ABSTRACT
Ruth Rosner Kornhauser's powerful critique of cultural deviance and culture of poverty steered much of criminology toward structural, situational, and individual explanations for crime and far away from cultural approaches. The two important changes in sociological thinking have spurred a resurgence of cultural thinking about social problems. First, poverty itself has changed. The deindustrialization and globalization of the United States economy, which were unfolding just as Kornhauser was writing, dramatically reshaped the ecology of urban environments. Second, and related to this first change, the sociological and criminological understanding of culture has changed dramatically since the 1960s. In this chapter, the authors illustrate how the reconceptualization of culture as a frame or lens allows for a cultural explanation of crime without the necessity of arguing that criminals are all morally bankrupt. They approach this objective by reviewing and extending their prior work on cultural frames and legal cynicism.
