Review essay: ‘They think it’s all over. . .’
| Author | Rod Earle |
| Date | 01 August 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480620930028 |
| Published date | 01 August 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Review essay |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480620930028
Theoretical Criminology
2020, Vol. 24(3) 543 –548
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480620930028
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Review essay: ‘They think
it’s all over. . .’
Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Confronting the Memory of Evil, Allen Lane/Penguin:
London, 2019; 432 pp.: 0141983426, £12.99 (pbk)
Sivamohan Valluvan, The Clamour of Nationalism: Race and Nation in Twenty-First-Century Britain,
Manchester University Press: Manchester, 2019; 288 pp.: 1526126141, £12.99 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Rod Earle , The Open University, UK
One of the inspirations that propelled the development of this Special Issue on race and
racism in criminology was the vitality of recent race scholarship.1 This is reflected in a
flurry of books and articles in journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies and Identities
that urgently address the ‘return’ of racism, race and nationalism to a political and cul-
tural landscape that appeared to have wished them away to a post-racial, post-nationalist
Neverland. The election of a paradigmatically white President in the USA and the UK
referendum on membership of the European Union, and its aftermath, represent political
conjunctures in which racism and nationalism have been undeniably dynamic. The work
of any and all criminologists in those countries will be shaped by these events but with-
out attending to this vibrant critical literature on race criminologists will be ill-equipped
to account for their dynamics in their teaching, research, analysis and theorization. The
two books reviewed here are chosen for the way they interrogate or open up a recurring
problematic in British criminology, namely its deference to US perspectives and narra-
tives on race and racism, and a corresponding lack of attention to the particularities of
racism and nationalism in the British Isles (see Phillips et al., this issue).
Susan Neiman’s book was a revelation. I grew up in England during the 1960s and
1970s when the triumph over German Nazism in the Second World War was a staple
feature of children’s comics and other reading. I can just remember England’s victory in
the 1966 football world cup final over West Germany and how it was adopted as symbol-
izing a post-war ascendancy that was otherwise rather absent. Wishfully more than actu-
ally, it signified Britons’ wider destiny to be the best in the world at everything, and the
ghost self-image of their fading empire. Beating Germany in two World Wars and the
world cup was all the proof anyone could want. Neiman’s book told me how little I had
really learned since then about Germany’s efforts to address its past and the profound
implications of defeat, division and unification on what it meant to be German. Two
930028TCR0010.1177/1362480620930028Theoretical CriminologyReview essay
book-review2020
Review essay
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