Lombroso's Jewish identity and its implications for criminology
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865811419062 |
| Published date | 01 December 2011 |
| Author | Paul Knepper |
| Date | 01 December 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
44(3) 355–369
!The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865811419062
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Article
Lombroso’s Jewish identity and
its implications for criminology
Paul Knepper
University of Sheffield, UK
Abstract
Recovering Lombroso’s Jewishidentity is important for understanding the context in which he
lived and worked. Italian statehood and positivist science had particular meaning relative to
Jewish emancipation. Lombroso turned his back on Judaism and Jewish tradition, but interacted
over the years with a circle of Jewish colleagues. Salvatore Ottolenghi, Pauline Tarnowsky,
Helen Zimmern, Max Nordau and Jean Finot influenced his professional life in more than one
way, as did members of his family, such as David Levi. Lombroso contributed to the defence of
Jews from the surge of anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century and he even managed a
measure of critical analysis in his discussion of Jews and crime. Although he failed to overcome
the prejudices and misconceptions at the centre of his outlook, the Lombroso who engaged
‘the Jewish question’ emerges as a more complicated and conflicted character than the
Lombroso associated with ‘the criminal man’.
Keywords
Cesare Lombroso, criminal anthropology, history of criminology, Jews and crime
Nicole Rafter and Mary Gibson have raised the need for a more complex understanding
of Lombroso’s work and legacy. In their recent translation of L’uomo delinquente, they
observe that a careful reading of it challenges the simplistic presentation of Lombroso’s
ideas. Despite his mistakes, and attitudes that ought not be explained away, he was an
energetic social critic who advocated meaningful criminal justice reforms (Lombroso,
2006: 33). The simplistic interpretation prevails, they suggest, because of the absence of
accurate translations available to English-speaking criminologists. It is an important
point, and Ystehede’s (2008) recent analysis of Lombroso’s work on anarchism demon-
strates how much can be learned from lesser-known sources.
Judging from discussions of other social thinkers, Lombroso’s Jewish identity merits
some investigation. Debates have been engaged about what Jewishness meant relative to
concepts and attitudes expressed by Marx (Berlin, 1981; Gilman, 1984) and Durkheim
(Pickering, 1994; Strenski, 1997), as well as members of the Frankfurt School (Eitler, 2005;
Corresponding author:
Paul Knepper,Depar tment of Sociological Studies, Universityof Sheffield, Elmfield, Northumberland Rd, Sheffield S10
2TU.
Email: p.knepper@sheffield.ac.uk
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