ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the state of sociological theories of crime, inequality and social control, focusing on new directions for theoretical development. It suggests specific directions for future empirical research. The book reveals how recent changes in the political order of socialist and communist states have influenced the study of crime and social control. It book argues that post-structural theories, by according importance to the varied meaning of "gender" and other aspects of inequality across historical periods and social contexts, offer more useful explanations of social control. The book offers new directions for both theory and research on ethnicity and social control. It examines the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist whose work has been only recently translated, on the role of symbolic capital in the regulation and control of social problems.
