ABSTRACT
In common with the previous chapter, this chapter adopts a broad chronological structure, picking up the story of theoretical developments from the 1960s onwards, at a time when mainstream theorizing about crime was beginning to look rather limited in its usefulness and applicability. This was either because its practice had failed to deliver the expected reduction in crime, or because the practical implications of the theorizing were in fact highly impractical. The decline in the practical utility of scientific theorizing about crime might have created a space for new approaches to the study of crime, but it was a space that criminology was not that well placed to exploit at this time.
