Course overview
This course is concerned with developing a sophisticated understanding of the contested meanings underpinning crime and its control and the manner in which such meanings are intertwined with various different cultural phenomena. The module explores the complex patterns and sites of contest, control and resistance that bisect everyday life. This is achieved through engaging in a detailed consideration of cutting edge theory and research in the fields of cultural criminology. Central to this course are the notions of crime as culture, culture as crime and the media dynamics of crime and control. The course will place criminality, policing, crime prevention, music, advertising, media representations, risk and emotionality in new and exciting contexts. Not only does it consider the social construction of crime, but it also privileges the emotive, exciting and risk-taking nature of certain crimes. The course equips students with the necessary theoretical tools and modes of social inquiry to make sense of a late-modern world permeated by crime and its control.
Course learning outcomes
- Evaluate and reflexively utilise theoretical approaches to understanding crime in terms of cultural meanings, representations and contestations.
- Critically analyse research that examines the ways in which criminality and its control are intertwined with cultural meanings and representations.
- Critically appraise the complex relationships between crime, control and the media.
- Identify and analyse the presence of crime and its control across a range of popular cultural phenomena.