ABSTRACT
0000-0001-8721-7066
Part one of this chapter provides an overview of the rationale for this book and its main lines of argument. Following this broad-brush overview, part two of the chapter then explores the complex relationship and attendant intellectual border disputes between the ‘disciplines’ of sociology and of criminology. There are two key claims and provocations to be drawn from the discussion in second part of this chapter. Firstly, there are important intellectual gains to be made from reconnecting the inter-disciplinary field of study of criminology back to the beating conceptual, methodological and empirical heart of the best sociological disciplinary practice. Secondly, in turn the best sociologically-informed work in the criminological field can play a significant part in resuscitating and reinvigorating the fragmented, quarrelsome and amnesiac ‘master’ discipline of sociology, and help return it to its ambitious, outward-looking modernist tap-roots of the classical sociological imagination.
