Criminology as Religion? Profane thoughts about sacred values

Fiona Haines and Adam Sutton1

Abstract

The terrain in and around academia is being transformed. Criminology has not been

exempt, with dwindling government funding forcing greater emphasis on contract

research, consultancies and even direct programme management. Various

commentators have expressed concern about the future of the discipline - but what is it

that is being changed? This paper explores the nature of criminology and argues that it

always has been as much a moral as an empirical science. Using Weber’s sociology of

religion as a model we argue that criminology has generated a variety of types,

including: “magicians” (whose primary concern is with “what works?”); “priests”

(guardians of doctrine); “gurus” (distillers of current expertise); and “prophets” (bearers

of “fresh visions”). The paper also explores tensions and paradoxes inherent in

criminology’s religious dimension: in particular the possibility that desire for “moral

virtuosity” (often disguised as a concern for “theoretical purity”) can lead to rejection

of worldly involvement on the grounds that it will cloud insight. In this context the

paper argues that the consequences of a shift toward market concerns need not be

entirely negative.

1 Department of Criminology, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Australia.

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Observations that economic rationalism and changes in the role of the modern state are

reshaping the terrain in and around criminology have become so frequent as to be

almost run of the mill (Young 1986; Nelken 1994; Chan 1996; Finnane 1996; O’Malley

1996). The fact remains, however, that for many in the discipline, work is being

transformed. Funding constraints for traditional mainstream tasks, such as teaching, are

forcing academic criminologists to turn to alternative revenue sources, such as

consultancies. Reluctance by governments to fund “pure” research is dictating that

applicants for, and recipients of, grants must attempt more and more to satisfy public

and private sector interests rather than criteria set by peers. With whole layers of public

and private sector bureaucracy stripped away, academic criminologists who involve

themselves in applied research also are being required to assume direct programme

management roles2.

This paper also is about these changes. Our concern, though, is not just with forces

reshaping criminology but with what it is that is being affected. We are interested in the

enterprise that criminology has been, as well as what it is becoming. How have

criminologists tended to see themselves and the world around them? What values and

perspectives are put at risk when the researcher moves closer to the marketplace?

Traditionally when trying to identify central beliefs, academics have articulated

ideals of science: objectivity, coherent theorizing and openness to critical debate and

refutation. In this paper we argue that as far as criminology is concerned, perhaps a

more helpful paradigm is that of a moral discourse. Indeed, we will be provocative and

argue that to understand core values and the sanctions, both positive and negative, that

criminologists apply to one another, it may be useful to treat criminology as form of

religion3. Analysing criminology as a secular religion can provide insight not just into

what gives the discipline some shape but also its schisms and divisions: why various

schools have emerged and how they have established and maintained hierarchies.

In effect we will be attempting the type of analysis Max Weber (1922) provided of

world religions. Having Weber’s work as a point of reference is useful for at least three

2 For example, in the vein of “steering not rowing” governments both in the UK and in Australia have tendered out entire crime prevention programmes, expecting that the successful contractors will involve themselves not just in policy refinement and evaluation, but running these initiatives as “private” providers. See the work of NACRO and Crime Concern in the UK (Hughes 1996) and, in Australia, Victoria’s “Safer Cities and Shires” initiative (Department of Justice 1997). 3 An analogy already drawn in passing by Morrison (1994:137). Readers should be warned that, like many who have reflected on these diffuse topics, we will not attempt to provide neat definitions either of religion or of the “crossroads” discipline that is criminology.

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reasons. First it supplies a neat and, we hope, reasonably entertaining framework for

categorizing the various types of practitioners - the magicians, the priests, the gurus and

the prophets - that constitute our criminological community. Second, there is value in

Weber’s analysis of the ways belief systems (in our case, criminological) are contoured

by specific material and ideal circumstances. Finally, we find relevance in what Turner

(1981) depicts as Weber’s vision of the “tragic fate” affecting virtually all systems of

religion: their tendency to generate practical consequences that are the opposite of

professed ideals.

There is some irony in all of this. One of the reasons for our beginning to prepare

this paper was highly critical - almost “moralizing” - feedback one of the authors had

received in relation to attempts to translate criminological theory into policy reform.

Indeed, we had started to formulate a reprisal: a sermon about shortcomings in so called

“radical” schools which are dismissive of any practical involvement. In true Sunday

service style, we had even chosen a text with which to commence. However even as we

embarked on this exercise we realized that the apparent religiosity which infused the

response we targeted could not, in fact, be restricted to particular schools or authors.

While it has been comparatively rare for criminologists to acknowledge their role as

proselytizers and to reflect on its implications for the discipline (but see Hogg 19964),

all work - our own included - has a religious or moral dimension: it simply manifests

itself in diverse ways. Having said this, perhaps the best way to develop our point is, in

fact, to begin with the critique which caused such vexation.

Criminology as Religion

Herein lies the fundamental problem of [the author’s] prescription for crime

management. Far from seeking to develop a coherent and critical understanding of

the ‘the way crime problems occur’, the authors simply take such matters for

granted. Crime thus becomes a reified behavioural outcome that needs to be

prevented, contained or managed through the implementation of a range of local

and national measures. The failure of [the authors] to mention, let alone discuss,

the socially constructed nature of crime, tends to place their analysis of crime

prevention in an extremely narrow epistemological framework (Hil 1996:60-61).

As stated, this text is part of a lively repudiation - not just by an individual

4 In some respects, this paper can be seen as a companion piece or sequel to Hogg’s earlier use of Weberian perspectives to explore “criminology as a science”. Unlike the present paper, Hogg also attempts to clarify the types of “knowledge claims” which tend to be generated by criminology’s peculiar combination of moral and

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commentator but by the “alternative” journal within which the response was located5 -

of a recent flirtation with policy advocacy. The specific trigger was an attempt by a

loose coalition of criminologists and community-based activists in one Australian State

to propose constructive alternatives to politicians’ current preoccupation with more

(and more) “law and order”. Why was this mild and ultimately ineffectual piece of

policy activism so vehemently rejected? Largely, we suspect, because crime prevention

- the framework advocated by this particular coalition - is in fact one of the areas of

expertise where criminologists have been trying to market themselves to governments.

While the author Richard Hil may not reject prevention per se, he seems convinced that

attempts to render the discipline more “relevant” inevitably must lead to abandonment

of key values.

Hil in fact articulates two interrelated themes. The first is that criminology should

never become engrossed in pragmatism: in “mere technical solutions”. Research which

allows itself to be constrained in these ways is bound to become purely “administrative,

correctional and managerial”. For more than three decades - at least since the

publication of Becker’s (1967) “Whose side are we on?”, and Taylor, Walton and

Young’s, New Criminology (1973) - criminologists drawn to more radical or critical

perspectives often have felt bound to reject such approaches (see, for example, Cohen

1985; Hester and Eglin 1992; Israel 1997; Cunneen 1997; Watts 1996; Scraton 1985;

but see also Young 1986 and Hogg and Brown 1998).

The second, and perhaps even more seminal, theme in this excerpt however relates

to Hil’s reason for rejecting even the most well intentioned attempts at “crime

management”. Involvement with such endeavours will cause criminologists to become

far too preoccupied with the “reified surface” of things. It will undermine their capacity

to see through superficial appearances to the “underlying realities”: of social inequality;

of the over-policing of disadvantaged and indigenous communities; of the relative

under-policing of white-collar sectors.

In articulating such views Hil echoes a classic claim of historical materialism: that

aspects of “superstructure” such as crime and culture can properly be understood only

within the context of “objective”, “scientific” analysis of material (class) relations.

empirical perspectives. 5The text critiqued was Hill and Sutton (1996): a discussion paper prepared on behalf of a lobby group, the Victorian Criminal Justice Coalition. Despite the highly critical tone of the commentary which followed the Coalition’s piece, its authors were not shown this response and were not offered a right of reply. It should be noted, however, that the author of the commentary was not aware of these editorial decisions.

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Whether Marxism in fact can provide appropriate anchor points for the study of crime

has, of course, been long debated (eg Hirst 1975; Taylor and Walton 1975). In any case,

poststructural and other recent theorizing has tended to reject base/superstructure

metaphors and attempts to provide “grand narratives” or “total understandings” of the

trajectories of societies (Foucault 1979; Brown 1987; Smart 1990; Young 1996). In

light of such debates, it would have been relatively easy to have developed a response

to Hil which put emphasis on flaws in the ontology to which he seems committed6.

Doing so, however, may well have been to miss the point. As we see it, for many

“radical” criminologists - Hil perhaps included - the appeal of Marxism does not in fact

lie in its promise that, by decoding the “logic of history”, it provides clues to praxis.

Rather, it lies in the moral juxtapositions such a perspective permits: the capacity, for

example, to contrast violence caused by massive corporations and the state with the

harm caused by individual “muggers” or to compare the losses caused by Maxwell-type

empires with the costs of property offences by conventional “delinquents” (Pearce

1976; Mintz 1985; Simon and Eitzen 1986; Ermann and Lundman 1987; Mokhiber

1988) . It is in the context of such juxtapositions that questions about who are the “real”

offenders, and the “real” victims (Shwendinger and Shwendinger 1970) acquire

genuine force.

It is clear, moreover, that even for theorists who have discarded the baggage of

historical materialism, sustained moral commentary remains central to the

criminological enterprise. Consider, for example, poststructuralism. One of its key tools

is to deconstruct specific discourses to reveal the power relations which cloak them

with apparent coherence. Why is such a process important? Surely, much of the value

lies in its capacity to contrast the legitimacy of voices and activities suppressed with

distortions, inconsistencies and injustices in dominant discourses. Again, the appeal is

to a “moral sense”.

Judgmentalism is everywhere in criminology. Even apparently pragmatic schools,

such as the liberal reformism of Morris and Hawkins’ (1970) The Honest Politician’s

Guide to Crime Control also, in their own way, are underpinned by moral commentary.

Here, concern is with the ways emotionalism (“moralistic excrescences”, as Morris and

Hawkins term it) has affected criminal justice systems’ capacities to protect life and

property in cost-effective ways, and helped pave the way for dangerous and

6 Although from Hil’s critique it is not entirely clear whether in fact he adopts a Marxist or a poststructuralist

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unnecessary incursions into civil liberties. If there is a theme common to the various

strands which comprise the discipline of criminology it is the claim that, through

specialized knowledge, its practitioners offer clearer insights on such emotive and

contentious issues as deviance, power and social control. This makes it as much a moral

as an empirical science.

To reinforce this point it is helpful, like Garland (1991), to revisit themes

enunciated by Durkheim (1933). As Durkheim pointed out, in defining crimes and in

punishing transgressors, societies always attempt more than a mere practical task.

Albeit with vision distorted by power and special interest, they are trying also to

delineate or reconsecrate “sacred ground”. In aspiring to expertise on crime,

criminologists cannot avoid also making pronouncements on how to discriminate

sacred from profane.

The allusion to Durkheim also reminds us that, to at least some of its founders, the

notion that social science should be overtly prescriptive and moralistic would not have

seemed untoward. Comte envisioned sociologists as a new, expert priesthood - even

going so far as to design special robes for the neophytes (Nisbet 1970). Albeit in more

subtle ways, Durkheim also saw sociology as a source of the new ethics essential for

the health of complex industrialised societies7. In his work on education Durkheim

consciously set out to supplant inflexible, traditional forms of religiosity associated

with the French Catholic system with practices and rules generated by sociology.

Nor are these simply quaint historicisms. Contemporary theorists such as

Habermas (1996) continue to argue that in the social sciences, norms are as central as

facts. Our view is that this is particularly relevant for criminology. Given the powerful

private emotions and public rituals associated with crime and punishment, those who

aspire to expertise in this field cannot avoid assuming a moralistic, religious aura. The

key question is: what kinds of practitioners are we?

Magicians or Priests?

In responding we find Weber’s sociology of religion - and in particular his basic

distinction between magicians and priests - a useful starting point. Weber portrayed

conflicts and contrasts between these two ideal types8 of practitioners as a fault line

position. 7 The specific ethic which Durkheim tried to promote was the “cult of individualism”: respect for the autonomy and right of the individual, based on a shared understanding of the interdependence of each within a given society (Giddens 1995: 94-115). 8 Ideal types, in the Weberian sense are extreme constructs. They constitute abstract models which allow

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running through all religious paradigms. We are convinced that, in transmuted form, a

similar division can be found within criminology.

Magicians and priests differ in two fundamental ways. The first is world outlook:

whether concerns revolve around achieving practical outcomes (magicians), or whether

they are more preoccupied with understanding and becoming reconciled with a

comprehensive cosmology (priests). The second dimension separating practitioners

hinges on whether they possess, or lack, an institutional base. Magicians tend to operate

in the market: they lack an independent base (sect or church) to which they can refer.

The notion of priesthood, on the other hand, is linked inextricably to an institutional

order.

Weber argued that basic outlook - whether practitioners are “this” or “other”

worldly in orientation - also fundamentally affects the nature and purpose of the

religious ceremony. For the magician the aim of a religious act (be it magic, ritual or

some form of ecstatic involvement) is to achieve immediate, practical, “this worldly”

objectives (eg to bring rain - the equivalent of what Hil might term “prevention,

containment or management”). Magicians must act at a pragmatic level, making deals

with capricious deities to enable people to cope with everyday problems. They deal

with magical forces which, through the correct use of formulae, can be trained to serve

human needs:

religious behaviour is not worship of the god but rather coercion of the god, and

invocation is not prayer but rather the exercise of magical formulae. Such is the

one ineradicable basis of popular religion (Weber 1922:25).

For the priestly type9, by contrast, religious activity is directed primarily at some “other

worldly” end (for example worshipping and obtaining guidance and comfort from God

- the religious equivalent of what Hil might term “a coherent and critical

understanding”). For priests invocation of magic or miracles becomes, in a world of

increasing complexity, more and more futile:

...the significance of distinctly (priestly) religious behaviour is sought less and less

in the purely external advantages of everyday economic success. Thus the goal of

religious behaviour is successively “irrationalized” until finally otherworldly non

infinitely complex social worlds to be explored with greater clarity. Ideal types are unlikely to exist in pure form in reality: they are analytical tools rather than positivist typologies (see Weber, 1948). 9 Again we emphasize that Weber was presenting ideal types. The reality of any particular religious order was, in his view, bound to combine elements from both a magical and priestly persuasion. For example, Weber argued that Catholic priests often incorporated magical elements in their beliefs, and that this was reflected in

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economic goals come to represent what is distinctive in religious behaviour (Weber

1922: 27-8).

Presence or absence of an institutional base - the second axis of differentiation - also

has major implications for the ways magicians or priests see themselves and behave. In

particular, Weber argued that this material fact affects the ways contests between

practitioners can be resolved. Among magicians, lack of an institutional base tends to

result in total dependence upon selling skills in the marketplace. For them, the key

religious question is: “what works?”. Challenges by one magician to another’s claim of

authority are likely to be resolved through a contest of magic (“mine is better than

yours”). Because they lack an institutional base, unsuccessful magicians are likely to be

held personally accountable10.

Priests, on the other hand, do have an independent base, and therefore are less

likely to be drawn into religious contests or to be held responsible in direct and

personal ways. Their beliefs are systematized into a rationalized form, and authority is

vested in the resultant doctrine and dogma. Challenges to authority cannot be resolved

by magical means. Disputes must be referred to doctrine for resolution, and dogma

flowing from omnipotent authority - which, by definition is not open to magical

influence - provides the ultimate source of legitimation.

As Weber (1922:29) points out, for practitioners operating from the vantage point

of a relatively independent institution, doctrine has distinct advantages over magic.

Doctrine involves elaboration of guidance concerning human destiny. As such it gives

priests the ability to “see over the horizon”, whereas magicians must deal with the

moment. Doctrine allows priests to deal in high levels of generalization, without

concern for messy detail. Lack of observable success does not necessarily lead to

problems, since the priest can apportion blame elsewhere:

...priests have enjoyed the contrasting advantage of being able to deflect blame

away from themselves and onto their god...priests may find ways of interpreting

failures in such a manner that the responsibility falls, not upon the god or

themselves, but upon the behaviour of their worshippers (Weber 1922:33).

Calls for priests to “face up” to lack of practical success therefore will be met with

dismissal or derision. Pragmatism is the domain and controlling ethos of the magician -

beneath consideration by the priest unless it is to denounce such actions as work of the

Catholic worship.

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devil. Such differences in orientation inevitably lead to conflicts between the two forms

of religious authority.

Of course, the concern of this paper is divisions within criminology, not religious

groupings. What can Weber’s theories tell us about our own debates? We suspect that

readers will not require too much assistance in drawing out the parallels.

In our view criminology, as a moral as well as practical discipline, exhibits

fundamental and ongoing tensions between those adherents whose preference is for

pragmatic solutions, and those whose outlook and orientation is more “priestly”. Indeed

in this context consistent critiques by some criminologists of colleagues who want to

dabble in prevention, corrections research or other mundane “managerial” tasks make

sense. In essence, they are the equivalent of priestly rebukes, delivered by councils of

authority to colleagues showing a tendency to “lapse into magic” and lose sight of the

true calling. The purpose of criminology should be to elaborate moral doctrine and

insight, not to provide politicians and others with immediate practical guidance. Taking

the latter course is dangerous. Not only does it put the individual practitioner at risk -

after all, who really knows what works? - it may well undermine the reputation of the

entire discipline.

Viewed through the prism of Weber’s sociology of religion, histories of

criminology (eg Garland 1990; Carson and O’Malley 1989; Finnane 1998; Naffine

1997) also take on a new slant: as records of contest between those relatively content

with pragmatic roles and those wanting it to become more concerned with doctrine, and

to shake off its “magical” past. More of this later, however. First it is important to note

that there is more to Weber’s religious typology than the schism between magicians and

priests. Other archetypes include gurus and prophets of various types. Again, there are

powerful resonances within criminology.

Gurus and Prophets

Gurus, for example can be characterised as practitioners whose primary concern is to

distil existing religious knowledge. Unlike priests, gurus are relatively unconcerned

with doctrine,

Yet the guru is, after all, only a teacher who transmits acquired, not revealed,

knowledge, and this by virtue of a commission and not his own authority (Weber

1922:52 - emphasis in original).

10 Often, as Weber pointed out, with their lives.

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Nonetheless, gurus are conscious of their independence and autonomy: they never will

descend the pure “ad-hocery” of market based magicians. Do gurus have their

equivalent in criminology? In our view, yes.

Consider theorists such as Marcus Felson (1994) and Ron Clarke (1992). Both

have won wide respect11 for pioneering opportunity reduction approaches to crime

prevention. Both, however, have argued that the crime expert’s primary role is not so

much to create new knowledge as to summarize and condense what already exists:

many [crime prevention practices] originated through the efforts of hard-pressed

public and private agencies seeking the most practical ways of solving their

particular crime problems... One purpose of this book, therefore, is to consolidate

the knowledge obtained through these individual problem-solving efforts and to

show how the criminological framework provided by situational prevention

enables the lessons learned from dealing with specific crimes in specialized

contexts to be more broadly generalized (Clarke 1992:4).

By the very fact that they do not challenge existing understandings but seek to work

within them, gurus have tended to be characterized as conservative. Weber points out

that in caste societies, religious gurus often played critical roles in helping ensure that

young people from more privileged strata became reconciled with the existing order:

Every young man belonging to polite society was unconditionally required to

devote himself for many years to the instruction and direction of life provided by

such a Brahminic teacher (Weber 1922:52).

Criminological gurus also, of course, often are chided for lacking concern about the

broader social implications of practices they document and refine (Sutton 1994; White

1997). However being in some ways reconciled with “the system” does not mean that

gurus lack reflectiveness. Indeed for Weber thoughtfulness is what distinguishes the

genuine guru12. Again there is a parallel in criminology. We see figures such as John

Braithwaite, who throughout his research on white collar crime (Braithwaite 1985;

Ayres and Braithwaite 1992) and in his influential Crime, Shame and Reintegration

(1989) has sought to distil and reuse the best that empirical studies have yielded, as

11 Challinger (1992) for example describes Clarke’s work as seminal. The authors also would maintain that an understanding of the work of situational and routine activity theorists is essential for any researcher intent on developing, applying or assessing crime prevention policy and practice. 12 For gurus considered less reflective and less concerned with the philosophical aspects of religion Weber reserved the label ‘mystagogue’ (1922:55).

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displaying the classic characteristics of the “thoughtful guru”13.

Whether in religion or, for that matter criminology, thoughtfulness will not always

be enough. Inevitably, some become impatient with what they perceive as recycled

wisdom and stale dogma. Through force of personality and charisma, such individuals

lay claim to new revelation and unique insights. They become prophets:

We shall understand ‘prophet’ to mean a purely individual bearer of charisma, who

by virtue of his message proclaims a religious doctrine to divine commandment

(Weber 1922:46).

Weber in fact identifies two types of prophecy: ethical and exemplary. Ethical prophets

place direct demands on their followers, exhorting them to change. Exemplary

prophets, by contrast, are more self-absorbed: intent on uncovering and pursuing their

own paths to salvation. In their relations with followers, they content themselves with

“appealing to the self-interest of those who crave salvation, recommending to them the

same path as he himself has traversed” (Weber 1922:55).

Not surprisingly, given that it is the product of Western practices and philosophy14,

criminology has tended to produce far more ethical than exemplary prophecy. From

anarchist “fire and brimstone”:

Burn the guillotines, demolish the prisons, drive away the judge, the policeman, the

spy - an impure race if ever there was one - but treat as a brother him who has been

lead by passion to do ill to his kind; above all deprive those truly great criminals,

those ignoble products of bourgeois idleness, of the possibility of parading their

vices in seductive form... 15.

to denunciations of the surveillance society, these texts exhort followers to act - now:

It is time to legislate to fill the void that permits the police, government agencies

and others to conduct illegal surveillance. It is time to legislate to exclude the fruits

of this illegal surveillance. It is time to legislate to provide compensation for

13 Experts working for government funded crime research centres such as Britain’s Home Office Research and Planning Unit, the United States’ National Institute of Justice, the Netherlands’ Research and Documentation Centre and the Australian Institute of Criminology also tend to have “guru” status. Perhaps these institutions should be characterized as “convocations of gurus”. In fairness to people like Marcus Felson, Ron Clarke and John Braithwaite however, we need to acknowledge that criminological gurus tend not to have the passive, fatalistic outlook of the traditional Indian sage. Western belief systems put emphasis on active manipulation of the physical and social environment. Perhaps a better term for our refiners of knowledge is “science-gurus”. 14 Weber pointed to the way that major western religions - Judaism and Christianity for example - lead to ethical prophecy rather than prophecy of a more exemplary nature. This, he argued, was by virtue of their religions being grounded in the notion of a singular, all powerful God. Exemplary prophecy is more likely where religion emphasizes a range of deities, (pantheism), the “God in all things” (panentheism) or is atheistic (eg Buddhism). 15 Kropotkin 1996:54, first published in 1898.

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people whose privacy has been invaded... (Schurr 1987:58).

Moreover as Cohen (1988) points out, while condemnations of managerialism and

correctionalism may now have become routinized (see for example Israel 1997), so-

called “critical” schools also can be seen as having originated in a prophetic break with

tradition or routine:

Faced by the hopeless bankruptcy of mainstream managerial criminology with its

endless round of “new” solutions to the crime problem and its final abandonment

of any social and political program, the various critical factions have more in

common than what divides them (Cohen 1988:271).

Not all criminological prophecy, however, is in the “ethical” mould. As the following

excerpts suggest, exemplary prophets - those who, having “seen the truth”, simply

invite others to follow, no matter how difficult the journey - also are beginning to

emerge:

...we all become nomads migrating across a system that is too vast to be our own,

but in which we are fully involved, translating and transforming bits and elements

into local instances of sense which become habitable as though ‘they were a space

borrowed for a moment by a transient, an immigrant, a nomad’16.

Gone is the expectation that others must - or even are expected to - conform. The vast

majority of relevant populations will remain oblivious to the new “heresy” - content to

remain sealed within the security of the accepted “truth”:

To write on the border of what is ‘criminology’ and what is ‘not’ acknowledges the

possibilities of rejection, of eyes that will not ‘see’. As an outlaw text, this book

seeks to inhabit the space of the beyond, or border, where the crimino-legal

complex falls into the real. The moment of falling into the real is paradoxically the

moment of hallucination; where infidelity is necessary for faith to be promised.

Criminology promises faith to itself, sealing the possibility of infidelity, of stories

within and beyond its borders (Young 1996:25).

Enough of analogies, however. They can be entertaining, and perhaps not too unfair, in

the context of conference presentations where there is possibility for at least one or two

of those targeted to improvise replies.17 In less interactive settings, however, they

16 Stanley 1995: 29. The concluding quotation is from Chambers 1993. 17Or, possibly, wear their labels with good humour and a touch of pride. A earlier version of this paper was presented at a recent annual conference of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology. The authors thank those present for feedback and suggestions, several of which now have been incorporated. One or two delegates proposed that the religion analogy be extended to an even more elaborate framework of denominations

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quickly become distortions: grotesque reifications of the ideal type. No criminologist in

fact fits entirely comfortably into the categories outlined above. Some, after all, still

exhibit symptoms of being alive - and therefore ever developing, changing, hard to pin

down. Many of us, moreover, experience no difficulty in shifting between the

categories of priest and guru, prophet and (just occasionally) magician as strategic

priorities, tactics and financial circumstances demand.

Construction of more and more elaborate typologies also would detract from our

main purpose, which is to explore the implications and consequences of criminology’s

being as much a moral as a practical science. In our view, the fact that religiosity is

ever-present but rarely acknowledged has enabled it to have profound impacts. How do

criminologists accord status on the moral or “religious” dimension, and how does this

affect what we do and say? These are the final questions to be addressed in this paper.

To begin to answer them, one must turn to the dynamics of religious movements - and

in particular to Weber’s exploration of the concept of religious “virtuosity”.

The dynamics of moralism

To appreciate Weber’s views on this topic it is necessary to commence with a paradox:

that while all religious practice may have begun with magicians, subsequent

specializations have consisted of attempts to become emancipated from such an ad hoc,

insecure past. Initially, emancipation tended to be of one of two forms. The magician’s

role could, over time, be transformed into that of the guru. More commonly, however,

patterns of working could become collective rather than individual, and practitioners

could begin rationalizing and codifying their knowledge (Weber 1922:27).

Weber argued, for example, that in societies where secular power had become

centralized (for example in the Ancient Egyptian empire c1400 B.C.), experts in the

sacred tended to coalesce into a “state priesthood”. Religious work remained tied to and

dependent on patronage, with priests drawing on special knowledge and divining skills

to advise rulers on such issues as the most propitious times for battle. While closely

linked to authority, however, these state priests experienced tensions between secular

pressures and the demands of their by now well developed doctrine. It was to resolve

such tensions that prophets emerged: either announcing new doctrines and denouncing

the old, or rediscovering and enunciating the “true meaning” of existing scriptures.

and sects: that they and their colleagues be compared to Quakers, Shakers, High Church Anglicans, Fundamentalists, Pentecostals, New Age Mystics, Pagans, and so on. This suggestion was gratefully received, but will have to be deferred. Another paper, perhaps.

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Inevitably such breakthroughs involved turning more and more away from “this

worldly” demands in order to align conduct more closely with the imperatives of “other

worldly” authorities (eg God). Following a prophetic innovation, new priestly orders

would emerge to systematize insights and translate them for a lay following. Inevitably

these new religions or denominations also would begin to experience tensions between

doctrine and secular demands, giving rise to new cycles of prophecy and routinization

(fig 1).

FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE

Clearly, for Weber the key to religious virtuosity lies in the capacity to resolve “inner

tensions” by breaking with an established order. Inevitably such breaks involve taking a

stance against “this worldly” concerns and accommodations. For prophets the focus

must be on “ultimate meaning”. Without such focus they lose charisma, and with it

following.

It should be emphasized, moreover, that within these cycles of religious renewal

and routinization the role of the audience - the laity - is powerful. In building on

insights of prophetic “virtuosi” and making them part of a worldly order, priests

invariably transform the message in ways that best fit not just their own interest but

those of their followers. In some instances this can lead to elements of magic being

reincorporated:

As the masses increasingly become the object of the priests’ influence and the

foundation of their power, the priestly labors of systematization concerned

themselves more and more with the most traditional, and hence most magical

forms of religious notions and practices (Weber 1922:77).

From more “intellectual” audiences, however, the demand will be not so much for

magic as for “meaning”:

The salvation sought by the intellectual is always based on inner need, and hence it

is at once more remote from life, more systematic than salvation from external

distress, the quest for which is characteristic of the nonprivileged classes ... it is the

intellectual who transforms the concept of the world into the problem of meaning

(Weber 1922:125).

As Weber (1922:136-37) pointed out, for all their inner anguish and “searches for

meaning” intellectuals generally lack the qualities required of bearers of new

15

religions18. Nonetheless, even within the rarefied sphere of academic criminology one

can discern cycles of magic, moral emancipation, routinization and renewal. Various

histories (Jeffrey 1960; Garland 1988; Carson and O’Malley 1989) have documented

western criminology’s pragmatic, “magical” beginnings: “sciences” such as psychiatry,

law and Lombroso’s “criminal anthropology”. In the first half of the twentieth century,

both state priesthoods and the “guru” tradition began to emerge - with cosmologies

which embraced both the existing disciplines and newer ones such as sociology

(particularly in the US) and psychology (the UK). As doctrines became systematized,

dissenting movements surfaced - led by those concerned to pursue theoretical and

ethical integrity rather than to work within constraints imposed by state-defined

criminal law. Ultimately, however, even these fresh insights - for example labelling

theory, Marxist, feminist and critical criminology - became routinized. Hence there

were further breaks: new prophecies such as poststructuralism and abolitionism, as well

as revisions of older ones (eg Lemert 1981; Matthews and Young 1986; Smart 1976,

1990; Stanko 1985). And so the cycle has continued19.

Ongoing demand by government and other clients that criminology demonstrate

“practical value” as well as being theoretically credible means the dynamic has been

alive and self-renewing - hence our characterization of the discipline as a loose

collection of magicians, priests, prophets and gurus20. However as the religious analogy

reminds us, given the “intellectual” nature of much of its audience, forces for renewal

within academic criminology are more likely to result in withdrawal from “this

worldly” concerns than engagement with them. No less than religion, academic

criminology has generated its own paradoxes. Concern about injustices and inequities

18 “The need of literary, academic, or cafe-society intellectuals to include religious feelings in the inventory of their sources of impressions and sensations, and among their topics for discussion, has never yet given rise to a new religion. Nor can a religious renascence be generated by the need of authors to compose books, or by the need of clever publishers to sell such books.” (Weber 1922:137)

19 Or as Braithwaite has put it - “the wheel turns again” (1993:395). Note, however that Braithwaite was mainly addressing the cycles within positivist criminology. Further, we should acknowledge that there has not been one criminological cycle, but rather different cycles in different cultures and countries. In chronological terms, for example, abolitionism - which we classify as a “second wave” prophecy - came earlier than much poststructuralist criminology. This reflects the particular evolution of Dutch criminology (Downes 1988). 20 In this context we feel obliged to quote Foucault’s famous assessment “Have you read any criminological texts? They are staggering ... One has the impression that it [criminological discourse] is so vital for the working of the system, that it does not even need to seek a theoretical justification for itself. It is entirely utilitarian.” (Foucault 1981:47)

16

in the way crime is defined and power exercised often can lead to greater and greater

detachment from practical involvement, as criminologists strive for what Hil (1996)

would term “coherent and critical understanding”.

Discussion

In an extended reflection on Weber’s sociology of religion, the contemporary

sociologist Bryan Turner once characterized him as a “Veblen without the humour”:

In that exemplar of sociological wit, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein

Veblen (1925) developed a theory that all dominant classes whose wealth resides

in the ownership of productive property must be seen to be idle and non

productive. Their patterns of consumption must serve to illustrate their massive

separation from the profane world of money and production ... Max Weber

implicitly developed a similar theory of the relationship between religious and

secular stratification - this time without the humour. In Weberian sociology, we

can discover the notion that all religious virtuosity must be developed in isolation

from the work-place and from domestic chores (Turner 1981: 109).

This paper has essayed a Weberian analysis of criminology - although hopefully with

some humour restored.

Our concern has been with ways the moralistic or religious impulse can lead

criminologists to turn away from “this worldly” issues: cause them to have disdain not

just for messy empirical research but even for the most pressing policy debates in the

societies around them. Applying Weber’s conceptual framework helps remind us that

ultimately, if criminology becomes too all-consumed with the moralistic path, it may

succumb to the “tragic fate” which has affected some world religions. Professed anxiety

about “this worldly” suffering, injustices and inequities will generate systems of belief

and practice which effectively incapacitate devotees from doing anything about them.

For politicians, bureaucrats and private sector interests, of course, such “turning

away” may not be a problem, if it means that academic “experts” no longer persist in

confronting them with the folly inherent in their policies and practices (Curtis 1987).

For criminologists themselves moreover, such a retreat can be a satisfactory way to

resolve not just “inner tensions” but the practical pressures which confront them in their

day to day lives. No less than blind (or abstracted) empiricism, “grand moralizing”21

21 The reference to C. Wright Mills (1970) is deliberate. However we are convinced that in criminology, much

17

provides inexhaustible raw materials for the “assembly line” production which

contemporary academics must sustain if they are to ensure, if not tenure, at least

survival. Indeed, given the nature of our audiences such a strategy can be made to

appear not shrewd but heroic.

As Weber reminds us, retreat into doctrine - however high minded - is never

without self interest. For criminologists no less than priests it helps avoid awkward

issues of accountability. One need not have the breadth of insight of a Stan Cohen

(1988) to experience a reflux of guilt at the thought that, from an academic perspective

at least, the main purpose of being “privileged witnesses” to suffering and injustice is

that it helps provide materials for lectures, seminars, books, papers and, of course, ever

more sensitive critical moral insights.

Undoubtedly, there are dangers in the shift toward market relevance which

currently affects criminology and other academic disciplines. This change in emphasis

is part of a general restructuring and “rationalization” of economies not just in western

society, but on a global scale. In the countries where criminology has a foothold such

transformation have significant potential to exacerbate divisions between rich and poor:

- “communities of choice” and “communities of fate” (Hirst 1994; Jordan 1996) - and

by doing so to undermine values and practices of inclusion, tolerance and “civilization”

advocated by liberal and radical criminologies alike (Hogg and Brown 1998). There is a

real possibility that in post-Keynesian “neo-liberal” societies, where risk management

for the more privileged is complemented by harsh law and order repression for those

excluded from the various “clubs” (Jordan 1996; O’Malley 1994), criminologists who

become too enthusiastic about offering “value for money” will experience increasingly

unsubtle pressures to accept the “technician of social order” role (Hil 1996).

Even in the absence of admonitions from their more priestly colleagues, however,

we see it as unlikely that the majority of the discipline will succumb. The rich

“religious” tradition which this paper has tried - however irreverently - to capture will

ensure that such an outcome is avoided. What commentators such as Hil overlook is

that for most criminologists, “better” in the context of social control always has had

connotations of social justice as well as technical efficiency. At the risk of seeming

Panglossian, we would argue that an equally likely outcome is that the pressures of the

market may simply help jolt those who are more theoretically inclined out of moralistic

of the impetus toward abstract theory arises from the desire to achieve a more detached and comprehensive

18

self absorption and into salutary recognition and even acceptance of their roles and

responsibilities as members of the middle class22. Along with Hogg (1996), we agree

with Weber that social sciences ultimately should see themselves not as religions but as

just one of a series of vocations:

... organized in special disciplines in the service of self clarification and the

knowledge of interrelated facts. It is not the gift of grace of seers and prophets

dispensing sacred values and meanings of the universe (Weber 1948:152).

Like all members of the intermediate strata in advanced industrial and post-industrial

societies criminologists have been, and will continue to be, accomplices and

beneficiaries in the generation and exercise of knowledge and power (Le Grand 1984;

Jamrozik 1991). At the same time, however, they often have felt uneasy and concerned

about the justice of such processes, and have tried to play some role in mediating their

impacts. Given its well established moral tradition - the emphasis that criminology has

put on issues of justice and equity rather than pure technical questions of efficiency - it

is unlikely that greater exposure to markets will result in these values simply being set

aside.

In contrast, perhaps, to Turner,23 we are not convinced that even in religion, the

virtuoso practitioner must feel bound to take the “other worldly” path and become

divorced from contemporary concerns. One need not have enlisted with the Salvation

Army - or for that matter the Left Realists24 - to realize that for many devotees the path

to spiritual renewal lies in combining contemplation with engagement with the

sufferings, needs and rights of others. Even more so, we would argue, for criminology.

It may indeed be the destiny of our discipline always to struggle with conflicting

impulses of practical, “expert” engagement and detached theoretical and moral insight -

but this destiny need not be a negative one. Indeed it only becomes so when we try to

resolve these tensions - whether by adhering exclusively either to the pragmatic or to

the moralistic path, or perhaps by inviting some Hollywood version of “split

moral perspective. 22 With due deference to Young (1975) we would argue that academic criminologists all are middle class - if not in origin then in current position. 23 But not necessarily Weber. Like all attempts, including ours, to condense this complex thinker Turner perhaps has overemphasized one aspect of Weber’s analysis - in this case his belief that impulses towards religious virtuosity always will succeed in pulling adherents away from “this worldly” involvement and concerns. 24Readers will have detected resonances between views in this paper and some left realist arguments - although not with notions of a “working class criminology” (see footnote 21). We also are uncomfortable with attempts to develop sharp distinctions between “realism” and “idealism”, seeing ongoing tensions between these outlooks as inherent to, and indeed productive for, the discipline.

19

personality” through treating practice and theory as discrete and totally unconnected

enterprises. It can be thought provoking - and we hope amusing - to treat criminology

as a religion, but ultimately the sacred accounts for only part of what we are. Profanity

is too valuable to be forever denied.

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