Citation

Milovanovic D. Aust. N. Zeal. J. Criminol. 2000; 33(2): 202-220.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/000486580003300207

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Modernist thought in criminology and law is being eclipsed by the postmodern perspective for the new millennium. Although some of modernist's contributions are surely useful in understanding crime and social justice, it's exclusive use has become a stagnant force. Postmodern thought, of the affirmative form, has offered a new beginning. It is marked by transgressions, border crossings, edgework and reconstruction. We can identify several emerging threads (psychoanalytic semiotics, chaos theory, catastrophe theory, edgework, and topology theory) as well as attempts of integration (e.g., constitutive criminology, integrative-constitutive criminology). This article first summarizes the emerging threads and their application to critical criminology, and then argues for contingent, integrative perspectives rooted more in a holographic conception of social reality.1 This article is more suggestive and offers lines of inquiry for critical research in the new millennium. Elsewhere (Milovanovic, 1997c, pp. 3-28), we have compared modernist with postmodernist thought along 8 salient points.

Language: en