Book Review: Global governance and the quest for justice. Volume 4: Human rights
| Author | Andrew M. Jefferson |
| DOI | 10.1177/146247450500700412 |
| Published date | 01 October 2005 |
| Date | 01 October 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
09_bkrevws_057124 (jk-t) 2/9/05 9:14 am Page 490
PUNISHMENT AND SOCIETY 7(4)
children which has forced the much more widespread problem of neglect of children
down the agenda. The problem of harm to children in this country when approached
through the narrow perspective of the 1989 Children Act, obscures the ‘intricate
network of overlapping harms that children may suffer, only some of which fall into
the criminal justice system’ (pp. 249–50).
It is in Gordon’s chapter (‘Poverty, death and disease’) that the full significance of the
harm perspective developed in Beyond criminology becomes apparent. This chapter, an
overview of the scale and production of global poverty – in any estimation by far the
largest source of social harm in the world – shows that the straightjacket of intention-
ality is an intellectual affliction that is suffered not only by criminology. It is a social
affliction that blinds us to the conditions that produce 10–11 million wholly avoidable
deaths of children every year. The centrality of indifference to large-scale harm produc-
tion is apparent in each contribution, a theoretical problem that Pemberton’s chapter
(‘A theory of moral indifference’) seeks to pin down. His concern with moral indiffer-
ence is significant also because it draws the greatest potential weakness of the social
harm approach out into the open: that of moral relativity. Critics no doubt will pounce
on the fluidity of the concept of harm, but it is a problem that the text does not shirk
from. So, for Hillyard and Tombs (just as for Pemberton), the future priority for a social
harm movement will be to develop a method robust enough to place the concept of
harm at the centre of a new disciplinary approach. It is, as they point out, by no means
beyond our capacity. We already have internationally recognized standards of harms
(poverty, injury and death for example) to draw upon. Of course, the concepts and defi-
nitions that the study of social harm will need to develop will not be developed seam-
lessly and without contradiction. But at least those who choose this approach will be
able to develop a new set of disciplinary organizing principles and concepts without
first checking to see if they might correspond to some ontologically spurious and
handed-down definition of crime.
If this text succeeds in forcing criminology for just a moment to look beyond the
rows of uniforms that police its borders, then the effort that went into the project will
not have been wasted. If it succeeds in injecting the study of crime and criminal justice
with a much needed intellectual rigor and conceptual awareness then perhaps all of our
efforts as criminologists will not be wasted.
Dave Whyte
University of Stirling, Scotland
Global...
PUNISHMENT AND SOCIETY 7(4)
children which has forced the much more widespread problem of neglect of children
down the agenda. The problem of harm to children in this country when approached
through the narrow perspective of the 1989 Children Act, obscures the ‘intricate
network of overlapping harms that children may suffer, only some of which fall into
the criminal justice system’ (pp. 249–50).
It is in Gordon’s chapter (‘Poverty, death and disease’) that the full significance of the
harm perspective developed in Beyond criminology becomes apparent. This chapter, an
overview of the scale and production of global poverty – in any estimation by far the
largest source of social harm in the world – shows that the straightjacket of intention-
ality is an intellectual affliction that is suffered not only by criminology. It is a social
affliction that blinds us to the conditions that produce 10–11 million wholly avoidable
deaths of children every year. The centrality of indifference to large-scale harm produc-
tion is apparent in each contribution, a theoretical problem that Pemberton’s chapter
(‘A theory of moral indifference’) seeks to pin down. His concern with moral indiffer-
ence is significant also because it draws the greatest potential weakness of the social
harm approach out into the open: that of moral relativity. Critics no doubt will pounce
on the fluidity of the concept of harm, but it is a problem that the text does not shirk
from. So, for Hillyard and Tombs (just as for Pemberton), the future priority for a social
harm movement will be to develop a method robust enough to place the concept of
harm at the centre of a new disciplinary approach. It is, as they point out, by no means
beyond our capacity. We already have internationally recognized standards of harms
(poverty, injury and death for example) to draw upon. Of course, the concepts and defi-
nitions that the study of social harm will need to develop will not be developed seam-
lessly and without contradiction. But at least those who choose this approach will be
able to develop a new set of disciplinary organizing principles and concepts without
first checking to see if they might correspond to some ontologically spurious and
handed-down definition of crime.
If this text succeeds in forcing criminology for just a moment to look beyond the
rows of uniforms that police its borders, then the effort that went into the project will
not have been wasted. If it succeeds in injecting the study of crime and criminal justice
with a much needed intellectual rigor and conceptual awareness then perhaps all of our
efforts as criminologists will not be wasted.
Dave Whyte
University of Stirling, Scotland
Global...
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