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Title: Anarchy Against the Discipline
Author: Jeff Ferrell
Date: 1995
Language: en
Topics: discipline, criminology, book review
Source: Retrieved on December 21, 2019 from https://web.archive.org/web/20191221003320/https://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol3is4/anarchy.html
Notes: Published in Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 3(4) (1995) 86–91.

Jeff Ferrell

Anarchy Against the Discipline

Author: DiCristina, B.

Title: Method in criminology: A philosophical primer.

Publisher: New York: Harrow and Heston.

Year: 1995

Method in Criminology: A Philosophical Primer is a deceptively innocuous

title for a wonderfully outrageous enterprise: a thoroughgoing epistemic

attack which Bruce DiCristina launches on both the day-to-day operations

of criminology and the philosophical foundations on which these

operations rest. In this brief but engaging book, DiCristina carefully

and ruthlessly (Marx, 1972) dismantles the basic assumptions which

undergird scientific criminology. In so doing, he exposes not only their

internal illogic, but their external utility for the bureaucratic

control of both crime and criminology, and for the structural

maintenance of inequitable social relations. In place of the dangerous

fraud which is scientific criminology, then, DiCristina proposes an

anarchic criminology — a criminology which embraces alternative methods

and epistemologies, encourages imaginative solutions to social and

criminal problems, and in the process continually undermines encrusted

hierarchies of certainty, truth, and power.

DiCristina begins his decomposition of contemporary criminology by

posing a seemingly safe, simple question: “Should any research method be

granted a privileged status in criminology?” (p. vii). DiCristina’s

pursuit of this question, though, quickly becomes the thread which, once

pulled, unravels the entire enterprise of contemporary scientific

criminology. The unravelling begins with a deconstruction of causality

and causal certainty as the goals of criminology. Pitting the radical

uncertainty of David Hume against the proto-scientific methods of John

Stuart Mill, DiCristina demonstrates that causal assertions are in fact

“little more than constructs of the imagination” (p. 15), with no firm

footing in external validation.

Having demonstrated the futility of causal analysis for criminology,

DiCristina generously offers those who would pursue a scientific

criminology a variety of less stringent options — probability,

prediction, falsification — and then proceeds to undermine these

possibilities as well. Drawing heavily on Feyerabend’s (1975) brilliant

attack on science and scientific method, and on philosophers of science

like Kuhn (1970), Lakatos (1968), and Rorty (1989), DiCristina dismisses

probability and prediction due to their reliance on wholly unreliable

methods of induction and inductive reasoning. He likewise exposes the

falsity of a falsification method which fails to understand that

theories and the facts by which they are allegedly falsified in reality

interpenetrate and intermingle. Finally, he considers the least

stringent of options — that certain methods are, if not scientifically

sound, at least the most plausible means for pursuing criminological

goals. Again, though, he finds that fundamental epistemic uncertainty

destroys any hierarchy of plausibility.

Significantly, DiCristina demonstrates that this consideration of

criminology’s underlying principles constitutes much more than an

exercise in abstract philosophy. First, he shows that mainstream

criminology is carefully guarded by various gatekeepers of scientific

authority and methodological purity: journal and book editors and

reviewers, curriculum designers, granting agencies, and others. In

demanding that criminological work meet the standards of science, and

excluding that work which does not, these authorities shape the

discipline around narrow (and, as DiCristina argues, unfounded)

definitions of scholarship (see Vaughn, Sjoberg and Reynolds, 1993;

Feagin, Orum and Sjoberg, 1991; Williams, 1984). Beyond this, the

framing of criminology as objective science contributes to the

functional rationality of the modern criminal justice system, and is in

turn “especially conducive to the maintenance of inequitable

distributions of power” (p. 67). As DiCristina persuasively argues, the

authority of allegedly objective knowledge, the sheen of scientific

method and quantification, both construct new realms of legal domination

and social control, and at the same time distance those in control from

responsibility for their actions.

Against a criminology which is both unjustifiably narrow in its scope

and overtly harmful in its consequences DiCristina, therefore, suggests

an anarchic criminology characterized by openness, creativity, and

inclusion (see Pepinsky, 1978; Tifft, 1979; Tifft and Sullivan, 1980;

Ferrell, 1993; Ferrell, 1994). In place of the stale straightjacket of

(pseudo)scientific criminology, anarchic criminology promotes the widest

possible range of theories and methods, values marginal and even

“unreasonable” knowledge, and revitalizes the “criminological

imagination” (Williams, 1984). In place of the false objectivity of

contemporary criminology, anarchic criminology employs a sort of

“reflexive hermeneutics” (p. 80 — 84) which encourages both interpretive

knowledge and critical awareness. In place of a criminology which is all

too useful for inequitable social and legal control, anarchic

criminology takes shape in humble conversation with those outside the

domains of criminology and criminal justice.

This notion of an open, anarchic criminology sheds light on a variety of

ongoing discussions within and beyond contemporary criminology. To begin

with, it provides a useful framework for making sense of the various

alternative criminologies which have emerged in recent years. The

Russian anarchist Michael Bakunin’s infamous injunction — that “the

passion for destruction is a creative passion, too” (1974: 58) — here

reflects the notion that the destruction of paradigmatic hegemony in

criminology in fact opens up intellectual space for the creation of

various alternative criminologies. If the deconstruction of theoretical

certainty and methodological privilege by DiCristina and those who have

gone before him has created a sort of negative space, an epistemic void,

it is a void that has been quickly filled by a healthy tangle of fresh

perspectives. In this sense, the plethora of criminologies which have

blossomed in recent times — peacemaking, newsmaking, feminist,

narrative, cultural, anarchist — constitutes perhaps a crisis of

criminological certainty, but more so a measure of disciplinary life.

In unmasking the myth of an objectively scientific criminology — in

realizing that we are only discarding something we never had — we are

also pushed to reconceptualize research methods and methods of knowing.

The “reflexive hermeneutic” which DiCristina proposes incorporates “both

interactive analyses and historical-contextual analyses” (p. 81), and

demands a certain degree of consensual agreement between researcher and

subjects; that is, it “takes subjectivity seriously” (p. 83). For

criminological researchers, this implies experiential closeness in place

of pseudo-scientific distance, and epistemic humility in place of

intellectual arrogance. In other words, it demands, as a requisite

feature of understanding and analysis, a sort of “criminological

verstehen” (Hamm and Ferrell, 1994; Ferrell and Sanders, 1995) between

criminological researchers and their subjects of study. And thus it is,

within this model, that criminological ethnographers, anarchic

criminologists, and others may know infinitely more about their subjects

of study than do survey researchers or statisticians, and at the same

time claim to know infinitely less.

Finally, anarchic criminology as sketched by DiCristina and others

clearly informs, and is informed by, those orientations grouped under

headings like “postmodernism” and “cultural studies.” DiCristina notes

that “perhaps the most refreshing anarchic developments in criminology

will be sifted from the work of postmodern criminologists” (p. 98), and

indeed anarchic and postmodern criminologies have much in common. The

epistemic assault on various forms of legal and intellectual authority;

the decentering of both centralized power and the certainty which

accompanies it; the rejection of metanarratives which position

themselves as true and universal accounts of social or criminal life —

these are the projects of postmodern and anarchic criminologies alike.

And as these projects open up the constricted intellectual space of

scientific criminology, they at the same time lead criminology into new

domains of research and analysis. DiCristina in this sense argues that

“criminological inquiry is more than a question of logic. Questions of

aesthetics and morality are just as important” (p. xi). Like others (see

Ferrell and Sanders, 1995), he thus recognizes the importance of

aesthetic and stylistic processes in constituting both criminology and

criminal action, and attempts to reclaim this “cultural trash” from the

dustbin of scientific, rationalist criminology.

DiCristina might have productively explored many of these issues more

fully; though he notes postmodern and aesthetic issues in the context of

anarchic criminology, for example, he all but fails to follow his own

lead. He might also have more thoroughly rooted his anarchic criminology

not only in prior anarchist work within criminology, but in the long

history of anarchist thought. Though brevity may be the soul of wit, a

hundred page book might well be expanded to include more thorough

exploration, and a few more pages. In addition, the book, though simply

and understandably written, would have benefited in places from a good

round of editing. Utilizing conventional language in new or

intentionally inappropriate ways certainly carries anarchic potential;

simply writing “and so forth” or “etc.” into sentences seems more sloppy

than seditious. These, though, are minor criticisms of an exciting and

courageous contribution to criminological thinking. Method in

Criminology transcends its own limitations in inventing a far- reaching

critique of contemporary criminology, and imagining a humane and

flexible alternative to it.

And in this spirit of anarchist imagination, I offer a closing note as

to means and ends, process and product. Dicristina concludes that, given

anarchic criminology’s promotion of “freedom of thought and creativity”

(p. 102), an anarchic criminology benefits criminology as a whole,

despite the fact that it may never be fully accomplished. I would agree,

but go a step further to argue that anarchic criminology is beneficial

precisely because it can never be fully realized. By its own logic,

anarchic criminology serves best, it seems, as an unfinished and

uncertain project, an emerging sensibility floating around and “against

criminology” (Cohen, 1988), a critique which folds back on itself so as

to undermine not only mainstream criminological rigidity but its own

encrustation as well. And in this sense, we arrive at an anarchic

criminology only as we continue to stumble toward it.

Jeff Ferrell

Department of Criminal Justice

Northern Arizona University

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