Key Text No 3

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The Exclusive SocietySocial Exclusion, Crime
and Difference in Late Modernity Jock Young

• Key Text No 3

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Jock Young

• Arguably, one of Britains most celebrated
  criminologists
• Prime mover in the development of critical
  criminology
• 1968 Founder member of the New Deviancy
  conference
• 1970s Left Idealism -gt Left Realism
• Extensive Publications
• Concerns political, economic and cultural
  contexts in which crime, and criminal justice
  occur, and is explained by criminology

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• The movement into late modernity is like a ship
  which has broken from its moorings
• Aim to document the changing nature of society,
  and the changing nature of crime, criminology and
  criminal justice within it

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From Inclusive to Exclusive Society

• Fundamental societal shift occurring between
  mid-60s and mid-70s
• Golden Age post-war -gt crisis of the 1970s
  onwards
• modernity -gt late modernity
• assimilation-gt separation exclusion
• material certainty and uncontested values -gt risk
  and uncertainty (economic and ontological)
• Why?
• economic crisis OR
• cultural revolution

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Modernism

• Citizenship resolved (or nearly)
• Interventionist State
• economically and socially
• Absolutist social order
• social order and rules appealing to the vast
  majority
• Conformation Rational Deviance propelled
• Deviance to be explained
• reference to individual circumstances
• The assimilative state
• solution to deviance expertise to re-socialize
  the deviant
• paying their debt to society

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Late Modernity

• Instability and crisis
• Work and Economic Life careers?
• Family
• Welfare state
• 403030 society
• Cultural change
• pluralism -gt ontological insecurity
• Diversification of lifestyles
• globalisation
• Immigration
• Reaction assertion of tradition / moral
  absolutes etc.
• Chronic relative deprivation precarious anxiety
• the causes of criminal violence and the punitive
  response to it spring from the same source. The
  obsessive violence of the macho street gang and
  the punitive obsession of the respectable citizen
  are similar dislocations in the labour market
• Rise of individualism

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Relative deprivation individualism -gt crime

• Young men cast adrift by the decline of
  manufacturing, turning to cultures of machismo,
  respect and violence to respond to denial of
  recognition
• Growing participation women in work and public
  life challenges male hegemony women experience
  more violence, and tolerate it less.
• Inclusion and Exclusion can trigger crime

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Changing Imagery of the Deviant
Modernity Late Modernity
Society Inclusive Exclusive
Size Minority Majority
Values Absolutism Relativism
Adherence Consensus Pluralism
Distinctiveness Distinct Blurred/ continuum / overlap
Constituted barriers Permeable Restricting
Threshold Tolerant Intolerant
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Rising Crime the cause of the changing attitudes

• Fear of Crime increases public avoidance
  behaviour increases
• Tendency for a greater call for increased
  imprisonment
• Growth in physical management of crime
• Privatization of public space
• Security and surveillance
• Defensive exclusion
• Core / cordon sanitaire / out group

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A crisis of criminology, and of the State

• A crisis of aetiology
• Presumed causes of deviance seemed to be
  reducing, while crime rate was increasing
• A crisis of penality
• Prison a history of increase, of overcrowding,
  of a widespread public recognition of its
  futility
• Police no longer the crime fighters par
  excellence now one part of a multi-agency
  approach, and one that is dependent on community
  support
• The State unable to protect its citizens, but
  subjecting them to increasing control and
  coercion

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Criminology in Late Modernity

• Finds itself needing to respond to
• Rising crime rate
• Revelation of invisible victims
• Extent and Nature of crime different than
  modernity
• Problematization of crime
• Deviance continuums contested and
  politicization
• Management of punishment
• Crime increases CJS finds efficiencies in
  processing it
• stop and search punishment a result of political
  / bureaucratic pressure rather than absolute
  standards actuarial justice gt prevention and
  risk focussed

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Actuarialism and Risk

• Risk increased, diversified, ever-present
• Risk avoidance more difficult cannot be certain
• Actuarial approach considers the probability of
  harm/crime NOT causes
• adiaphorization the morality of harm / crime
  is removed you simply consider the likelihood of
  harm

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6 components of risk

• A real rise in risk
• A rise in awareness of risk
• A rise in expectations
• Of safety / security, and of something being done
• Reserve less predictability-gt wariness
• Risk is less knowable
• Refraction
• the media distorted presentation of risks
• Umwelt the area of security decreasing

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Cannibalism and Bulimia

• Claude Levi-Strauss
• Anthropophagic v. Anthropoemic societies
• Late modernity
• Diversity is consumed, absorbed, sanitizes
• Difficulty is not tolerated, excluded, defended
  against
• Reverse of modernity (like us / lacking in us)
• e.g. Youth crime, victimless crime toleration or
  defined as merely lacking something

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Bulimic Society

• A society that voraciously devours people, and
  then steadfastly ejects them
• Merton
• cultural inclusion (the American Dream)
• structural exclusion gt crime
• Late modernity
• Rampant individualism media saturation of
  consumerism increasing relative deprivation
• Example Carl Nightingale Black ghetto in
  Philadelphia paradox of cultural inclusion of
  American youth

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Essentializing the Other

• Late Modernity
• Diversity of lifestyle threatens ontological
  security
• Multiculturalism a celebration of the plurality
  of equally valid cultures resulting in
  essentializing of difference
• Essentialism membership of a group is dependent
  on certain characteristics
• Essentializing if you have those
  characteristics, you are assigned to that group
  (whether you want to or not!) you become defined

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Appeal of Essentialism

• Ontological Security
• Removal of Responsibility
• Justifies the Unjustifiable
• Assertion of Superiority / Inferiority
• Claims unity of interest / projection
• As a defence mechanism / blame
• This can be done by members of the group, and by
  outsiders

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• Examples
• Paul Gilroy and inter-racial adoption
• Nationalism
• Drug-users
• The Underclass

• Critique of essentialism
• Assumes an unchanging nature of a culture
• Culture never exists in a pure form
• Culture overlap, exchange ideas and symbols, and
  are transformed
• A short step to demonization
• Paul Condon and Black muggers

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The Criminology of Intolerance

• Zero-tolerance policing false claims and
  confused categories
• Police, associated academics and evidence all
  question the quick-fix BUT IT STILL GETS
  REPEATED
• Cosmetic fallacy the social as simple the
  culture of congratulation
• Prison the ultimate simple solution

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The Contradictory World of Late Modernity

• Concerns
• Mass imprisonment threatening social contract
• Information poor citizens information rich State
  and business
• Ontological insecurity and reactions to it
• Potential
• The decline of traditional values, and the rise
  of individualism offers the possibility of a new,
  more equal, society

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The social contract in late modernity

• Needs re-negotiating
• Goal no longer full employment now personal
  fulfilment and identity through meaningful work
  and leisure a genuine meritocracy
• Emphasis on diversity and the development of
  cultural forms
• We cannot go back nostalgia is a thing of the
  past

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Evaluation

• A wide ranging, deeply theoretical analysis,
  relevant to criminology, sociology and cultural
  studies
• Provides an analytical framework for a huge range
  of empirical research
• Possible areas of criticism
• Importance of rising crime and links to criminal
  justice and perceptions
• Metaphor and analogy rather than detailed
  analysis?
• Overstates difference between modernity and late
  modernity