who emphasize the first rationale. There is an ethical problem ethical problem in this attitude requiring resolution: the criminological deontology would require an equal consideration of all settings of crime talk, its concrete application and its relevance to practice is ethically problematic. How is it possible to consider with seriousness public-opinion’s crime talk, when this talk shows a strong emotional coloration and when it is inherent within populism? Can this talk about crime, security and public protection be relevant to rational decision making in security and end politics and policies? Given the rational referent (rationalist conception of legitimacy) and the morals of Garland’s & Spark’s interpretation, the answer to these questions would be negative rather than positive. On the other hand, we can not ignore that in modern democracy one of the major tasks of the State is to provide its citizens with security, and according to some Constitutions the right for security is, as it is the case for example in France, defined as a fundamental human right. And the fundamental question which follows then is whether and if yes, to which degree the advocacy for an epistemological feedback is worth being considered from a deontological viewpoint, but also from the practical ethical one. And that what is engendered in such feedback is the come-back of the traditional criminological, academic setting of crime talk - the privileged area for scientific crime talk – and the actuality and relevance of  ‘modernist criminology’ (Garland & Sparks 2000: 292-64)[13] to post-modern penal policy – at least the relevance of Sir Radzinowicz’s complaint and disappointment [14].   

What happens when the liberty rationale is hyper-emphasized? Concerns for security tend then to become a case for populism – an artificial construction which is inherent part in that which, according to the morals advocated by Garland & Sparks, is the political reaction of the 1980s and 1990s that provided public opinion with a ‘moralist’ superficial construction of crime and insecurity. What happens furthermore? A look on the most recent political events in France provides us with the answer: the awareness for populist penal policy prevention, being associated with hyper-emphasized penal permissiveness turns into fascist populism: the National Front Part of Le Pen was the winner of the first round of the last French President election; thus the French electors sanctioned the tolerance discourse of the liberal elites of the left – the insecurity-taboo being stopped here.

The fundamental ethical problem that is engendered in security issues, in particular security and safety policy being associated or referring to he feeling of insecurity is raised with the question whether and to which degree a rationalist conception of legitimacy and legitimization can be thought as from an absolute principle; whether and to which degree the application of this conception to issues that show a strong emotional coloration is practically possible and politically and ethically desirable. And which are the normative references and parameters on which depends the final choice? How to define them, and who?[15]

 

 3. Cultural Essentialism, Theocratic Fascism, Multiculturalism and The Limits of Modern Critical Crime -Talk

 

We have previously referred to the necessity for scholarly distinction between ‘multiculturality’ and ‘multiculturalism’. In our discussion about the French ‘headscarf affaire’ we have also observed the relevance of this distinction to ethics. There is a moral duty in this clear distinction.

According to Floya Anthias’ ‘multiculturality’ is

‘the removal of barriers to the legitimacy of different ways of being and is not dedicated to reproduction. Multiculturality goes along with both hybridity and assimilation. Neither is to be feared a loss or a demise of a group although assimilation is an ideology and practice of forced acculturation and therefore deeply delegitimizing’ (1995: 298)

whereas

multiculturalism focuses on the reproductive process of culture rather than the transformative ones’ (1995:298).

Since multiculturalism is often thought of as a figure of cultural essentialism and the analysis of this complex relation expressed in Jock Young’s ‘Late Modernity And The Dynamics of Social Exclusion’ (2002) stipulates a very high degree of intellectual pertinence. ‘Multiculturalism’ and ‘cultural essentialism’ are considered phenomena that are characteristic for late-modern society. More than simple notions, they are inherent core slogans within the critics of post-modernity. As far as their significance is concerned, they refer to what Antonio calls the renewal of anachronistic forms of social life, being associated with 'reactionary tribalism' and ‘auto-referential culture’. This is often viewed as the most important practical consequence of the recurrent theoretical feeling which emphasizes the fight against modernity and the categorical refusal of universals (Antonio 2001: 40 - 87)[16]. According to Zygmunt Bauman’s analysis (1995), the renewal of anachronistic tendency is considered a transformation that supplants 

biological essentialism by that of cultural essentialism’ (Young 2000: 605).

Given the circumstance that

the inclusivist rhetoric had as its progressive moment the stress on way in which biological differences (whether of ‘race’, ‘gender’ or of age) the inclusivist rhetoric had as its progressive moment the stress on way in which biological differences (whether of ‘race’, ‘gender’ or of age) were not rooted in any essential difference, but were social product” (Young 2000:60; se also Bauman 195:188)[17],

it is clear that ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘cultural essentialism’ are in the critics of postmodernism synonymous with the collapse of the inclusivist model.

Despite the diversity of critical literature on post-modernity, the analysis provides for conclusions that converge[18]. This convergence is clearly identified within the critical discourse of late-modern penal and security politics and policy. Thus the acknowledgment that

‘Essentialism provides a cultural basis for conflict and is the necessary prerequisite for demonisation of parts of society. Demonization is important in that it allows the problems of society to be blamed upon others’ usually perceived as being on the ‘edge’ of society. (Jock Young 2003)

must be thought as a leitmotiv of critical literature, all the more so as the these critiques converge in this that they think  multiculturalism and cultural essentialism as from the societal reaction against ontological insecurity; but as a means to ‘secure’ ontological insecurity. The motto is that cultural essentialism, because of the contradiction inherent within it, has the paradoxical effect to favor inter-ethnical conflict and insecurity, with the demonisation of the other as its most important practical consequence. In this analytical context, the solution to the problem of ontological insecurity and to inter-ethical conflict becomes devolved to the enforcement of the fight against illegal immigration as if

‘it were a cosmetic problem rather than rising out  of the interior structure  and values of society itself;’( Young 2002:606, Young 1997; Baratta 1996).

The advantage of such explanation and interpretation offers a view of cultural essentialism that is contextualized. The problem of security is thought and defined as a cultural or general social problem rather than with reference to crime and policy. Thus crime becomes synonymous with criminalization as means to displace the real problem, not as means to resolve it. Obviously the force of this approach derives from its radical nature. But at the same time it engenders its fallacy. The acknowledgement that social problems are increasingly ‘resolved’ by means of criminalization, that criminalization and penal politics are means of demonisation and that both the social and legal blame usually apply to those being perceived at the edge of society is empirically relevant. Moreover further development of this issue would be a major contribution to the development of the paradigm of the economical causes and origins of crime. Nonetheless crime, even if it is thought with reference to cultural essentialism, cannot be reduced to criminalization as means of demonisation, nor is it possible to generalize the acknowledgment that social and legal blame is usually applied to those being perceived at the edge of society. Such generalization would provide a focal centre on ‘crime in the streets’, ‘crime in the suites’ being put aside

(Sack 1994: 150). Is crime the privilege of economically and socially marginalized, disintegrated classes? Are the poor rather disposed to commit crime than the rich? It is therefore clear that such generalization damages the theoretical, in particular the economical background to which this scheme refers. Thus this leftist discourse would become counter-productive; finally it would play the game of the ‘selective’ and ‘reactionary’ penal politics which it criticizes.    

 

A view of crime derived from cultural essentialism cannot be reduced to criminalization as means of demonisaton of the ‘other’, because cultural essentialism supposes per definition demonisation, exclusion, blame and rejection of the other by means of racial, ethical or even religious identity; it cannot be reduced to criminalization because cultural essentialism constitutes an offence against the fundamental values of modern liberal democracy. Thus it can be thought as criminal; insofar it is worth being criminalized. By providing a focal centre on criminalization as means of demonisation, the real demoniac and criminal nature of cultural essentialism is not only put aside, but it is also the result of a superficial demoniac criminalization. The fallacy of such approach is not only its epistemological inconsistence but also its ethical deficiency. It is epistemologically inconsistent, because criminalization is a paradigm that is genuinely inherent within the modern criminological crime talk and refers to selective criminalization and social and legally constructed injustice. It supposes multiculturality and an inclusivist model of society and it refers to the principles of liberty, equality and tolerance. It is therefore clear that it cannot be applied to cultural essentialism. As for the ethical deficiency, if not the morally deplorable nature of such crime talk, it engenders in a discourse which transform the demon Bin Laden into the victim of occidental demonisation; thus the fascist becomes the victim of ‘ demonic US imperialism’. Given the demoniac nature and the terrific and revolting and alarming proportion of the September 11 attack, it is easily understandable that the traditional moral crime talk could hardly be applied to this event; thus crime talk shifted from criminological to victimological talk. If, as Garland & Sparks acknowledge, one of the most important aspects of ‘crime-complex’ is decreasing concern for the criminal and increasing concern for the victim, then this victimological derivation of traditional moral crime talk must is the parody of crime complex.

 

In this issue Simon Cottee advocates the intellectual and moral inconsistence of this construction. His ‘The Worship of Unreason, September 11 and the Forces of Theocratic Fascism’ provides our lectures with a substantial analysis of the cultural and political background of the September 11 event, its cultural significance, and with a substantial critic of stereotypical sets of interpretation, either left or conservative right wing, The originality of his essay prompts us to consider the significance of the event with reference to a civilization clash within the Islamist world rather than to adopt the more prominent scheme that advocates the clash between Islamic and Occidental culture.

Given the prominence of the crime talk which transforms the authors into victims and the victims into authors; given the epistemological inconsistence and the ethical deficiency of this construction, it might be argued that the clash within intellectual occidental culture would be an exact match with the clash within the Islamic civilization. After all the modern ‘lecture’ of archaism and theocratic fascism which is at the base of the moral crime talk plays the game of Theocratic Fascism.

 

4. Exlusion And Inequality.  

 

In my opinion an important integrative “criminogenic” (in general “delictogenic”) factor is the fundamental contradiction between the relatively even distribution of human demands and the inequality in the existing opportunities to satisfy these demands, depending first of all on a person’s position in the social structure; the more significant this rupture, the lower the responsiveness of society (its capacity to meet people’s demands, as understood by A. Etzioni), the higher of deviance level, including crime.’

And Yakov Gilinskiy acknowledges in his essay Problems of Inclusion and Exclusion in Contemporary Russiathat social and economical inequality is one of the most significant criminogenic factors.

 

These core proposals of Yakov Gilinskiy’s essay are easily identified as inherent parts within the modern critical sociological crime / deviance talk, but also as master-pieces of economical crime talk. These two core-proposals are somehow the focus of an analysis that demonstrates this discourse’s relevance – however problematic and controversial its generalization and its application to specific areas and phenomena of postmodern society might be – to the understanding and the explanation of social problems, in particular deviance. The essay’s merit and originality resides in its general validity as tested in a specific Russian Context. The contextualization of this critical sociological modern deviance talk provides a welcome opportunity to test the validity of the radical approach that is inherent in this critical modern discourse. It is therefore obvious that Yakov Gilibskiy’s essay must be thought as an incitation for criminologists and social theorists to develop upcoming analysis, providing a focal centre on the complex relation between, crime, anomie, social change, economical and social inequality and practical social philosophy, but also as an requirement for empirical testing of economic crime talk and sets of interpretation that are inherent .within social theory and practical philosophy, either modern critical or more conservative or post-modern. One of the most important challenges of contemporary social sciences is to test the empirical relevance of these theoretical settings of crime talk, in particular those that are inherent within the works of Durkheim, Polaniy, Habermas and Mesmer & Rosenfeld.        

 



[1] This reappraisal is the result of an interpretation that focuses on the difference between the works of the young Marx and those of the older. Such an interpretation, by focusing on the antagonistic structure of Mark works, developed during the 1960s in the Western democratic world. The scheme is an inherent part of  neo-Marxist and critical theory’s attempt to get back in touch with Marxism and to provide Marxism by means of a theoretical re-conceptualization with a more humanist dimension. It must be thought as a result of the traditional Left’s disillusion and disappointment about historical materialism and the Communist totalitarian experience. Later the scheme is snatched up by conservative critics of Marx, providing a focal center on the inherent contradiction within Marx’s oeuvre. See on this subject for example the re-lecture by François Furet of Marx’s analysis of the French Revolution in Furet’s and Calvie’s Marx et le Révolution Française (1986)

 

[2] See for this opinion and a fundamental discussion of this issue the book of F. Furet & F. LiniersTerrorisme et démocratie’ ( 1985)

 

[3] F. Fukuyama, S. Huntington, J.-P. Moynihan and D. Blankenhorn are among the most prominent US intellectuals who advocate the legitimacy of the US intervention. See for a global overview Le Monde 2003/0215On the left N. Chomsky is the most prominent US critics of the intervention. See in this issue the article of Simon Cottee.

 

[4] Here is not the place to discuss in detail this issue. To support this observation it is always useful to acknowledge with Benedict Kingsbury ( 2002:401-36)

‘ that the vitality of mainstream positivist traditions in international law has been sustained by a deeply felt commitment to the ethical view that legal positivism provides the best means for international lawyers to promote realization of fundamental political and moral values.’

It is this assessment that forms the starting point and the guide-line of the ethical lecture which Kingsbury proposes in his essay ‘Legal Positivism as Normative Politics: International Society, Balance of Power, and Lassa Oppenheim's Positive International Law’. Such lecture – however strange – suggests drawing an analogy with Hans Kelsen’s Legal Theory. As Oppenheim held that positive international law has no concern for ethics and morals, so did Kelsen. And yet Kelsen’s comments and developments show clearly that ethical considerations are at the origin of his pure legal theory and that, for Kelsen, the legitimacy of the positivist theory is an ethical case. See on this subject for example Jelic (2001:551-570) 

 

[5] According to F. Anthias multiculturality involves diversity, cultural penetration and hybridity, whereas multiculturalism difference, reproduction and enslavement. ( 1995: 298)

 

[6] Concern, if not disappointment and disapproval about France’s attitude and reaction. It is obviously difficult for the s public opinion and the intellectual and political elites to understand the reasons to which France refers in order to legitimate its attitude. In recent history a good example for this is that Tarik Ramadan, who was and still is one of the most important advocates for the right for cultural difference and the legitimacy of headscarf in France, but also one of the most controversial personalities in France, has been appointed by the Department of Multi-cultural Studies of the very highly quoted and prominent Church’s  University; Indiana.

 

[7] Of which the most convincing is in our opinion the argument that the requirement for cultural difference refers to a context of multiculturalism rather than to multiculturality; thus those who advocated the legitimacy of headscarf in the name of multi-cultural society would have somehow used an ideological strategy that was aimed to the multicultural concealment of multiculturalism ( its genuine reference)

 

[8] See on this controversial issue Jürgen Habermas’ article ' La statue et les révolutionnaires', published in the journal Le Monde (2003 / 0503). Contra Pierre Pesactore’s La carence du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU, published in Le Monde 2003 / o513.

 

[9]  When the affaire of the legal consequences of the construction of Israel’s security - wall in the territory is referred to the International Court of Justice; when the same Court is requested for advisory opinion and when the great majority of the nations of the democratic and liberal world deny the Court the competence to give an advise in a political affaire or a genuinely Israeli security issue then there is not only a legal case for International Justice, but also an ethical case for the Court’s legal competence.

A similar observation might apply to UN’s peace and security mission; the circumstance that the great majority of the member-States of the UN’s Security Council are not democratic and liberal ones might indeed be morally deplored.     

 

[10] The authors continue as follow: Indeed such is a centrality of many criminological issues to the social organization, governance and everyday life of contemporary societies that these activities of reappraisal cannot really be thought of as separate.( In addition to the essays collected here , see Taylor 1999, Young 1999, Bauman19 98, Garland 2001).

 

[11] To support his observation the author ( 2003, p. 593 note 1) provides a large sets of examples: ″ See for example , on the left, David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity ( 1989) and Eric Hobsbam’s  The Age of extremes ‚1994), from the right James O. Wilson’s  Thinking about crime ‚ 1985) and On Character (1994),  )while from the communitarian  third way  Ammitai Etzioni’s  The New Golden Rule ( 1997) and Francis Fukuyama’s Great Disruption ‚ 1999).“

 

[12] But yet this is, it seems, the way mainstream criminology has reacted against this new situation. On his issue and for a critical comment  see Garland& Sparks  2000: 192

 

[13] ’ By modern criminology’, Garland & Sparks acknowledge, ‘we mean the frameworks of problems, concepts and style of reasoning that emerged at the end of the 19th century, produced by the confluence of medical psychology, criminal anthropology statistical enquiry social reform and prison discipline – a framework that provided the coordinates for the penal – welfare institutions that developed during the next seventy years (Garland 18985). Modern criminology is no longer quiet up to the minute, but it was a formative hegemonic discourse for the first two-thirds of this century. For all their disagreements, the founders of modern criminology were all proponents of this basic framework. Hermann Mannheim as LSE, Max Grunhut at Oxford, Leon Radzinowics at Cambridge, Tom Lodge at the Home Office, Edward Glower and Emmanuel Miller, who, along with Mannheim founded the British Journal of Delinquency, the forerunner to the British Journal of Criminology – all of them shared the same basic commitments. (A reading of American criminology up to and including the President’s Crime Commission Report (1967) reveals similar themes). And although subsequent generations would revise its terms and question its commitments, this version of criminology paid a crucial role in establishing the discipline in the academy, in government and in popular culture’.( Garland& Sparks 2000:193-94)

And furthermore in their essay, the same authors note:

‘With its faith in instrumental reason, its vision of the technocratic state and its commitment to social progress and social engineering, this criminology was emphatically modernist. Punishment in general, and retributive punishment in particular were viewed as irrational and counterproductive, as remnants of pre- modern practices, based upon emotion and superstition’…’ The proper management of crime and criminals required individualized corrective measures adapted to the specific case or the particular problem. For modern criminology crime was a social problem that, presented in the form of individual, criminal acts These criminal acts, or at least those which appeared serious, repetitive or irrational were viewed as symptoms of ‘ criminality and delinquency’ ( p; 194)

 

[14] Sir Leon Radzionowicz’s expresses his disappointment as follows:

‘What I find profoundly disturbing is the gap between ‘criminology’ and ‘criminal policy’, between the study of crime and punishment and the actual mode of controlling crime…;The stark fact stands out that, in the field of criminal justice, in spite of the output of criminological knowledge, a populist political approach holds sway.’ (Radzionowizs 1999:469)

And Garland & Sparks ( p.192) comment this disappointment:

‘And Sir Leon perhaps overstates the problem a little. Criminological expertise now plays a bigger role in local crime policy then it has ever done before – in crime prevention, crime audits, community policing and in private security – and in Britain at leas there is currently more government funding for ‘crime reduction’ research than ever before;’

And furthermore:

‘Elsewhere R ‘ 1997) has written about ‘Penal Regressions, giving the sense of the reversal of a developmental pattern – a system that has been maturing, becoming more civilized, more modernized, has suddenly regressed. Its development has been arrested, its evolution blocked. This rather unexpected reversal and the disparity between criminology(s success in the academy and its declining role in public life – particularly in national penal policy- provides us with the problem through which we can think about criminology’s development over the last hundred years.’

 

[15] With the question whether and to which degree security and safety policing, by focusing on crime prevention, might be thought as an appropriated means to increase the citizen’s feeling of security is raised another major ethical problem. We have already acknowledged that the feeling of insecurity has become a principal motor for the development of security politics and policy, although it shows a strong emotional nature. But it would be a fundamental error to believe that that strong emotional coloration would be denied of any objective references. The real problem is the nature of these objective references, their relationship and their distribution. In other words is crime the exclusive reference for the feeling of insecurity, is it the major or fundamental part within these objective references or are other aspects that play a more important role are involved?  According to a current in contemporary criminological literature, the felling of security refers partly to crime, partly it refers to transformations and change within the immediate environment of the individual and its perception (ecological environment, unemployment added to a great density of immigrants (Albrecht 1997: 147-65. Cf. Kury 1997: 166-217). Partially is it the result of the individuals‘ subjective evaluation of the risk of victimization A correlation between these two aspects must not necessarily exist (Kury 1997) and a confusion between both cannot be excluded. It is therefore clear that there is an ethical case for the application of safety and security policy to other social problems than crime, all the more so as these policies are targeted to crime prevention. On the other hand there is we cannot ignore that, as Garland & Sparks have acknowledged, that the increasing feeling of insecurity is closely connected to increasing crime rates: that the evaluation of the risk to become a victim, despite its subjective nature is closely connected with he state of crime and that the illegal statute of immigrants is a factor of social and economical disintegration, destabilization and marginalization – finally a factor that favors deviance and crime. On this account Governments’ increasing concern for insecurity is morally and politically legitimate ( see ( Silverman 2002: 2001a; 2001; Gilly 2o03: 85-102; 1998:  154 - 168. Roché 1998, 151 - 256. Kury 1997).        

[16] Antonio Robert J. After Postmodernism: Reactionary Tribalism. American Journal of Sociology. Volume 106, Number 1 July 2000 40 - 87 where the author puts that: “The idea of auto - referential culture one of the most  usually debated facets of the post modernization holds that culture  operates according to its own autonomous logic, free from  modern theory’s formative sociological substrates ( e.g. Durkheim’s consciousness or Marxist class values). This view emphasizes a split between the signifier and signified (I.e. a symbolic codes lack shared conceptual and external referents of common meaning and object) and consequent semiotic determinism.”(p. 50). The postulate of auto - referential culture constitutes only one aspect of auto - reference: In contemporary system - theory, in particular those developed by Parsons and more recently by Luhmann, auto-reference was developed as an inherent aspect in auto referential systems; it was thought of as autopoïesis. See on this subject: Salvaggio, S.-.A. , Barbesino, P.: Autopoietic Systems Theory and the System of Science. In: Salvaggio (ed.), Collected papers on Niklas Luhmann / Articles choisis autour de N. Luhmann. Information sur les Sciences Sociales. SAGE Publications. London. 35, 2 (1996), 203-214. Comp.: How is sociology of sociological knowledge possible?  In: Salvaggio (éd), op.cit, 341- 362. See also Rosbach, S.: Gnosis, Science and Mysticism: a history of self - referential theory designs. In:  Salvaggio (éd.), op.cit, 233-255. As Brodeur put it (1993. 90), auto - reference is translated in linguistics and philosophy of language as internal reflexivity of language and reversibility. Considering the core proposal of Antonio, the author focuses on  a  recurrent 20th century theoretical feeling, the radical critic of modernity, as a highly pessimistic fusion of one - side Nietzeanism and one - side  Weberianism, such that makes theory’s hope about social progress as moribund and portrays profound exhaustion of modern democratic culture and institutions

 

[17] Given the circumstance that ‘the inclusivist rhetoric had as its progressive moment the stress on way in which biological differences ( whether of ‘race’, ‘gender’ or of age) were not rooted in any essential difference, but were social product’ ( Young 2000:605)

 

[18] Thus Antonio’s analysis can be thought as from the traditional left; insofar it is an inherent part of the modern critical narrative, providing a focal-centre on the traditional inclusivist model, privileging the primacy of universals over particulars. In contrast with this traditional inclusivist discourse from the traditional left, the discourse developed by Baumann, but also by Jock Young, by claiming fort he deconstruction of the conventional notion of multiculturalism, analyses as an inherent critic in multiculturalism rather than a critic of multiculturalism. By criticizing the essentialist alienation of multiculturalism, this discourse would no longer refer closely to the traditional inclusivist rhetoric. Or, both provide for similar conclusions.

 

 

 

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By Thomas Gilly

 

I thank Professor Eli Silverman for his precious help and advices