Assignment:
Whiteness in Criminology
Description
Activity Six:
Imagine you are writing your final discussion paper (task 3) on the topic of Whiteness in criminology in an Australian context.
Which three (3) references located in Smith's (2014) article would you use to help direct your research?
How might Smith's (2014) article be useful to you in developing your own argument?
Activity Seven:
Provide evidence of your process for narrowing down the discussion paper topic (this might include a series of keywords you entered into OneSearch, mind maps, flow charts, etc.)
Abstract
This paper merges critical White studies with the sociological field of criminology as a means to progress understanding of criminal behavior, justice, and social control. Up to this point, criminology has largely neglected the significance of whiteness within its boundaries of the study.
Thankfully, a strong foundation of research and theoretical statements has been completed in the interdisciplinary field of critical White studies. The formation of criminal law can be more clearly understood through the inclusion of frameworks offered by critical White studies.
Additionally, nuanced explanations of criminal behavior and hate crime among Whites can be attained through this perspective.
Introduction
In his 2009 presidential address for the Society for the Study of Social Problems, a criminologist Steven Barkan called social science to reclaim the study of racial and ethnic inequality through new innovations. Heeding this call, the current paper proposes that criminologists engage in a critical interrogation of whiteness as an explicit effort to explain criminal behavior and social control. The purpose here is to develop theoretical perspectives with a clear recognition of how White identities and whiteness shape and are shaped by perceptions of justice, crime, and social control - criminology landscapes of research, policy development, and activism. Like many other scholars and activists have clearly stated, Barkan (2010: 3) calls for social science to recognize that "racial and ethnic inequality is, after all, a white problem."