Book Review: Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously
| Author | Gordon Hughes |
| Published date | 01 March 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390601500113 |
| Date | 01 March 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
resist that had Ian Ward attempted somewhat less, he might thereby have achieved
immeasurably more.
BEN GOLDER
University of East London, UK
PADDY HILLYARD, CHRISTINE PANTAZIS, STEVE TOMBS AND DAVID GORDON (eds),
Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously. London: Pluto Press, 2004, 332 pp.
This collection of essays aims to both critique ‘mainstream’ criminology and to open
up a ‘new’ field of study around the concept of social harm. According to the epigram
on the back cover of the book, the ambition of this text is richly rewarded by its
contents in that ‘Beyond Criminology is an innovative, ground-breaking critique of
the narrow focus of conventional criminology’. This collection of essays certainly
provides an accessible and sustained critique of ‘conventional criminology’ and
should prove a challenging yet also accessible and student-friendly text for those
studying crime, criminalization and crime control alongside wider harms in these
neo-liberal times. There are 16 chapters in the collection and there is much food for
(critical) thought in many of the contributions which a brief review such as this
cannot hope to convey in any depth. A striking feature of the book is that it does
have a common conceptual theme running throughout all chapters. This common
theme is that the deployment of the concept of ‘social harm’ which is viewed as
providing an analytically superior lens through which to explore the multitude of
harms affecting humanity ‘from the cradle to the grave’ than is possible when viewed
through the myopic gaze of what is termed mainstream or conventional criminology
and its narrow focus on crime, legally defined. The topics covered range from the
harms associated with states and corporations (Tombs and Hillyard), the different
forms of violence in democratic societies (Salmi), moral indifference and production
of harm in capitalist societies (Pemberton), state crimes and harms (Ward), the myth
of the ‘victimized state’ (Sim), the ‘war’ on migration (Webber), workplace harms
(Tombs), the collective causes of murder in Britain (Dorling), harms affecting females
in developing countries (Pantazis), heterosexuality as harm (Bibbings), children as
victims and harmers (Parker), and poverty as the largest source globally of social harm
(Gordon). This rich body of material is made up of generally broad overviews on each
topic and is ‘topped’ and ‘tailed’ by an editorial introduction and conclusion which,
along with the ‘Beyond Criminology?’ chapter by Hillyard and Tombs, provide a
valuable analytical scaffolding for the whole text. Much of the material covered is self-
consciously polemical in nature and if this reviewer’s experience is anything to go by,
the book should provoke valuable and much needed debate, especially in the context
of teaching criminology and related cognate subjects at both undergraduate and
master’s levels throughout Anglophone universities.
What is more problematic in the above-cited quote from the book cover, however,
is the claim made for its intellectual innovativeness and ground-breaking character.
While acknowledging the unprecedented breadth of coverage of social harms in the
collection, this claim appears somewhat hyperbolic given that much of the ground
covered throughout the text has already been well-trodden, and continues to be, by
radical scholars in critical socio-legal studies and critical criminology for over 30
years. Indeed, a number of the best articles gathered together here are best viewed as
lucid restatements and synthetic overviews of the long-term projects of these critical
scholars (see, in particular, contributions by Tombs and Hillyard on the political
economy of harm; Ward on state harms/crimes; Sim on the ideological mystification
BOOK REVIEWS 157
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