User:Cdjp1/sandbox/PrimCom

29 August 2022‎

Primitive communism

Primitive communism is a way of describing the gift economies of hunter-gatherers throughout history, where resources and property hunted or gathered are shared with all members of a group in accordance with individual needs. In political sociology and anthropology, it is also a concept (often credited to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), that describes hunter-gatherer societies as traditionally being based on egalitarian social relations and common ownership. A primary inspiration for both Marx and Engels were Lewis H. Morgan's descriptions of "communism in living" as practised by the Haudenosaunee of North America. In Marx's model of socioeconomic structures, societies with primitive communism had no hierarchical social class structures or capital accumulation.

Development of the idea

Ely S. Parker

Lewis H. Morgan

The original idea of primitive communism is rooted in the idea of the noble savage present in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the early anthropological work of Morgan and Ely S. Parker. Engels was the first to write about primitive communism in detail, with the 1884 publication of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Engels categorised primitive communist societies into two phases: the "wild" (hunter-gatherer) phase that lacked permanent superstructure and had close relationships with the natural world, and the "barbarian" phase which held a superstructure like that of the ancient Germanic populations beyond the borders of the Roman Empire and the Indigenous peoples of North America before colonisation by Europeans, being intra-communally egalitarian and matrilineal within the community.

Marx and Engels used the term more broadly than Marxists did later, and applied it not only to hunter-gatherers but also to some communities that engaged in subsistence agriculture. There is also no agreement among later scholars, including Marxists, on the historical extent, or longevity, of primitive communism. Marx and Engels also noted how capitalist accumulation latched itself onto social organizations of primitive communism. For instance, in private correspondence the same year that The Origin of the Family was published, Engels attacked European colonialism, describing the Dutch regime in Java directly organizing agricultural production and profiting from it, "on the basis of the old communistic village communities". He added that cases like the Dutch East Indies, British India and the Russian Empire showed "how today primitive communism furnishes ... the finest and broadest basis of exploitation".

Anarchists, including Peter Kropotkin and Élisée Reclus, believed that societies that exemplified primitive communism were also examples of anarchist society before industrialisation. An example of this is Kropotkin's anthropological work on anarchism and gift economies, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, which uses a study of the San people of southern Africa for its thesis.

There was little development in the research of "primitive communism" among Marxist scholars beyond Engels' study until the 20th and 21st centuries when Ernest Mandel, Rosa Luxemburg, Ian Hodder, Marija Gimbutas and others took up and developed upon the original theses. Non-Marxist scholars of prehistory and early history did not take the term seriously, although it was occasionally engaged with and often dismissed. The term primitive communism first appeared in Russian scholarship in the late 19th century, with references to primitive communism existing in ancient Crete. However, it was not researched in any depth until the 20th century, with work such as that of the ethnographer Dmitry Konstantinovich Zelenin, who looked at non-hunter-gatherer societies within the Soviet Union to identify remnants of primitive communism within their societies.

Venus figurine found in the Kostyonki–Borshchyovo archaeological complex, Russia

The belief of primitive communism as based on Morgan's work is flawed due to Morgan's misunderstandings of Haudenosaunee society and his since-proven-wrong theory of social evolution. Subsequent and more accurate research has focused on hunter-gatherer societies and aspects of such societies in relation to land ownership, communal ownership, and criminality and justice. A newer definition of primitive communism could be summarized as societies that practice economic cooperation among the members of their community, where almost every member of a community has their own contribution to society and land and natural resources are often shared peacefully among the community.

From the 20th century onward, sociologists and archaeologists have looked at the application of the term of primitive communism to hunter-gatherer societies of the paleolithic through to horticultural societies of the Chalcolithic, including Paleo-American societies from the lithic stage through the archaic period. Soviet archaeologists, influenced by Morgan's and Engels' works, interpreted the various paleolithic cultures that created Venus figures, many of which were found in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, as evidence of the societies being primitive communist and matriarchal in nature. The psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich concluded in 1931 the existence of an early communism from the information in Bronisław Malinowski's work. However, Malinowski and the philosopher Erich Fromm did not consider this conclusion to be compelling. Ernest Borneman supported Reich's ideas in his 1975 work Das Patriarchat.

Primitive communist societies

Characteristics

Mbendjele hunter-gatherer meat sharing

In a primitive communist society, the productive forces would have consisted of all able-bodied persons engaged in obtaining food and resources from the land, and everyone would share in what was produced by hunting and gathering. There would be no private property, which is distinguished from personal property such as articles of clothing and similar personal items, because primitive society produced no surplus; what was produced was quickly consumed and this was because there existed no division of labour, hence people were forced to work together. The few things that existed for any length of time - the means of production (tools and land), housing - were held communally. In Engels' view, in association with matrilocal residence and matrilineal descent, reproductive labour was shared. There would have also been a lack of state.

A term usually associated with Karl Marx, but most fully elaborated by Friedrich Engels (in The Origin of the Family, 1884), and referring to the collective right to basic resources, egalitarianism in social relationships, and absence of authoritarian rule and hierarchy that is supposed to have preceded stratification and exploitation in human history. Both Marx and Engels were heavily influenced by Lewis Henry Morgan's speculative evolutionary history, which described the "liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes", and the "communism in living" said to be evident in the village architecture of native Americans.

—John Scott and Gordon Marshall, 2007, Dictionary of Sociology.

Domestication of animals and plants following the Neolithic Revolution through herding and agriculture, and the subsequent urban revolution, were seen as the turning point from primitive communism to class society, as this transition was followed by the appearance of private ownership and slavery, with the inequality that those entail. In addition, parts of the population began to specialize in different activities, such as manufacturing, culture, philosophy, and science which lead in part to social stratification and the development of social classes.

Egalitarian and communist-like hunter-gatherer societies have been studied and described by many well-known social anthropologists including James Woodburn, Richard Borshay Lee, Alan Barnard and Jerome Lewis. Anthropologists such as Christopher Boehm, Chris Knight and Lewis offer theoretical accounts to explain how communistic, assertively egalitarian social arrangements might have emerged in the prehistoric past. Despite differences in emphasis, these and other anthropologists follow Engels in arguing that evolutionary change—resistance to primate-style sexual and political dominance—culminated eventually in a revolutionary transition. Lee criticizes the mainstream and dominant culture's long-time bias against the idea of primitive communism, deriding "Bourgeois ideology [that] would have us believe that primitive communism doesn't exist. In popular consciousness it is lumped with romanticism, exoticism: the noble savage."

Papers have argued that the depiction of hunter-gatherers as egalitarian is misleading. According to one paper published in Current Anthropology, while levels of inequality were low, they were still present, with the average hunter-gatherer group having a Gini coefficient of 0.25 (for comparison, this was attained by the nation of Denmark in 2007). This argument is in part supported by Alain Testart and others, who have said that a society without property is not free from problems of exploitation, domination or wars. Marx and Engels, however, did not argue that communism brought about equality, as according to them equality was a concept without connection in physical reality. Testart does support Engels' observations that societies without surplus are economically egalitarian and conversely that societies with surplus are unequal.

Arnold Petersen has used the existence of primitive communism to argue against the idea that communism goes against human nature. Hikmet Kıvılcımlı in his The Thesis of History argued that in pre-capitalist societies, the main dynamic of historical change "was not class struggle within society but rather the strong collective action" of egalitarian and collectivist values of "primitive socialist society".

Example societies

Çatalhöyük after the first excavations

Due to the strong evidence of an egalitarian society, lack of hierarchy, and lack of economic inequality, historian Murray Bookchin has argued that Çatalhöyük was an early example of anarcho-communism, and so an example of primitive communism in a proto-city. However, still others use Çatalhöyük as an example that refutes the concept of primitive communism. Similarly it has been argued that the Indus Valley civilisation is an example of a primitive communist society due to its perceived lack of conflict and social hierarchies. Daniel Miller and others argue that such an assessment of the Indus Valley civilisation is not correct.

The Marxist archaeologist V. Gordon Childe carried out excavations in Scotland from the 1920s and concluded that there was a neolithic classless society that reached as far as the Orkney Islands. This has been supported by Perry Anderson, who has argued that primitive communism was prevalent in pre-Roman western Europe. Descriptions of such societies are also present in the works of classical authors.

Biblical scholars have also argued that the mode of production seen in early Hebrew society was a communitarian domestic one that was akin to primitive communism. Claude Meillassoux has commented on how the mode of production seen in many primitive societies is a communistic domestic one.

The Indian communist politician Shripad Amrit Dange considered ancient Indian society to be of a primitive communist nature. Other communists within India have also labelled the societies of current indigenous groups, such as the Adivasi, as examples of primitive communism. In Alfred Radcliffe-Brown's study of the Andamanese at the beginning of the 20th century he comments that they have "customs which result in an approach to communism" and "their domestic policy may be described as a communism".

Rundale clachan patterns of settlement still visible in Inver, Kilcommon, Erris, County Mayo, Ireland

Alexander Mikhailovich Zolotarev, in his 1960 work on the development of religious cult communities from tribal communities in the Balkans, spoke of the primitive communism of the "archaic form of the tribal system".

Rolf Jensen in the 1980s conducted a historical study of Wolof society in west Africa looking at the development of class antagonisms from a primitive communist society. Also in the 1980s, Bourgeault looked at the forceful transition of indigenous societies in Canada from their traditional structures, which were anarchist and communistic in nature, into capitalist exploitation due to encroaching imperialism and colonialism. Such an area of interest has been a common topic of research for many fields beyond just Marxist scholars. Some anthropologists, such as John H. Moore, have continued to argue that societies such as those of Native Americans constitute primitive communist societies, whilst acknowledging and incorporating the research showing the complexity and diversity in native American societies.

James Connolly believed that "Gaelic primitive communism" existed in remnants in Irish society after it "had almost entirely disappeared" from much of western Europe. The agrarian communes of the rundale system in Ireland have subsequently been assessed using a framework of primitive communism, where the system fits Marx and Engels' definition.

Soviet theorists and anthropologists, such as Lev Sternberg, considered some of the indigenous groups of Siberia and the Russian far east (such as the Nivkh) to be primitive communist in nature.

Criticism

A detail from Benjamin West's heroic, neoclassical history painting, The Death of General Wolfe (1771), depicting an idealized indigenous American. An example of the romanticisation of indigenous and non-Western people.

Criticism of the idea of primitive communism relates to definitions of property, where anthropologists such as Margaret Mead argue that private property exists in hunter-gatherer and other "primitive societies" but provide examples that Marx and subsequent theorists label as personal property, not private property. Similar arguments have been made by other academics, such as the economist Richard Pipes. The idea has also been critiqued by other anthropologists for being based on Morgan's evolutionary model of society and for romanticising non‐Western societies.

Western and non-Western Scholars have criticised applying models that are too ethnocentrically European to non-European societies. Western scholars, including Leacock, have also criticised the ethnocentric point of view and biases in previous ethnographic research into hunter-gatherer societies. This is similar to criticism of adhering to stadialism in analysing cultures. Feminist scholars have criticised the idea of the lack of subjugation of women as suggested from the works of Engels, while Marxist feminists have been critical of and have reassessed Engels' ideas and suggestions in The Origin of the Family related to the development of women's subjugation in the transition from primitive communism to class society.

The Marxian economist Ernest Mandel criticised the research of Soviet scholars on primitive communism due to the influence of "Soviet-Marxist ideology" in their social sciences work.

David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything challenges the notion that humans ever lived in precarious, small scale societies with little or no surplus. While they provide examples of sharing egalitarian societies in pre-history they claim that a huge variety of complex societies (some with large cities) existed long before the supposed agricultural and then urban revolutions proposed by V. Gordon Childe. Graeber and Wengrow's understanding of hunter-gatherer societies has, however, been questioned by other anthropologists.

Anthropologist Manvir Singh argued that while some indigenous groups, such as the Aché of Paraguay, exemplified primitive communism, this did not apply to all indigenous groups, such as the Hiwi, using the example of the unequal distribution of meat from hunting. Singh also claims that all hunter gatherers had private property, but provides examples that Marx and subsequent theorists label as personal property, not private property, such as personal "bows, arrows, axes and cooking implements".

The use of the term "communism" to describe these societies has been questioned when put in comparison with a future post-industrial communism, particularly in relation to the difference in scale from small communal groups to the size of modern nation-states.

Use of the term "primitive"

"Primitive" in recent anthropological and social studies has begun to fall out of use due to racial stereotypes surrounding the ideas of what is primitive. Such a move has been supported by indigenous peoples who have faced racial stereotyping and violence due to being viewed as "primitive". Due to this, the term "primitive communism" may be replaced by terms such as Pre-Marxist communism.

Alain Testart and others have said that anthropologists should be careful when using research on current hunter-gatherer societies to determine the structure of societies in the paleolithic, where viewing current hunter-gatherer communities as "the most ancient of so-called primitive societies" is likely due to appearances and perceptions and does not reflect the progress and development that such societies have undergone in the past 10,000 years.

There have been Marxist historians criticised for their comments on the "primitivism" and "barbarism" of societies prior to their contact with European empires, such as the comments of Endre Sík. Such views on "primitivism" and "barbarism" are also prevalent in the works of their non-Marxist contemporaries. Marxist anthropologists have criticised and denounced Soviet anthropologists and historians for declaring indigenous communities they were studying for primitive communism as "degenerate".

See also

Anthropology

• Classless society
• Ethnocentrism
• Functionalism (social sciences)
• Marxist anthropology
• Marxist archaeology
• Original affluent society
• Origins of society
• State of nature
• Structural functionalism
• Unilineal evolution

Economy

• Economic anthropology
• Economy of the Iroquois
• Potlatch
• Primitive accumulation of capital
• Right to property
• Social ownership
• The Gift (essay)

Law

• Great Law of Peace
• Indigenous rights
• Res communis

Marxism

• Marx's theory of history
• Mode of production
• Pre-Marxist communism

References

Bibliography

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• Croom, Adam M. (2015). "Slurs, stereotypes, and in-equality: a critical review of "How Epithets and Stereotypes are Racially Unequal"". Language Sciences. 52: 139–154. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2014.03.001. ISSN 0388-0001. Archived from the original on 19 April 2021.
• Diamond, Stanley, ed. (1979). Toward a Marxist Anthropology: Problems and Perspectives. New York: De Gruyter Mouton. doi:10.1515/9783110807714. ISBN 978-90-279-7780-9.
• Dunayevskaya, Raya (1982). Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252018381.
• Dunayevskaya, Raya (2018). "Marx's "New Humanism" and the Dialectics of Women's Liberation in "Primitive" and Modern Societies". In Dmitryev, Franklin (ed.). Marx's Philosophy of Revolution in Permanence for Our Day. Brill. pp. 241–256. ISBN 9789004383678.
• Felluga, Dino (1 January 2011). "Introductory Guide to Critical Theory - Modules on Marx: On the Stages of Economic Development". Purdue University. Archived from the original on 28 February 2021. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
• Gowdy, John M. (1998). Limited Wants, Unlimited Means: A Reader on Hunter-Gatherer Economics and the Environment. St Louis: Island Press. p. 342. ISBN 155963555X.
• Haller, John S. Jr. (1971). "Race and the Concept of Progress in Nineteenth Century American Ethnology". American Anthropologist. 73 (3): 710–724. doi:10.1525/aa.1971.73.3.02a00120.
• Hersey, Mason (1993). "Lewis Henry Morgan and the Anthropological Critique of Civilization". Dialectical Anthropology. 18 (1). Springer: 53–70. doi:10.1007/BF01301671. JSTOR 29790527. S2CID 144701125. Archived from the original on 15 April 2021. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
• Hume, Brad D. (January 2011). "Evolutionisms: Lewis Henry Morgan, Time, and the Question of Sociocultural Evolutionary Theory". Histories of Anthropology Annual. 7 (1): 91–126. doi:10.1353/haa.2011.0009. S2CID 170478166. Archived from the original on 28 October 2021.
• Knight, Chris (June 2021). "Did communism make us human?: On the anthropology of David Graeber". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
• Kostick, Conor (10 November 2021). "'Primitive Communism': Did it Ever Exist?". Independent Left. Archived from the original on 24 November 2021. Retrieved 24 November 2021.
• Lee, Richard B. (1990). "Primitive communism and the origin of social inequality". In Upham, S. (ed.). Evolution of political systems: Sociopolitics in small-scale sedentary societies (PDF). Cambridge University Press. pp. 225–246. ISBN 0521382521. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 April 2021.
• Lee, Richard B. (1992). "Demystifying Primitive Communism". In Ward Gailey, Christine (ed.). Civilization in Crisis: Anthropological Perspectives. Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press.
• McGregor, Shiela Margaret (12 March 2021). "Engels on women, the family, class and gender". Human Geography. 14 (2): 186–197. doi:10.1177/19427786211000047. S2CID 233667504.
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• Seagle, William (April–June 1937). "Primitive Law and Professor Malinowski". American Anthropologist. 39 (2). Wiley: 275–290. doi:10.1525/aa.1937.39.2.02a00080. JSTOR 662606.
• Semenov, Y.I. (1989). На заре человеческой истории [At the dawn of human history] (in Russian). Moscow. p. 318.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Service, Elman R.; Barnard, Alan; Bodemann, Y. Michal; Fleuret, Patrick; Fried, Morton; Harding, Thomas G.; Köcke, Jasper; Krader, Lawrence; Kuper, Adam; Legros, Dominique; Makarius, Raoul; Moore, John H.; Pilling, Arnold R.; Skalník, Peter; Strathern, Andrew; Tooker, Elisabeth; Whitecotton, Joseph W. (February 1981). "The Mind of Lewis H. Morgan". Current Anthropology. 22 (1): 25–43. doi:10.1086/202601. JSTOR 2742415. S2CID 163464337. Archived from the original on 15 April 2021. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
• Smith, Stuart (2009). "Lewis Henry Morgan". University of California, Santa Barbara. Archived from the original on 13 April 2021. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
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• Svizzero, Serge; Tisdell, Clement A. (2016). "Economic evolution, diversity of societies and stages of economic development: A critique of theories applied to hunters and gatherers and their successors". Cogent Economics & Finance. 4 (1). doi:10.1080/23322039.2016.1161322.
• Tomba, Massimiliano (9 November 2012). Marx's Temporalities. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-23679-0.
• Vogel, Lise (March 2014). Marxism and the Oppression of Women. Chicago: Haymarket Books. ISBN 9781608463404.
• Ward Gailey, Christine (September 2016). "Locating primitive communism in capitalist social formations". Dialectical Anthropology. 40 (3): 259–266. doi:10.1007/s10624-016-9431-8. S2CID 148006390.
• Yang, Manuel (September 2012). "Specter of the commons: Karl Marx, Lewis Henry Morgan, and nineteenth-century European stadialism". Borderlands. 11 (2). Gale Academic OneFile.

Further reading

Historic and original texts

• (in French) Paul Lafargue, La propriété, Origine et évolution, Éditions du Sandre, 2007 (1890) (Read online, Marxist Internet Archive)
• Paul Lafargue, The Evolution of Property from Savagery to Civilization, (1891), (new edition, 1905)
• (in French) Paul Lafargue, Le Déterminisme économique de Karl Marx. Recherche sur l'origine des idées de Justice, du Bien, de l'âme et de dieu, L'Harmattan, 1997 (1909)
• (in German) Heinrich Eildermann: Urkommunismus und Urreligion: Geschichtsmaterialistisch beleuchtet. Nabu, 2011, ISBN 978-1245831512 (reprint from 1921; Full text on archive.org).
• (in German) Karl August Wittfogel: Vom Urkommunismus bis zur proletarischen Revolution. Eine Skizze der Entwicklung der menschlichen Gesellschaft. Part 1: Urkommunismus und Feudalismus. Junge Garde, Berlin 1922.
• (in Hungarian) István Kertész Az ősközösség kora és az ókori-keleti társadalmak, IKVA Kiadó, Budapest, 1990
• Johann Jakob Bachofen, Myth, Religion, and Mother Right: Selected Writings of J.J. Bachofen by Joseph Campbell (Introduction) and George Boas (preface), Princeton University Press, 380p., 1992

Other texts

• "Marx, Engels, Luxemburg and the Return to Primitive Communism". infoshop.org. Archived from the original on 12 December 2013.
• Sims, Lionel (15 February 2012). "Primitive Communism, Barbarism and the Origins of Class Society". libcom.
• Gowdy, John (2 November 2011). "Hunter-Gatherers and the Mythology of the Market". libcom.

Potential citations

• Gretz, Michael F. (2011). "Primitive Communism". In Kurian, George Thomas; Alt, James E.; Chambers, Simone; Garrett, Geoffrey; Levi, Margaret; McClain, Paula D. (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Political Science. SAGE Publications. pp. 1351–1352. ISBN 978-1-933116-44-0.
• Wilczynski, Jozef, ed. (1981). "Primitive Communism". An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Marxism, Socialism and Communism. The Macmillan Press. p. 456. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-05806-8. ISBN 978-1-349-05806-8.

• https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780691213002-018/html
• https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article/118/4/699/140504/Birth-Death-and-Resurrection-of-the-Issue-of-the / full article
• http://www.irishmarxistreview.net/index.php/imr/article/viewFile/151/152
• https://brill.com/view/book/9789004413863/BP000003.xml
• https://home.csulb.edu/~eruyle/published/climax.htm / info for citing
• https://www.jstor.org/stable/2800738
• https://againstthecurrent.org/friedrich-engels-and-primitive-communism/
• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00131857.2021.1993824?journalCode=rept20
• https://www.jstor.org/stable/4608931
• Miropolsky, Dmitry Yurievich [in Russian] (2004). Хозяйственная система: исходные принципы функционирования [Economic system: basic principles of functioning] (in Russian). St. Petersburg. ISBN 5-7310-1765-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

José Carlos Mariátegui

Intro

José Carlos Mariátegui
Mariátegui in 1929
Born	José del Carmen Eliseo Mariátegui De La Chira 14 June 1894 Moquegua, Peru
Died	16 April 1930(1930-04-16) (aged 35) Lima, Peru
Era	Late modern period
Region	Latin American philosophy
School	Marxism
Main interests	Politics, aesthetics
Signature

José Carlos Mariátegui La Chira (June 14, 1894 – April 16, 1930) was a Peruvian writer, journalist, politician and Marxist philosopher.

A prolific author despite his early death, El Amauta (from Quechua: hamawt'a, "teacher", a name by which he is also known in his country) is considered one of the greatest scholars of Latin America. His Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (1928), a synthesis of his thought, became a reference work for the intelligentsia of the continent.

He was the founder of the Peruvian Socialist Party (1927) (PSP) and the General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP) in 1927 and 1929 respectively. The PSP initially adhered to Mariateguism for a syndicalist-influenced socialism "without tracing or copying", but after Mariategui's death in 1928 it would be reformed as the Peruvian Communist Party to be in-line with the Comintern's rigid party policy and Marxism-Leninism. In 1930 the party wing loyal to Mariategui would split and form the Socialist Party of Peru (Spanish: Partido Socialista del Perú).

For the sociologist and philosopher Michael Löwy, Mariátegui is "undoubtedly the most vigorous and original Marxist thinker that Latin America has ever known". Along the same lines, José Pablo Feinmann, Argentine philosopher and cultural critic, declares him the "greatest Latin American Marxist philosopher".

Biography

Childhood and youth

Mariátegui was born in Moquegua in 1894. His parents were María Amalia La Chira Ballejos and Francisco Javier Mariátegui Requejo. Among his ancestors was the illustrious liberal thinker Francisco Javier Mariátegui y Tellería. He had two brothers: Guillermina and Julio César Mariátegui.

In 1899 he moved with his mother and his brothers to Huacho and in 1902, after an accident at school, he was admitted to the Maison de Santé clinic in Lima. After a long recovery he was left with ankylosis in his left leg for the rest of his life. Having become unable to partake in the recreations typical of his age, he began reading and reflecting.

In 1907, his father Francisco Javier Mariátegui died in the port of Callao.

In 1909, Mariátegui joined the newspaper La Prensa to perform auxiliary tasks, first as a rejones (folder) and then as a linotypist's assistant. Despite not having completed his school studies, he was trained in journalism and began to work as a columnist, first in La Prensa (1914-1916) and then in the newspaper El Tiempo (1916-1919), at the same time that he collaborated in the magazines Mundo Limeño, Lulú, El Turf and Colónida. Using the pseudonym Juan Croniqueur, he ridiculed Lima's frivolity and exhibited a vast self-taught culture, which brought him closer to the avant-garde intellectual and artistic nuclei. He became friends with the writer Abraham Valdelomar, with whom he formed a dilettante duo whose duels of wit they reproduced in their chronicles. Around that time (which he later contemptuously called his "stone age"), he enthusiastically cultivated poetry but never published his announced collection of poems, Sadness.

In 1918 his interests turned to social problems. Together with the journalist César Falcón and Félix del Valle, he founded the magazine Nuestra Época, in which he criticized militarism and traditional politics but of which only two issues came out. In 1919, also in collaboration with Falcón, he founded the newspaper La Razón, in which he supported university reform and workers' struggles. This newspaper did not have a long life either and was closed by the government of President Augusto B. Leguía, officially for having expressed contempt for members of parliament, although it was most likely due to the growing popular demands that it encouraged.

Trip to Europe and socialist training

Mariátegui and Falcón traveled to Europe on a scholarship they received the Leguía government as a covert form of deportation. They passed through New York, coinciding with a strike of workers on the docks of the port, and in Germany with the Spartacist revolution, reaching the port of Le Havre in November and then Paris. The researcher Sylvers Malcolm claims that both traveled as "overseas propagandists" of the Leguía government; that both belonged to the Foreign Relations sector; and that they were paid and on scholarships, as was believed for a time. Mariátegui was assigned to the Peruvian Consulate in Rome and Falcón to the Peruvian Consulate in Madrid. All of this appears corroborated in a letter from Mariategui to Victoria Ferrer, dated January 24, 1920.

During this trip, his eldest daughter, Gloria María Mariátegui Ferrer, was born from his relationship with Victoria Ferrer González.

Mariátegui said that it was in Europe that he did the most of his learning. He linked up with leading writers, studied languages, inquired about new intellectual and artistic concerns, and attended international conferences and meetings.

In Italy he married Anna Chiappe and was present during the occupation of the factories in Turin, as well as at the XVII National Congress of the Italian Socialist Party in Livorno, where the historic split took place and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was formed. He was part of PSI study circles and took on Marxism as a method of study when Benito Mussolini was about to take power. According to his analysis, the victory of fascism is the price a country must pay for the contradictions of the left.

Mariátegui left Italy and traveled throughout Europe, hoping to be able to return to Peru. He visited Paris, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Prague and Berlin. During this tour, he studied the revolutionary movements that convulsed Europe after the war.

Return to Peru

On March 17, 1923, Mariátegui returned to Lima, accompanied by his wife and his firstborn. At the invitation of Haya de la Torre, the founder and rector, he gave lectures at the Universidad Popular González Prada on the world crisis resulting from the First World War. He was put in charge of the direction of Claridad magazine when its founder, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, the future leader of APRA, was expelled to Mexico as an exile. He called for the realization of the United Front of Workers. At the end of that same year he announced the publication of "Vanguardia: Revista Semanal de Renovación Ideológica", co-directed with Félix del Valle, a project that was not carried out but later became the magazine Amauta.

In 1924, due to his old injury, Mariátegui had to have his leg amputated. He continued his creative activity confined to a wheelchair. He spent a period of rest in Miraflores, moving on June 1, 1925, to his most symbolic residence on Washington Street, left, No. 544, today known as the José Carlos Mariátegui House Museum. In October 1925, he founded the Editorial Minerva publishing house together with his brother Julius Caesar, which published his works and those of other Peruvian authors, beginning with his first compilation book of essays: The contemporary scene, on world politics. In 1926 he founded the magazine Amauta (wise or teacher in Quechua), which united a broad generation of intellectuals around a new appreciation of national life and gave impetus to the indigenous movement in art and literature. Likewise, he collaborated assiduously in the Lima weekly magazines Variedades and Mundial.

Mariátegui was imprisoned in 1927 during a trial against communists accused of conspiring against the Leguía government, but was later given house arrest. In 1928 he broke politically with Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, with whom he had collaborated between 1926 and 1928, when APRA was still only an alliance. "The discrepancies arise for reasons above all of political tactics rather than ideology." On October 7, 1928, he founded the Peruvian Socialist Party, becoming its general secretary a year later. During the same year, he founded the Marxist magazine Labor and published his Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality. In 1929 he founded the General Confederation of Workers of Peru.

Mariátegui's political project was put to the test in the Latin American Trade Union Congress in Montevideo (May 1929) and the Latin American Communist Conference (June 1929). They were attended by the Peruvian Socialist Party with five delegates who carry Mariátegui's approach: Hugo Pesce, Julio Portocarrero, José Bracamonte (pilot of the National Merchant Marine, founder of the Federation of Crewmen of Peru), Juan Peves (peasant leader of Ica, founder of the Federation of Yanacones) and Carlos Saldías (textile leader). These approaches were questioned by the political bureau of the International in South America, generating a distance between Mariátegui and the Communist International. Ultimately, Mariátegui "did not agree to subordinate himself to the communist hierarchy."

In February 1930, Eudocio Ravines was appointed General Secretary of the Socialist Party of Peru, replacing Mariátegui, who was preparing a trip to Buenos Aires, where he could treat his illness and participate in the General Council of the Anti-Imperialist League. He also planned to give Amauta greater reach by moving its headquarters from Lima to Buenos Aires.

Last days and death

At the end of March 1930, Mariátegui was admitted to an emergency hospital accompanied by his friends, among whom Diego San Román Zeballos (creator of the magazine El Poeta Hereje) stood out. He died on April 16, almost on the eve of his long-awaited trip to Buenos Aires. On May 20, the leadership of the Peruvian Socialist Party, with Eudocio Ravines as general secretary and Jean Braham Fuentes Cruz as general president, changed the name of the Socialist Party of Peru to the Peruvian Communist Party.

Mariátegui was buried in the Presbítero Maestro Cemetery with a massive funeral procession. In 1955, commemorating the 25th anniversary of his death, he was transferred to a new mausoleum in the same cemetery (a granite mound by the Spanish sculptor Eduardo Gastelu Macho).

Thought

Vision of Peru

The Conquest not only split the history of Peru, but also its economy. Before the Spaniards arrived, there was a quite solid indigenous communal economy. Material well-being existed thanks to the collectivist organization of Inca society. This organization had enervated the individual impulse and at the same time developed the habit of obedience to social duty.

The Conquest established a feudal economy. The Spanish did not seek to develop a solid economy but only to exploit natural resources. In other words, the Spaniards were not formed as a colonizing force (like the English in the United States), but rather constituted themselves as a small court, a bureaucracy. This system determined the republican economy.

The economic policy of the Spanish Crown prevented the emergence of a bourgeoisie in the colonies. These saw independence necessary to ensure their development. Independence is then decided by the needs of capitalist development, in that sense, England played a fundamental role in supporting the nascent American nations.

For Mariátegui, the gamonal inevitably invalidates any law or ordinance protecting the indigenous or peasant. Against the authority of the landowner sustained by environment and habit, the written law is powerless. The mayor or the municipal president, council or city council, the judge, the corregidor, the inspector, the commissioner, the collector, the police and the army are enfeudados to the great property. «The law cannot prevail against the gamonales. The official who persists in imposing it would be abandoned and sacrificed by the central power, near which the influences of gamonalism are always omnipotent, acting directly or through parliament, both ways with the same efficiency.

It is important to clarify the solidarity and commitment to which the regional gamonalismo and the central regime have gradually reached: "for all the defects, for all the vices of the central regime, the gamonalismo is responsible and supportive." The gamonal is a piece in the structure of the centralized administration: he is the local head of one of the political parties with national influence and is the fundamental link in the chain of one of the many clients of the political system. The central power rewards the gamonal by allowing him to enjoy innumerable contracts and alcabalas and currently, by leaving in his hands the royalties produced by the exploitation of natural resources by multinationals and innumerable contracts to complement them. Under these conditions, any decentralization ends with the essential result of an increase in the power of gamonalism.

Guano and saltpeter played a fundamental role in the development of the Peruvian economy. These products quickly increased the wealth of the State, since industrial Europe needed these resources to maintain its agricultural productivity, products that Peru had a monopoly on. This wealth was squandered by the Peruvian State. But it allowed the appearance of commercial and banking capital. A capitalist class began to be constituted, whose origin was found in the old Peruvian aristocracy. These products also allowed the consolidation of the power of the coast, since until then, mining had shaped the Peruvian economy an Andean character. In short, guano and saltpeter allowed the transformation of the Peruvian economy from a feudal system to a capitalist system.

The new nations sought to develop trade. Latin America sold its natural resources and bought manufactured products from Europe, generating a system that mainly benefited the European nations. This system allowed development only to the Atlantic countries, since the distances were enormous for the countries that were on the Pacific coast, as in the case of Peru. Peru, on the other hand, began to trade with Asia, but did not achieve the same development as the Atlantic countries.

In addition, with the War of the Pacific, Peru lost guano and saltpeter. But this war also meant the paralysis of all national production and trade, as well as the loss of foreign credit. Power temporarily fell into the hands of the military, but the Lima bourgeoisie soon regained its function. The Grace Contract was proposed as a measure to get out of the crisis. This contract consolidated the British predominance in Peru, by granting the railways in concession for a period of 66 years.

Marxism

Since his return from Europe, Mariátegui subscribed to Marxism, in the Leninist version of the Third International, finding remarkable similarities with the thought of Antonio Gramsci, especially with regard to the importance of the cultural superstructure not as a mere "reflection", but from the assessment of its revolutionary potentialities to generate counter-hegemony. Fruit of this notion was his theoretical magazine Amauta and the revolutionary organ Labor, which was closed by the Leguía regime. A tireless critic of the reformism of the Second International and of social democracy, Mariátegui is considered the first Marxist in Latin America, by emphasizing the role of the indigenous masses as the continent's authentic "proletariat" and proclaiming the need for socialist revolution, influenced by the radical syndicalism of Georges Sorel.

Fascism

Mariátegui argued that fascism was not an "exception" in Italy or a "cataclysm", but an international phenomenon "possible within the logic of History" of the development of monopolies in imperialism and its need to defeat the struggle of the proletariat. He saw fascism as big capital's response to a profound social crisis, an expression that the ruling class no longer felt sufficiently defended by its democratic institutions, for which it blames all the ills of the country before the masses, to the parliamentary system. And he bet on the revolutionary struggle, unleashing the cult of violence against the new order of the fascist state, conceived as a vertical authoritarian structure of corporations. Mariátegui glimpsed how the triumph of fascism was inevitably destined to exacerbate the European and world crisis.

Influence

In different ways, organizations like Shining Path, and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, and the Peruvian Communist Party all look to Mariátegui and his writings.

Mariátegui's ideas have recently seen a major revival due to the rise of leftist governments all over South America, in particular in Bolivia, where in 2005 Evo Morales became the first indigenous president since the Conquest 500 years earlier (second in Latin America following Mexico's Benito Juárez). The rise of popular indigenous movements in Ecuador and Peru have also sparked a renewed interest in Mariátegui's writings on the role of indigenous peoples in Latin American revolution. The ruling party in Peru from 2011 to 2016, the Peruvian Nationalist Party, claims Mariátegui as one of its ideological founders.

Works

During his lifetime, Mariátegui published only two books (The Contemporary Scene and the Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality), leaving two more unfinished and unpublished (The Morning Soul and Defense of Marxism published in 1950 and 1955, respectively, although much of them had already been published in the press). These works and his abundant journalism (articles, conferences, essays, and a short novel) have been edited by his heirs (his wife and his children) into 20 volumes. Among these volumes are two biographies of Mariátegui (by María Wiesse and by Armando Bazán), a summary of the content of Amauta magazine by Alberto Tauro del Pino, and a poetic anthology of various authors inspired by Mariátegui's life and work. Mariátegui's own work fills 16 of the volumes. Substantial work was produced from 1923 to 1930.

• Mariátegui, José Carlos (1996). "The Heroic and Creative Meaning of Socialism". In Pearlman, Michael (ed.). Selected Essays. New Jersey: Humanities Press.
• Mariátegui, José Carlos (1997). Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0292701151.

Further reading

• Chang-Rodríguez, Eugenio (1983). Poética e ideología en José Mariátegui [Poetics and ideology of José Mariátegui] (in Spanish).
• De Castro, Juan E. (2020). Bread and Beauty: The Cultural Politics of José Carlos Mariátegui. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-44186-6.
• Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. "Indigenous Resistance in the Americas and the Legacy of Mariátegui". Monthly Review vol. 61(4)2009.
• Krauze, Enrique. "José Carlos Mariátegui: Indigenous Marxism" in Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America. Translated by Hank Heifetz and Natasha Wimmer. New York: HarperCollins 2011.
• Vanden, Harry E. (1986). National Marxism in Latin America: José Carlos Mariátegui's Thought and Politics. L. Rienner Publishers.
• Gonzalez, Mike (2019). In the Red Corner: The Marxism of José Carlos Mariátegui. USA: Haymarket Books. ISBN 978-1608469154.

External links

• Media related to José Carlos Mariátegui at Wikimedia Commons
• José Carlos Mariátegui Online Archive
• José Carlos Mariátegui Memorial Museum, Lima
• José Carlos Mariátegui Film Archive
• José Carlos Mariátegui Complete Photo Archive
• José Carlos Mariátegui Main Internet Portal
• José Carlos Mariátegui Internet Archive (articles, biography, and pictures)
• "José Carlos Mariátegui: Latin America’s forgotten Marxist" an introduction to Mariátegui's life and political views by Mike Gonzalez from International Socialism 115 (summer 2007)
• Indigenous Resistance in the Americas and the Legacy of Mariátegui by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Monthly Review
• Escritos Juveniles de José Carlos Mariátegui.

Criminology

Criminology (from Latin crimen, "accusation", and Ancient Greek -λογία, -logia, from λόγος logos meaning: "word, reason") is the interdisciplinary study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is a multidisciplinary field in both the behavioural and social sciences, which draws primarily upon the research of sociologists, political scientists, economists, legal sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, psychiatrists, social workers, biologists, social anthropologists, scholars of law and jurisprudence, as well as the processes that define administration of justice and the criminal justice system.

Criminologists are the people working and researching the study of crime and society's response to crime. Some criminologists examine behavioral patterns of possible criminals. Generally, criminologists conduct research and investigations, developing theories and analyzing empirical patterns.

The interests of criminologists include the study of nature of crime and criminals, origins of criminal law, etiology of crime, social reaction to crime, and the functioning of law enforcement agencies and the penal institutions. It can be broadly said that criminology directs its inquiries along three lines: first, it investigates the nature of criminal law and its administration and conditions under which it develops; second, it analyzes the causation of crime and the personality of criminals; and third, it studies the control of crime and the rehabilitation of offenders. Thus, criminology includes within its scope the activities of legislative bodies, law-enforcement agencies, judicial institutions, correctional institutions and educational, private and public social agencies.

History of academic criminology

Modern academic criminology has direct roots in the 19th-century Italian School of "criminal anthropology", which according to the historian Mary Gibson "caused a radical refocusing of criminological discussion throughout Europe and the United States from law to the criminal. While this 'Italian School' was in turn attacked and partially supplanted in countries such as France by 'sociological' theories of delinquency, they retained the new focus on the criminal." According to Gibson, the term criminology was most likely coined in 1885 by Italian law professor Raffaele Garofalo as Criminologia. In the late 19th century, French anthropologist Paul Topinard used the analogous French term Criminologie.

Criminology grew substantially as a discipline in the first quarter of the twentieth century. From 1900 through to 2000 this field of research underwent three significant phases in the United States: (1) Golden Age of Research (1900–1930) which has been described as a multiple-factor approach, (2) Golden Age of Theory (1930–1960) which endeavored to show the limits of systematically connecting criminological research to theory, and (3) a 1960–2000 period, which was seen as a significant turning point for criminology.

Schools of thought

There were three main schools of thought in early criminological theory, spanning the period from the mid-18th century to the mid-twentieth century: Classical, Positivist, and Chicago. These schools of thought were superseded by several contemporary paradigms of criminology, such as the sub-culture, control, strain, labelling, critical criminology, cultural criminology, postmodern criminology, feminist criminology, Queer criminology, and others discussed below.

Origins and classical school

The Classical school arose in the mid-18th century and reflects ideas from utilitarian philosophy. Cesare Beccaria, author of On Crimes and Punishments (1763–64), Jeremy Bentham (inventor of the panopticon), and other early criminological philosophers proposed ideas including:

1. Punishment should be used as a way to deter people from further criminal action. This is premised on the belief that individuals want to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
2. Punishment should be "public, prompt, necessary, the minimum possible [i.e., no more than necessary for effective deterrence] under the given circumstances, and established by law."
3. Severity of punishment should be determined by actual harms, not intent.

This school developed during a major reform in penology when society began designing prisons for the sake of extreme punishment. This period also saw many legal reforms, the French Revolution, and the development of the legal system in the United States.

Positivist

The Positivist school argues criminal behaviour comes from internal and external factors out of the individual's control. Its key method of thought is that criminals are born as criminals and not made into them; this school of thought also supports theory of nature in the debate between nature versus nurture. They also argue that criminal behavior is innate and within a person. Philosophers within this school applied the scientific method to study human behavior. Positivism comprises three segments: biological, psychological and social positivism.

Psychological Positivism is the concept that criminal acts or the people doing said crimes do them because of internal factors driving them.

Social Positivism, which is often referred to as Sociological Positivism, discusses the thought process that criminals are produced by society. This school claims that low income levels, high poverty/unemployment rates, and poor educational systems create and motivate criminals.

Criminal personality

The notion of having a criminal personality is achieved from the school of thought of psychological positivism. It essentially means that parts of an individual's personality have traits that align with many of those possessed by criminals, such as neuroticism, anti-social tendencies, aggressive behaviors, and other factors. There is evidence of correlation, but not causation, between these personality traits and criminal actions.

Italian

Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), an Italian sociologist working in the late 19th century, is often called "the father of criminology". He was one of the key contributors to biological positivism and founded the Italian school of criminology. Lombroso took a scientific approach, insisting on empirical evidence for studying crime. He suggested physiological traits such as the measurements of cheekbones or hairline, or a cleft palate could indicate "atavistic" criminal tendencies. This approach, whose influence came via the theory of phrenology and by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, has been superseded. Enrico Ferri, a student of Lombroso, believed social as well as biological factors played a role, and believed criminals should not be held responsible when factors causing their criminality were beyond their control. Criminologists have since rejected Lombroso's biological theories since control groups were not used in his studies.

Sociological positivist

Sociological positivism suggests societal factors such as poverty, membership of subcultures, or low levels of education can predispose people to crime. Adolphe Quetelet used data and statistical analysis to study the relationship between crime and sociological factors. He found age, gender, poverty, education, and alcohol consumption were important factors to crime. Lance Lochner performed three different research experiments, each one proving education reduces crime. Rawson W. Rawson used crime statistics to suggest a link between population density and crime rates, with crowded cities producing more crime. Joseph Fletcher and John Glyde read papers to the Statistical Society of London on their studies of crime and its distribution. Henry Mayhew used empirical methods and an ethnographic approach to address social questions and poverty, and gave his studies in London Labour and the London Poor. Émile Durkheim viewed crime as an inevitable aspect of a society with uneven distribution of wealth and other differences among people.

Differential association (sub-cultural)

Differential association (sub-cultural) posits that people learn crime through association. This theory was advocated by Edwin Sutherland, who focused on how "a person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavorable to violation of law." Associating with people who may condone criminal conduct, or justify crime under specific circumstances makes one more likely to take that view, under his theory. Interacting with this type of "antisocial" peer is a major cause of delinquency. Reinforcing criminal behavior makes it chronic. Where there are criminal subcultures, many individuals learn crime, and crime rates swell in those areas.

Chicago

The Chicago school arose in the early twentieth century, through the work of Robert E. Park, Ernest Burgess, and other urban sociologists at the University of Chicago. In the 1920s, Park and Burgess identified five concentric zones that often exist as cities grow, including the "zone of transition", which was identified as the most volatile and subject to disorder. In the 1940s, Henry McKay and Clifford R. Shaw focused on juvenile delinquents, finding that they were concentrated in the zone of transition. The Chicago School was a school of thought developed that blames social structures for human behaviors. This thought can be associated or used within criminology, because it essentially takes the stance of defending criminals and criminal behaviors. The defense and argument lies in the thoughts that these people and their acts are not their faults but they are actually the result of society (i.e. unemployment, poverty, etc.), and these people are actually, in fact, behaving properly.

Chicago school sociologists adopted a social ecology approach to studying cities and postulated that urban neighborhoods with high levels of poverty often experience a breakdown in the social structure and institutions, such as family and schools. This results in social disorganization, which reduces the ability of these institutions to control behavior and creates an environment ripe for deviant behavior.

Other researchers suggested an added social-psychological link. Edwin Sutherland suggested that people learn criminal behavior from older, more experienced criminals with whom they may associate.

Theoretical perspectives used in criminology include psychoanalysis, functionalism, interactionism, Marxism, econometrics, systems theory, postmodernism, behavioural genetics, personality psychology, evolutionary psychology, etc.

Social structure theories

This theory is applied to a variety of approaches within the bases of criminology in particular and in sociology more generally as a conflict theory or structural conflict perspective in sociology and sociology of crime. As this perspective is itself broad enough, embracing as it does a diversity of positions.

Disorganization

Social disorganization theory is based on the work of Henry McKay and Clifford R. Shaw of the Chicago School. Social disorganization theory postulates that neighborhoods plagued with poverty and economic deprivation tend to experience high rates of population turnover. This theory suggests that crime and deviance is valued within groups in society, 'subcultures' or 'gangs'. These groups have different values to the social norm. These neighborhoods also tend to have high population heterogeneity. With high turnover, informal social structure often fails to develop, which in turn makes it difficult to maintain social order in a community.

Social Ecology

Since the 1950s, social ecology studies have built on the social disorganization theories. Many studies have found that crime rates are associated with poverty, disorder, high numbers of abandoned buildings, and other signs of community deterioration. As working and middle-class people leave deteriorating neighborhoods, the most disadvantaged portions of the population may remain. William Julius Wilson suggested a poverty "concentration effect", which may cause neighborhoods to be isolated from the mainstream of society and become prone to violence.

Strain

Main article: Strain theory (sociology)

Strain theory, also known as Mertonian Anomie, advanced by American sociologist Robert Merton, suggests that mainstream culture, especially in the United States, is saturated with dreams of opportunity, freedom, and prosperity—as Merton put it, the American Dream. Most people buy into this dream, and it becomes a powerful cultural and psychological motivator. Merton also used the term anomie, but it meant something slightly different for him than it did for Durkheim. Merton saw the term as meaning a dichotomy between what society expected of its citizens and what those citizens could actually achieve. Therefore, if the social structure of opportunities is unequal and prevents the majority from realizing the dream, some of those dejected will turn to illegitimate means (crime) in order to realize it. Others will retreat or drop out into deviant subcultures (such as gang members, or what he calls "hobos"). Robert Agnew developed this theory further to include types of strain which were not derived from financial constraints. This is known as general strain theory.

Subcultural

Main article: Subcultural theory

Following the Chicago school and strain theory, and also drawing on Edwin Sutherland's idea of differential association, sub-cultural theorists focused on small cultural groups fragmenting away from the mainstream to form their own values and meanings about life.

Albert K. Cohen tied anomie theory with Sigmund Freud's reaction formation idea, suggesting that delinquency among lower-class youths is a reaction against the social norms of the middle class. Some youth, especially from poorer areas where opportunities are scarce, might adopt social norms specific to those places that may include "toughness" and disrespect for authority. Criminal acts may result when youths conform to norms of the deviant subculture.

Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin suggested that delinquency can result from a differential opportunity for lower class youth. Such youths may be tempted to take up criminal activities, choosing an illegitimate path that provides them more lucrative economic benefits than conventional, over legal options such as minimum wage-paying jobs available to them.

Delinquency tends to occur among the lower-working-class males who have a lack of resources available to them and live in impoverished areas, as mentioned extensively by Albert Cohen (Cohen, 1965). Bias has been known to occur among law enforcement agencies, where officers tend to place a bias on minority groups, without knowing for sure if they had committed a crime or not.

British sub-cultural theorists focused more heavily on the issue of class, where some criminal activities were seen as "imaginary solutions" to the problem of belonging to a subordinate class. A further study by the Chicago school looked at gangs and the influence of the interaction of gang leaders under the observation of adults.

Sociologists such as Raymond D. Gastil have explored the impact of a Southern culture of honor on violent crime rates.

Control

Another approach is made by the social bond or social control theory. Instead of looking for factors that make people become criminal, these theories try to explain why people do not become criminal. Travis Hirschi identified four main characteristics: "attachment to others", "belief in moral validity of rules", "commitment to achievement", and "involvement in conventional activities". The more a person features those characteristics, the less likely he or she is to become deviant (or criminal). On the other hand, if these factors are not present, a person is more likely to become a criminal. Hirschi expanded on this theory with the idea that a person with low self-control is more likely to become criminal. As opposed to most criminology theories, these do not look at why people commit crime but rather why they do not commit crime.

A simple example: Someone wants a big yacht but does not have the means to buy one. If the person cannot exert self-control, he or she might try to get the yacht (or the means for it) in an illegal way, whereas someone with high self-control will (more likely) either wait, deny themselves of what want or seek an intelligent intermediate solution, such as joining a yacht club to use a yacht by group consolidation of resources without violating social norms.

Social bonds, through peers, parents, and others can have a countering effect on one's low self-control. For families of low socio-economic status, a factor that distinguishes families with delinquent children, from those who are not delinquent, is the control exerted by parents or chaperonage. In addition, theorists such as David Matza and Gresham Sykes argued that criminals are able to temporarily neutralize internal moral and social-behavioral constraints through techniques of neutralization.

Psychoanalytic

Main article: Psychoanalytic criminology

Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory (and therapy) which regards the unconscious mind, repressed memories and trauma, as the key drivers of behavior, especially deviant behavior. Sigmund Freud talks about how the unconscious desire for pain relates to psychoanalysis in his essay, Beyond the Pleasure Principle,. Freud suggested that unconscious impulses such as 'repetition compulsion' and a 'death drive' can dominate a person's creativity, leading to self-destructive behavior. Phillida Rosnick, in the article Mental Pain and Social Trauma, posits a difference in the thoughts of individuals suffering traumatic unconscious pain which corresponds to them having thoughts and feelings which are not reflections of their true selves. There is enough correlation between this altered state of mind and criminality to suggest causation. Sander Gilman, in the article Freud and the Making of Psychoanalysis, looks for evidence in the physical mechanisms of the human brain and the nervous system and suggests there is a direct link between an unconscious desire for pain or punishment and the impulse to commit crime or deviant acts.

Symbolic interactionism

Main article: Symbolic interactionism

Symbolic interactionism draws on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and George Herbert Mead, as well as subcultural theory and conflict theory. This school of thought focused on the relationship between state, media, and conservative-ruling elite and other less powerful groups. The powerful groups had the ability to become the "significant other" in the less powerful groups' processes of generating meaning. The former could to some extent impose their meanings on the latter; therefore they were able to "label" minor delinquent youngsters as criminal. These youngsters would often take the label on board, indulge in crime more readily, and become actors in the "self-fulfilling prophecy" of the powerful groups. Later developments in this set of theories were by Howard Becker and Edwin Lemert, in the mid-20th century. Stanley Cohen developed the concept of "moral panic" describing the societal reaction to spectacular, alarming social phenomena (e.g. post-World War 2 youth cultures like the Mods and Rockers in the UK in 1964, AIDS epidemic and football hooliganism).

Labeling theory

Main article: Labeling theory

Labeling theory refers to an individual who is labeled by others in a particular way. The theory was studied in great detail by Becker. It was originally derived from sociology, but is regularly used in criminological studies. When someone is given the label of a criminal they may reject or accept it and continue to commit crime. Even those who initially reject the label can eventually accept it as the label becomes more well known, particularly among their peers. This stigma can become even more profound when the labels are about deviancy, and it is thought that this stigmatization can lead to deviancy amplification. Malcolm Klein conducted a test which showed that labeling theory affected some youth offenders but not others.

Traitor theory

At the other side of the spectrum, criminologist Lonnie Athens developed a theory about how a process of brutalization by parents or peers that usually occurs in childhood results in violent crimes in adulthood. Richard Rhodes' Why They Kill describes Athens' observations about domestic and societal violence in the criminals' backgrounds. Both Athens and Rhodes reject the genetic inheritance theories.

Rational choice theory

Main article: Rational choice theory (criminology)

Cesare Beccaria

Rational choice theory is based on the utilitarian, classical school philosophies of Cesare Beccaria, which were popularized by Jeremy Bentham. They argued that punishment, if certain, swift, and proportionate to the crime, was a deterrent for crime, with risks outweighing possible benefits to the offender. In Dei delitti e delle pene (On Crimes and Punishments, 1763–1764), Beccaria advocated a rational penology. Beccaria conceived of punishment as the necessary application of the law for a crime; thus, the judge was simply to confirm his or her sentence to the law. Beccaria also distinguished between crime and sin, and advocated against the death penalty, as well as torture and inhumane treatments, as he did not consider them as rational deterrents.

This philosophy was replaced by the positivist and Chicago schools and was not revived until the 1970s with the writings of James Q. Wilson, Gary Becker's 1965 article Crime and Punishment and George Stigler's 1970 article The Optimum Enforcement of Laws. Rational choice theory argues that criminals, like other people, weigh costs or risks and benefits when deciding whether to commit crime and think in economic terms. They will also try to minimize risks of crime by considering the time, place, and other situational factors.

Becker, for example, acknowledged that many people operate under a high moral and ethical constraint but considered that criminals rationally see that the benefits of their crime outweigh the cost, such as the probability of apprehension and conviction, severity of punishment, as well as their current set of opportunities. From the public policy perspective, since the cost of increasing the fine is marginal to that of the cost of increasing surveillance, one can conclude that the best policy is to maximize the fine and minimize surveillance.

With this perspective, crime prevention or reduction measures can be devised to increase the effort required to commit the crime, such as target hardening. Rational choice theories also suggest that increasing risk and likelihood of being caught, through added surveillance, law enforcement presence, added street lighting, and other measures, are effective in reducing crime.

One of the main differences between this theory and Bentham's rational choice theory, which had been abandoned in criminology, is that if Bentham considered it possible to completely annihilate crime (through the panopticon), Becker's theory acknowledged that a society could not eradicate crime beneath a certain level. For example, if 25% of a supermarket's products were stolen, it would be very easy to reduce this rate to 15%, quite easy to reduce it until 5%, difficult to reduce it under 3% and nearly impossible to reduce it to zero (a feat which the measures required would cost the supermarket so much that it would outweigh the benefits). This reveals that the goals of utilitarianism and classical liberalism have to be tempered and reduced to more modest proposals to be practically applicable.

Such rational choice theories, linked to neoliberalism, have been at the basics of crime prevention through environmental design and underpin the Market Reduction Approach to theft by Mike Sutton, which is a systematic toolkit for those seeking to focus attention on "crime facilitators" by tackling the markets for stolen goods that provide motivation for thieves to supply them by theft.

Routine activity theory

Main article: Routine activity theory

Routine activity theory, developed by Marcus Felson and Lawrence Cohen, draws upon control theories and explains crime in terms of crime opportunities that occur in everyday life. A crime opportunity requires that elements converge in time and place including a motivated offender, suitable target or victim, and lack of a capable guardian. A guardian at a place, such as a street, could include security guards or even ordinary pedestrians who would witness the criminal act and possibly intervene or report it to law enforcement. Routine activity theory was expanded by John Eck, who added a fourth element of "place manager" such as rental property managers who can take nuisance abatement measures.

Biosocial theory

Biosocial criminology is an interdisciplinary field that aims to explain crime and antisocial behavior by exploring both biological factors and environmental factors. While contemporary criminology has been dominated by sociological theories, biosocial criminology also recognizes the potential contributions of fields such as behavioral genetics, personality psychology, and evolutionary psychology. Various theoretical frameworks such as evolutionary neuroandrogenic theory have sought to explain trends in criminality through the lens of evolutionary biology. Specifically, they seek to explain why criminality is so much higher in men than in women and why young men are most likely to exhibit criminal behavior. See also: genetics of aggression.

Aggressive behavior has been associated with abnormalities in three principal regulatory systems in the body: serotonin systems, catecholamine systems, and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis. Abnormalities in these systems also are known to be induced by stress, either severe, acute stress or chronic low-grade stress.

Biosocial approaches remain very controversial within the scientific field.

Marxist

Main article: Marxist criminology

In 1968, young British sociologists formed the National Deviance Conference (NDC) group. The group was restricted to academics and consisted of 300 members. Ian Taylor, Paul Walton and Jock Young – members of the NDC – rejected previous explanations of crime and deviance. Thus, they decided to pursue a new Marxist criminological approach. In The New Criminology, they argued against the biological "positivism" perspective represented by Lombroso, Hans Eysenck and Gordon Trasler.

According to the Marxist perspective on crime, "defiance is normal – the sense that men are now consciously involved ... in assuring their human diversity." Thus Marxists criminologists argued in support of society in which the facts of human diversity, be it social or personal, would not be criminalized. They further attributed the processes of crime creation not to genetic or psychological facts, but rather to the material basis of a given society.

State crime is a distinct field of crimes that is studied by Marxist criminology, which considers these crimes to be some of the most costly to society in terms of overall harm/injury. In a Marxist framework, genocides, environmental degradation, and war are not crimes that occur out of contempt for one's fellow man, but are crimes of power. They continue systems of control and hegemony which allow state crime and state-corporate crime, along with state-corporate non-profit criminals, to continue governing people.

Convict

Convict criminology is a school of thought in the realm of criminology. Convict criminologists have been directly affected by the criminal justice system, oftentimes having spent years inside the prison system. Researchers in the field of convict criminology such as John Irwin and Stephan Richards argue that traditional criminology can better be understood by those who lived in the walls of a prison. Martin Leyva argues that "prisonization" oftentimes begins before prison, in the home, community, and schools.

According to Rod Earle, Convict Criminology started in the United States after the major expansion of prisons in the 1970s, and the U.S. still remains the main focus for those who study convict criminology.

Queer

Queer criminology is a field of study that focuses on LGBT individuals and their interactions with the criminal justice system. The goals of this field of study are as follows:

• To better understand the history of LGBT individuals and the laws put against the community
• Why LGBT citizens are incarcerated and if or why they are arrested at higher rates than heterosexual and cisgender individuals
• How queer activists have fought against oppressive laws that criminalized LGBT individuals
• To conduct research and use it as a form of activism through education

Legitimacy of Queer criminology:

The value of pursuing criminology from a queer theorist perspective is contested; some believe that it is not worth researching and not relevant to the field as a whole, and as a result is a subject that lacks a wide berth of research available. On the other hand, it could be argued that this subject is highly valuable in highlighting how LGBT individuals are affected by the criminal justice system. This research also has the opportunity to "queer" the curriculum of criminology in educational institutions by shifting the focus from controlling and monitoring LGBT communities to liberating and protecting them.

Cultural

Cultural criminology views crime and its control within the context of culture. Ferrell believes criminologists can examine the actions of criminals, control agents, media producers, and others to construct the meaning of crime. He discusses these actions as a means to show the dominant role of culture. Kane adds that cultural criminology has three tropes; village, city street, and media, in which males can be geographically influenced by society's views on what is broadcast and accepted as right or wrong. The village is where one engages in available social activities. Linking the history of an individual to a location can help determine social dynamics. The city street involves positioning oneself in the cultural area. This is full of those affected by poverty, poor health and crime, and large buildings that impact the city but not neighborhoods. Mass media gives an all-around account of the environment and the possible other subcultures that could exist beyond a specific geographical area.

It was later that Naegler and Salman introduced feminist theory to cultural criminology and discussed masculinity and femininity, sexual attraction and sexuality, and intersectional themes. Naegler and Salman believed that Ferrell's mold was limited and that they could add to the understanding of cultural criminology by studying women and those who do not fit Ferrell's mold. Hayward would later add that not only feminist theory, but green theory as well, played a role in the cultural criminology theory through the lens of adrenaline, the soft city, the transgressive subject, and the attentive gaze. The adrenaline lens deals with rational choice and what causes a person to have their own terms of availability, opportunity, and low levels of social control. The soft city lens deals with reality outside of the city and the imaginary sense of reality: the world where transgression occurs, where rigidity is slanted, and where rules are bent. The transgressive subject refers to a person who is attracted to rule-breaking and is attempting to be themselves in a world where everyone is against them. The attentive gaze is when someone, mainly an ethnographer, is immersed into the culture and interested in lifestyle(s) and the symbolic, aesthetic, and visual aspects. When examined, they are left with the knowledge that they are not all the same, but come to a settlement of living together in the same space. Through it all, sociological perspective on cultural criminology theory attempts to understand how the environment an individual is in determines their criminal behavior.

Relative deprivation

Relative deprivation involves the process where an individual measures his or her own well-being and materialistic worth against that of other people and perceive that they are worse off in comparison. When humans fail to obtain what they believe they are owed, they can experience anger or jealousy over the notion that they have been wrongly disadvantaged.

Relative deprivation was originally utilized in the field of sociology by Samuel A. Stouffer, who was a pioneer of this theory. Stouffer revealed that soldiers fighting in World War II measured their personal success by the experience in their units rather than by the standards set by the military. Relative deprivation can be made up of societal, political, economic, or personal factors which create a sense of injustice. It is not based on absolute poverty, a condition where one cannot meet a necessary level to maintain basic living standards. Rather, relative deprivation enforces the idea that even if a person is financially stable, he or she can still feel relatively deprived. The perception of being relatively deprived can result in criminal behavior and/or morally problematic decisions. Relative deprivation theory has increasingly been used to partially explain crime as rising living standards can result in rising crime levels. In criminology, the theory of relative deprivation explains that people who feel jealous and discontent of others might turn to crime to acquire the things that they can not afford.

Rural

"Rural crime" redirects here. For illegal hunting or capturing of wild animals, see Poaching.

Rural criminology is the study of crime trends outside of metropolitan and suburban areas. Rural criminologists have used social disorganization and routine activity theories. The FBI Uniform Crime Report shows that rural communities have significantly different crime trends as opposed to metropolitan and suburban areas. The crime in rural communities consists predominantly of narcotic related crimes such as the production, use, and trafficking of narcotics. Social disorganization theory is used to examine the trends involving narcotics. Social disorganization leads to narcotic use in rural areas because of low educational opportunities and high unemployment rates. Routine activity theory is used to examine all low-level street crimes such as theft. Much of the crime in rural areas is explained through routine activity theory because there is often a lack of capable guardians in rural areas.

Public

Public criminology is a strand within criminology closely tied to ideas associated with "public sociology", focused on disseminating criminological insights to a broader audience than academia. Advocates of public criminology argue that criminologists should be "conducting and disseminating research on crime, law, and deviance in dialogue with affected communities." Its goal is for academics and researchers in criminology to provide their research to the public in order to inform public decisions and policymaking. This allows criminologists to avoid the constraints of traditional criminological research. In doing so, public criminology takes on many forms, including media and policy advising as well as activism, civic-oriented education, community outreach, expert testimony, and knowledge co-production.

Types and definitions of crime

Both the positivist and classical schools take a consensus view of crime: that a crime is an act that violates the basic values and beliefs of society. Those values and beliefs are manifested as laws that society agrees upon. However, there are two types of laws:

• Natural laws are rooted in core values shared by many cultures. Natural laws protect against harm to persons (e.g. murder, rape, assault) or property (theft, larceny, robbery), and form the basis of common law systems.
• Statutes are enacted by legislatures and reflect current cultural mores, albeit that some laws may be controversial, e.g. laws that prohibit cannabis use and gambling. Marxist criminology, conflict criminology, and critical criminology claim that most relationships between state and citizen are non-consensual and, as such, criminal law is not necessarily representative of public beliefs and wishes: it is exercised in the interests of the ruling or dominant class. The more right-wing criminologies tend to posit that there is a consensual social contract between state and citizen.

There have been moves in contemporary criminological theory to move away from liberal pluralism, culturalism, and postmodernism by introducing the universal term "harm" into the criminological debate as a replacement for the legal term "crime".

Subtopics

Areas of study in criminology include:

• Comparative criminology, which is the study of the social phenomenon of crime across cultures, to identify differences and similarities in crime patterns.
• Crime prevention
• Crime statistics
• Criminal behavior
• Criminal careers and desistance
• Domestic violence
• Deviant behavior
• Evaluation of criminal justice agencies
• Fear of crime
• The International Crime Victims Survey
• Juvenile delinquency
• Penology
• Sociology of law
• Victimology

See also

Main article: Index of criminology articles

• Anthropological criminology
• Crime science
• Forensic psychology
• Forensic science
• List of crime-related publications
• List of criminologists
• Social cohesion
• The Mask of Sanity
• Taboo
• Public criminology
• Qualitative research in criminology
• Quantitative methods in criminology

References

Bibliography

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• Jones, Shayne E.; Miller, Joshua D.; Lynam, Donald R. (1 July 2011). "Personality, antisocial behavior, and aggression: A meta-analytic review". Journal of Criminal Justice. 39 (4): 329–337. doi:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2011.03.004. ISSN 0047-2352.
• Miller, Joshua D.; Lynam, Donald (2001). "Structural Models of Personality and Their Relation to Antisocial Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review*". Criminology. 39 (4): 765–798. doi:10.1111/j.1745-9125.2001.tb00940.x. ISSN 1745-9125.
• Miller, Joshua D.; Lynam, Donald; Leukefeld, Carl (2003). "Examining antisocial behavior through the lens of the five factor model of personality". Aggressive Behavior. 29 (6): 497–514. doi:10.1002/ab.10064. ISSN 1098-2337.
• Mõttus, René; Guljajev, Juri; Allik, Jüri; Laidra, Kaia; Pullmann, Helle (2012). "Longitudinal associations of cognitive ability, personality traits and school grades with antisocial behaviour" (PDF). European Journal of Personality. 26 (1): 56–62. doi:10.1002/per.820. ISSN 1099-0984. S2CID 53060482. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 April 2023.
• O'Riordan, Cáit; O'Connell, Michael (1 October 2014). "Predicting adult involvement in crime: Personality measures are significant, socio-economic measures are not". Personality and Individual Differences. 68: 98–101. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.04.010. ISSN 0191-8869.
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• Siegel, Larry J. (2003). Criminology (8th ed.). Thomson-Wadsworth.
• Siegel, Larry J. (2015). Criminology: Theories, Patterns, and Typologies (12 ed.). Cengage Learning. ISBN 9781305446090. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
• Sparks, Richard F. (1980). "A Critique of Marxist Criminology". Crime and Justice. 2: 159–210. JSTOR 1147414.
• Wiebe, Richard (1 April 2004). "Delinquent Behavior and the Five-Factor Model: Hiding in the Adaptive Landscape?". Individual Differences Research. 2: 38–62.

Further reading

• Agnew, Robert (2005). Why Do Criminals Offend? A General Theory of Crime and Delinquency. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Barak, Gregg (ed.). (1998). Integrative criminology (International Library of Criminology, Criminal Justice & Penology.). Aldershot: Ashgate/Dartmouth. ISBN 1-84014-008-9.
• Beccaria, Cesare, Dei delitti e delle pene (1763–1764).
• Blatier, Catherine (1998), "The Specialized Jurisdiction: A Better Chance for Minors". International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family. pp. 115–127.
• Bouchard, Jean-Pierre, "Can criminology be considered as a discipline in its own right?" L'Evolution Psychiatrique 78 (2013) 343–349.
• Briar, S., & Piliavin, I. (1966). Delinquency, Situational Inducements, and Commitment to Conformity. Social Problems, 13 (3).
• Clear, T. R. (2009). Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Cohen, A. K. (1965). The Sociology of the Deviant Act: Anomie Theory and Beyond. American Sociological Review, 30.
• Horning, A. et al. (2020). "Risky Business: Harlem Pimps' Work Decisions and Economic Returns", Deviant Behavior, 21(2): 160–185.
• Jaishankar, K., & Ronel, N. (2013). Global Criminology: Crime and Victimization in a Globalized Era. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN 9781439892497.
• Katz, J. (1988). Seductions of crime: Moral and sensual attractions in doing evil. New York: Basic Books.
• Pettit, Philip and Braithwaite, John (1990). Not Just Deserts. A Republican Theory of Criminal Justice. New York: Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0-19-824056-3 (see Republican Criminology and Victim Advocacy: Comment for article concerning the book in Law & Society Review, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 765–776).
• Pontell, Henry; Black, W. K.; Geis, G. (2014). "Too big to fail, too powerful to jail? On the absence of criminal prosecutions after the 2008 financial meltdown". Crime, Law and Social Change. 61 (1): 1–13.
• Sampson, Robert J. (2012). Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Wikibooks: Introduction to sociology
• Wolff, Kevin; Baglivio, M. T. (2017). "Adverse childhood experiences, negative emotionality, and pathways to juvenile recidivism". Crime & Delinquency. 63 (12): 1495–1521.