ABSTRACT
Because we are locked into society, because our journey of knowledge occurs within the journey of our societies, we cannot know things about society with absolute certainty – the ‘truths’ of the social sciences are interpretative. But we need concepts, we need to clarify and analyse our linguistic products. They define the objects we bump into, they lay out the meaning of the courses of action we undertake. As the contemporary Scottish social theorist Alasdair MacIntyre put it:
It is no wonder then, that in the 200 or so years that some form of criminology has been in existence controversy has raged over the meaning of its basic concepts.
