ABSTRACT
Social theory and criminological thought remain haunted by the ghosts of the nineteenth century, and imaginative exploration is required to recast theories of symbolic interaction, communication, and control. Interactionist theory featuring concepts of identity, self, and biographical continuity seems of dubious validity in a era shaped increasingly by electronic information technology and mass communications. In addition, social control theories generally take little account of the symbolic, especially the visual, in explicating processes of social control.
