BA (Hons) Criminology

This programme will allow you to consider the subject of criminology from a sociological perspective. You will study:

• the history and development of criminology as a discipline
• how our knowledge of crime and criminality is refracted through culture and how the media represent crime, law and social order
• forms of government of crime and the policing of individuals, populations and territories
• technologies of forensic policing, surveillance and security
• crime as a global phenomenon and its policing in the context of global inequality, the movement of peoples, international trade, human rights and state violence
• practical cases and stories from people working in and with experience of the criminal justice system
• research methods for the empirical investigation of sociological and criminological topics

Our intention is that you consider the problem of crime from a critical perspective in the context of modern forms of power. You will develop a practical, but conceptually sophisticated, set of skills that will equip you for a range of careers in the sector and beyond.

Year 1 (credit level 4)

You take four core modules in the first year:

Year 1 core modules Module title Credits. Policing the Nation State Policing the Nation State 30 credits

The module considers the growth and development of criminological theories and methodologies in the context of the forms of representation, policing, constraint and government of people and things and largely in the contexts of the city and the nation over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The module is divided into four parts across twenty weeks.

a) It initially considers the social pathology of the gang within the milieu of the urban. This provides an opportunity to reflect on some of the early Chicago School ethnographies and analyses of the urban (Cressey, Park and Burgess, Thrasher), questions about culture and environment, and also importantly adolescence and delinquency. This work is then contrasted with contemporary analyses of the gang (Venkatesh, Alexander, Hagedorn) in order to notice the striking continuities, but also the discontinuities with regard to understandings of gender, race and ethnicity, culture and the global.

b) Secondly, the module considers the work of Becker, Cohen, Hall. Walkowitz and others regarding the labelling and representation of crime and the work of representation in the criminalisation of populations and areas of the city.

c) Thirdly, the module looks at the role of disciplining, punishing and confining institutions and technologies through the writing of Goffman, Foucault, Wacquant, Davis, Khalili and Graham. What kind of institution is the prison? How has it developed in the form it has? What is its role now? And how has its inventiveness spilled out into wider social environments and contexts?

d) Finally, the module considers the circulation and associations of people and things in the context of technologies of security and territory. Through a consideration of cases such as the global sex trade, the circulation of images of child sexual abuse, the control of drugs, and the war on terror, the module focuses on the fundamental question of movement and security.

30 credits. Criminological Imaginations I Criminological Imaginations I 30 credits

The module takes its lead from Jock Young’s call to the criminological imagination and his critique of a criminology based on a realist, positivist and often quantitative conception of evidence. It is a direction that brings to the fore an understanding of what is referred to as ‘cultural criminology’, one which seeks to make sense of the lived cultures and phenomenological experiences of crime.

But the module understands this call more broadly in terms of how crime and the criminological are refracted through a rich and diverse field of media and cultural forms, devices and practices. It considers the imagination of crime and criminality from nineteenth century novelistic descriptions of the city and poverty, to photography and phrenology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, to press representations of sex crime in the 1970s, to forensic analysis in television police series, to online portrayals of banking fraud.

Examples and case studies provide depth and empirical focus throughout the module. It also provides a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding what the criminological imagination might mean and how we might bring to the fore its critical analytical force.

30 credits. Modern Knowledge, Modern Power Modern Knowledge, Modern Power 30 credits

This module aims to introduce you to the ‘sociological imagination’. What is distinctive about Sociology? With a focus on knowledge and power, the module looks at how Sociology has developed, with an emphasis on the study of relations between individuals and groups in modern industrial societies.




30 credits. Researching Society and Culture 1 Researching Society and Culture 1 15 credits

This module introduces you to the methods that social scientists have developed to analyse societies and to produce social scientific knowledge. Through lectures and workshops you learn about methods in relation to various topics and research traditions.




15 credits. Year 2 (credit level 5)

You take these core modules:

Year 2 core modules Module title Credits. The Making of the Modern World The Making of the Modern World 15 credits

Exploring the sub-discipline of historical sociology, the module focuses on the formation of the modern state out of earlier types of political organisation, and different ways of understanding state power. It examines processes such as: revolution; the development of nationalism; the nature of imperialism; post-socialism; and the rise of fascism.



15 credits. Criminological Imaginations II Criminological Imaginations II 30 credits

Cultural criminology ‘captures the phenomenology of crime – its adrenaline, its pleasure and panic, its excitement and its anger, rage and humiliation, its desperation and its edgework’ (Jock Young, 2011: 84).

We take this as our starting point for an investigation of the subjectivity of crime and its material contexts. This module investigates what factors impact on our sense (seeing, touching, hearing, smelling) and imagination of crime, particularly in the context of material conditions, technological devices, and built environments. It considers a range of issues from street lighting, to mosquito sonic transmitters as a deterrent for young 'hooligans' to the idea of 'bobbies on the beat' to the role of video analysis in 'police brutality' (e.g. in the Rodney King trial).

The module is structured through a series of case studies that provide the basis for critical reflection on how we imagine and feel crime and the threat of crime. The intention is to understand how we experience crime inasmuch as that experience is mediated. In a sense, this is a methodological question. For example, if video analysis is central to the legal judgement of the killing of a young black man in the United States of America, how do we see the criminal act in a court of law? If we feel unsafe in a poorly lit street, what factors contribute to our feeling insecure? If we have been personally injured, does that mean the punishment should match how we feel about our injury?

30 credits. Researching Society and Culture 2 Researching Society and Culture 2 30 credits

This module – which has Researching Society and Culture 1 as a prerequisite- looks in detail at the various stages in the research process: including the construction of research questions, collecting and analysing data and the political and ethical questions involved in thinking about writing for an audience. You're encouraged to work through these issues by reading particular research monographs and by developing your own research proposal.

30 credits. Criminal Justice in Context Criminal Justice in Context 15 credits

This module considers a number of issues concerning crime: both the acts themselves and also the legal and policing frameworks which address them and which frame them. It relates to longstanding philosophical and social theoretical questions about the relation between crime, the law, justice and rights.

It focuses on five themes:

• policing
• criminal court process
• migration
• refugees and their relationship to criminal justice
• prisons
• the 'prevent' agenda on 'radicalisation'

In this module you will consider the institutions of criminal justice systems and explore the space between the law's conceptualisation of itself as being neutral, above and outside society, and a social critique of that conceptualisation which focuses on all the ways in which the law falls short of its own ideals. Law is understood as a relationship between concepts and their actualisations by social actors; a relationship between the conceptual and the material.

The module will invite guest speakers from relevant spheres of practice and will contextualise their contemporary and actual experience in discussions of soicological and criminological theory and method.

15 credits. Crimes Against Humanity Crimes Against Humanity 15 credits

This module considers crimes against humanity. In terms of social theory, it asks what it might mean to say that something is a crime against humanity as a whole, or against the human condition, rather than simply a crime against a paticular state or a particular national law. You will consider the meaning of key concepts such as humanity, state, universal jurisdiction, and individual responsibility.

The introduction to this module will also look at sociological theories of nationalism and the distiction between civic and ethnic nationalism. It will go on to consider totalitarianism, comparing Bauman's analysis of totalitarianism as a prototype of 'modernity' with Arendt's understanding of totalitarianism as a revolt against modern forms.

You will study what kinds of behaviour consititute crimes against humanity; how, why and by whom such crimes are committed, and consider what kinds of international legal instruments and institutions have arisen to designate crimes against humanity as such and to try to prevent or punish them. The module will also explore the difficulties of cultural representation of crimes against humanity, through movies including Shoah, Schindler's List, Ararat, Hotel Rwanda and The Act of Killing.

Throughout this module you will develop a materialist sociological methodology: using concepts to understand case studies and case studies to shed light on concepts.

15 credits.

You also choose one option module. Those available recently have included:

Year 2 option modules Module title Credits. Sex, Drugs & Technology Sex, Drugs & Technology 15 credits

The module will cover contemporary approaches to the body and especially sexuality, beginning with an introduction to Foucaultian critiques and associated theories of performativity. It will provoke a series of questions about social constructionism and materiality, inviting students to evaluate more process oriented theories of performativity as well as those emphasising the productive work of speech acts (Butler). The terms ‘drugs’ and ‘technology’ in the title give emphasis to the way in which the body will be posed as always already engaged with phenomena that is more commonly deemed external. This conceptual approach will introduce students in second year to more contemporary debates and particularly debates that offer a more applied approach to inquiries of the body in relation to health, medicine and everyday technologies.

15 credits. Leisure, Culture and Society Leisure, Culture and Society 15 credits

‘Leisure is free time’. But is it? We need only think about the annual subscription to gymnasiums to recognise that leisure-time really isn’t ‘free-time’. ‘Leisure is a marker for time away from work’. But we need only think of the time of the harried vacation to know that the clock-time of work never ceases to operate. In critical theory, leisure-time is defined as functionally dependent on the labour market system. Indeed leisure is revealed as big business, as leisure-time becomes ever more central to consumer culture. This module examines the interconnections between leisure, culture and society.

15 credits. Space, Place & Power Space, Place & Power 15 credits

How is space stabalised and de-stabalised? How do we imagine space? How is space invented? These questions will be considered from within different contexts, where space is understood to be invaded. The arrival of outsiders (on the grounds of not being human or the right kind of human) in places not demarcated for them will form the basis of several case studies on this module.

The production, representation and performance of space will be central. Both theoretical readings and sociological fieldwork will form the basis of the learning. Students will consider a series of case studies from public and private domains. These will include cities, public spaces, political sites, national ceremonies and animals in the civic space.

15 credits. Art and Society Art and Society 15 credits

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu once noted that ‘sociology and art make an odd couple’: indeed whilst sociological investigations on the arts and aesthetics can be traced back to the founders of the discipline, they remain, like their subject matter, a diverse and changing field.

Still, in recent years the sociology of art has been emerging from its marginality, increasingly combining theoretical investigations with empirical research on contemporary artistic phenomena. This module will introduce key themes and authors in the sociology of art, classical and contemporary.

It will outline both a history of theoretical approaches and an overview of major results and trends in empirical research; key case studies will illustrate and interrogate the thematic core of each lecture. The lectures are divided in two parts, enshrined in a thematic approach that highlights crucial issues, such as: is art about beauty? What is an artist? Is art beyond society? Should art be political?

15 credits. Organisations and Society Organisations and Society 15 credits

Organisations make strange things happen. Organisations can cause serious problems. Some organisations can be quite useful or may even be necessary for doing things well together. Schools, churches, banks, supermarkets, the state and indeed the university not only shape the world but also shape the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves. This module explores the role of organisations in social life through a range of theoretical approaches and case studies.

15 credits. Culture, Representation and Difference Culture, Representation and Difference 15 credits

The module draws on work from cultural studies and sociology to think critically about the relationships between forms of cultural representation and the construction of modern self-identity. The module will examine different approaches to representation such as those developed in the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes and Stuart Hall. We will also discuss more recent theoretical approaches to difference based upon recognition of generosity and cosmopolitanism. Across the module, examples will be taken from areas such as advertising, photography, tattooing and other cultural forms.

15 credits. London London 15 credits

This is a visually oriented urban sociology module in which students are taught close observation of urban space in broader context and required to work through a combination of photography and writing. This module introduces students to key themes in sociology – class, ethnicity, space, time, social inequalities, social change - through active engagement with the urban environment around New Cross specifically and more generally other areas of London. It combines classroom lectures with lectures, observation, workshops and other activities embedded in urban walks.

15 credits. Marxism Marxism 15 credits

This module will introduce students to basic concepts developed from Marxist theory that are now ubiquitous elsewhere such as class, value, alienation, exploitation, and fetishism. Each week will focus on a basic concept; start with its original source, explain, contextualise, and trace its development and critique as it progresses through social theory and sometimes into popular uses. Each concept will be interrogated then developed in relation to contemporary issues, exploring its significance and explanatory power as a critical sociological tool.

15 credits. The Body: Social Theory and Social Practice The Body: Social Theory and Social Practice 15 credits

This module explores a selection of approaches to the sociological study of the body, as well as substantive problem-areas where the body has become an important focus of research. You address the contrast between traditions that approach the body as an object (the body we have), those that approach the body as a subject (the body we are), and those that address the body in terms of performativity (the body we become).

15 credits. Social Change and Political Action Social Change and Political Action 15 credits

The first part of the module is primarily concerned with establishing a firm grasp of the fundamental approaches to the political