Beyond wildlife crime: Towards the concept of ‘mundane fauna crime’

DOI10.1177/1748895820981603
Published date01 April 2022
AuthorOrlando Goodall
Date01 April 2022
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895820981603
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2022, Vol. 22(2) 217 –234
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895820981603
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Beyond wildlife crime:
Towards the concept of
‘mundane fauna crime’
Orlando Goodall
University of Plymouth, UK
Abstract
Research and theorisation on crimes against non-human species in rural regions have been
conducted with less conceptual refinement than crimes against anthropocentric victims. The
dominant conception of ‘wildlife crime’ predominantly advanced by the rational choice school
of criminology is a nebulous ‘chaotic concept’. This article disaggregates crimes against common
and relatively abundant species from that capacious categorisation and offers the original concept
of ‘mundane fauna crime’ as a more precise alternative. The original concept aims to supersede
the wildlife crime terminology using realist social relations theory and to offer researchers a
rational abstraction to advance aetiological explanations. The additional category of ‘illegal taking’
is offered to complement the central conceptualisation, thus supplanting the terms of ‘wildlife
poaching’. The new model is intended to contribute to the advancement of comprehensive
theorisation and practically adequate knowledge on mundane fauna crimes in rural regions.
Keywords
Chaotic concept, critical realism, illegal taking of deer, mundane fauna crime, poaching, rural
criminology, social relations theory, wildlife crime
Introduction
The term ‘wildlife crime’ is a chaotic concept. This article advances an alternative, origi-
nal conceptual framework for the explication of crimes against common non-human
species that are primarily situated in rural regions. It is contended that social scientists
have treated the study of offences against fauna with less epistemic, ontological and
conceptual innovation and refinement than offences against anthropocentric victims (e.g.
Green and Ward, 2019; Lasslett, 2010). General reviews of explanations and character-
istics of ‘poaching’ crimes, for instance, reveal a reliance on traditional and outmoded
Corresponding author:
Orlando Goodall, University of Plymouth, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK.
Email: orlando.goodall@plymouth.ac.uk
981603CRJ0010.1177/1748895820981603Criminology & Criminal Justice X(X)Goodall
research-article2020
Article
218 Criminology & Criminal Justice 22(2)
‘criminologies of everyday life’, such as rational choice theory (Garland, 2001; see Von
Essen et al., 2014). Empiricist crime scripts, which de-socialise phenomena, and nomo-
thetic data collection models, which decontextualise crime commissioning processes, are
also prevalent in the discipline (Moreto and Clarke, 2013; Viollaz et al., 2018). It is
argued that not only is a holistic structural sociological appraisal negated by positivist
frameworks such as those, but that due to their compacted or ‘flat’ ontologies (reducing
descriptions to utility maximisation rationales, individual agents and immediate empiri-
cal circumstances), they are unable to adequately account for the rich sets of relations,
dispositions and historically mediated material contexts constituting the criminogenic
tendencies they are seeking to ameliorate (Edwards and Hughes, 2005; Jessop, 2005;
Kurki, 2008; Sayer, 2000). This article seeks to overcome these unnecessary burdens by
adopting a realist social relations perspective.
This perspective was originally introduced in this journal and has to a certain extent
been underutilised in applied research (Edwards and Levi, 2008). The epistemological
framing advances beyond reductive positivist empiricism, not only by avoiding the pro-
duction of under-determined, individuating and mono-causal outcomes that inevitably
reduce social problems to regularities or crude economistic cognitions (Edwards, 2016;
Jessop, 2005). Rather, the central problem is the tendency of extensive research strate-
gies to generate or reproduce chaotic conceptualisations of complex problems (Sayer,
2010: 163). One such problem is that of the concept of ‘wildlife crime’ (Moreto, 2018;
Wyatt, 2013; Wyatt et al., 2020). Following Edwards and Levi’s (2008) (classic) critique
of the chaotic concept of organised crime, I argue in this article that much of the problem
can be highlighted by noting that the problem of ‘Wildlife Crime’ (the proper noun) is the
concept of wildlife crime itself.
Ethnographic data derived from research on offences against mundane fauna conducted
over a sustained 4-year period with key informants in rural England underpin the philo-
sophical critique and conceptual refinements being advanced. The article argues that the
ontologically incoherent and excessively vague category of wildlife crime should be super-
seded with the disaggregated terms that are contained within its capacious ontology: mega-
fauna crime and mundane fauna crime, respectively. These lower level rational abstractions
denote concrete instances of criminality and hold more promise for the specificity that
social science should strive for. To do that, the following section critiques the superordinate
category of ‘wildlife crime’, after which the adopted philosophy of social science and
methodology is outlined. The remainder of the article introduces two original conceptuali-
sations: the rational abstraction of mundane fauna crime and then the ‘illegal taking of
deer’. The latter conceptual category delineates a historically contingent set of contempo-
rary relations that more concisely account for what is often mis-described with the outdated
terminology of ‘poaching’. The offerings are intended to orientate future social science and
assist the accurate theorisation of crimes against non-anthropocentric victims.
The chaotic conception of ‘wildlife crime’
The category of ‘wildlife crime’ is better understood as a policy construct that is consist-
ent with the fleeting and competing objectives of policy makers, non-governmental
organisations (NGOs), and public relations communications specialists and as adopted

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