ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes two particular theoretical connections: the first is the relationship between criminology and the evolving contradictions of liberalism; the second is the parallel between anti-criminology and various deconstructionist movements in literature, philosophy, and other areas of the human sciences over the time period. The internal twists of the emerging discourse – the actual disputes that took place as the new criminology tried to establish its identity – deserve attention as much as these detached views of its history. The study of crime, law, deviance, and social control remains one of the most fertile areas for the sociological imagination, and the ideas generated by anti-criminology are as interesting now as they always were: the reality of crime as a social problem, the possibility of creating a crime-free society, the relationships between crime and politics, the nature of social control.
