Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a more comprehensive, theoretical framing of the anthology by introducing central concept in gender studies. It renders visible and problematize conceptions and norms for performing masculinities across a number of settings within the criminological field. The book provides the criminological research field with a contemporary, Nordic theoretical discussion of the gendered aspects of crime and crime-related practices. In criminology, there is a research gap or an imbalance between a relatively comprehensive body of research from a feminist and/or gender-theoretical approach, focusing on women, and a fairly limited gender-theoretical literature on men, masculinities and crime. Lotta Pettersson and Christoffer Carlsson argue that in order to better understand persistence and desistance in drug use over time, it is necessary to analyse this in relation to age and age norms.