Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology

Interventions and Possibilities

Contributions by Anette Ballinger, Neil Chakraborti, Rachel Condry, Robert Elias, Carina Gallo, Rebecca Katz, Ronnie Lippens, Kirsten McConnachie, Kieran McEvoy, Ross McGarry, David Miers, Jillian Patterson, Jon Shute, Dale Spencer, Sandra Walklate, Hannah Willis Edited by Dale Spencer, Sandra Walklate

Publication date:

13 April 2016

Length of book:

262 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

239x161mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781498510264

Since the 1960s, the field of victimology has developed into a variegated discipline with its own theoretical and methodological traditions. In the early 1990s two texts were published—Towards a Critical Victimology (Fattah, 1992) and Critical Victimology (Mawby and Walklate, 1994)—that concretized critical victimology as a paradigm within victimology. Since then, the field has remained conceptually stale and with few a few exceptions there has not been a considerable lacuna of works from a critical perspective. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology: Interventions and Possibilities provides a rejoinder to the two aforementioned texts and demonstrate how critical victimology can be reconceptualized, where interventions can be made in this victimological paradigm, and possibilities for future theorizing and research in this provocative field. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology includes eleven papers on the forms of victimization and issues pertinent to victims written by leading and emerging international scholars in the field of critical victimology. It is interdisciplinary in scope and contains contributions from leading and emergent international scholars on victims and victimization. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology serves as a crucible to demonstrate the complexities of and the multitude of factors that interact to complicate victim status, the vagaries of victim response, and the phenomenology of violence and victimization.

Introduction: Themes and Issues in Critical Victimology, Dale C. Spencer & Sandra Walklate

Part One: Thinking Critically about Victimhood
Chapter One: Sovereign Bodies, Minds and Victim Culture, Ronnie Lippens
Chapter Two: Still Worlds Apart? Habitus, Field, and Masculinities in Victim and Police Interactions, Dale C. Spencer & Jillian Patterson
Chapter Three: Boys to Offenders: Damaging Masculinity and Traumatic Victimization, Rebecca S. Katz & Hannah M. Willis
Chapter Four: The Parent as Paradoxical Victim: Adolescent to Parent Violence and Contested Victimization, Rachel Condry
Chapter Five: Victims of Hate: Thinking Beyond the Tick-Box, Neil Chakraborti

Part Two: Victims and Victim Services in Comparative Perspective
Chapter Six: Punishment or Solidarity: Comparing the U.S. and Swedish Victim Movements, Carina Gallo & Robert Elias
Chapter Seven: Restorative Justice as a Boundary Object: Some Critical Reflections on the Rise and Influence of Restorative Justice in England and Wales, David Miers
Chapter Eight: Victimhood and Transitional Justice, Kieran McEvoy & Kirsten McConnachie

Part Three: Bringing the State Back In
Chapter Nine: A Change for the better or Same Old Story? Women, the State and Miscarriages of Justice, Annette Ballinger
Chapter Ten: Hierarchical Victims of Terrorism and War, Ross McGarry
Chapter Eleven: Bereaved Family Activism in Contexts of Organized Mass Violence, Jon Shute

Conclusion: Critical Victimology beyond the Academe: Engaging Publics and Policy, Sandra Walklate & Dale C. Spencer

This edited collection provides an important and valuable contribution to our understanding of the cultural politics of ‘victimhood’ and our responses to victimization. Victim suffering is explored across a diverse array of political, social, economic and cultural contexts using a range of theoretical and empirical tools that bring us new concepts to work with and guide future research. In doing so, this book puts forward a policy agenda that challenges narrow positivist frames and promotes a critical approach with significant implications for practice and justice.