Criminological Theory

A Genetic-Social Approach

T. Owen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137316950
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Criminología

In an age of rapid advances in behavioural genetics, this book applies a unique genetic-social framework to the study of crime and criminal behaviour. Drawing upon evidence from evolutionary psychology and behavioural genetics, it offers an up-to-date and balanced account of the mutuality between genes and environment.

1

Introduction

This book is a contribution towards metatheoretical development as part of the post-postmodern return to sociological theory and method associated with Archer (1995), Layder (1997, 2007), Mouzelis (1995, 2007), Owen (2009a, 2009b, 2012a, 2012b) and Sibeon (2004, 2007), in tandem with a cautious attempt to build bridges between criminological theory and selected insights from evolutionary psychology and behavioural genetics. In the pages that follow, I suggest a way in which criminological theory might move beyond its four main theoretical obstacles. These obstacles are the nihilistic relativism of the postmodern and poststructuralist cultural turn; the oversocialised gaze and harshly environmentalist conceptions of the person; genetic fatalism or the equation of genetic predisposition with inevitability (Owen, 2009a, 2012a) and bio-phobia (Freese et al., 2003) that appear to dominate mainstream criminology; and the sociological weaknesses of many so-called biosocial explanations of crime and criminal behaviour (see, for instance, Walsh and Beaver, 2009; Walsh and Ellis, 2003), which, although dealing adequately with biological variables, appear to neglect or make insufficient use of meta-concepts such as agency–structure, micro–macro and time– space in their accounts of the person. I suggest that a way forward lies in the form of an ontologically flexible, metatheoretical sensitising device, alternatively referred to as post-postmodern or genetic–social in order to distance the framework from hard-line sociobiology.

My starting point is to modify Sibeon’s (ibid.) original anti-reductionist framework to include a new focus upon the biological variable (the evidence from evolutionary psychology and behavioural genetics for a partial genetic basis for human behaviour in relation to sexuality, language, reactions to stress, etc.), genetic fatalism, the oversocialised gaze and psychobiography. This new framework is capable of making a contribution towards a return to sociologically based theory and method and suggesting a way forward for criminological theory, and also towards a cautious marriage between the biological and social sciences that is balanced and does adequate justice to the mutuality between genes and environment. Here, the evidence that genes play a role alongside environment in terms of causality in relation to human behaviour is considered (Cosmides and Tooby, 1997; Hamer and Copeland, 1999; Pinker, 1994). My contention is that there is sufficient evidence to warrant the incorporation of a focus upon the biological variable into the new metatheoretical framework, alongside meta-concepts, notions of dualism – as opposed to a Giddensian duality of structure – and notions of psychobiography (Layder, 1997, 1998a; Owen, 2009a) that describe the asocial and dispositional aspects of the person, and modified notions of Foucauldian power. The latter notion of modified Foucauldian power entails a recognition of the dialectical relationship between agentic and systemic forms of power; the relational, contingent and emergent dimensions of power; and the concept that contra Foucault, power can be stored in roles, such as those played by police officers, and in systems, the most obvious of which, for criminologists, is the criminal justice system. It is important to keep in mind here the idea of mutuality when focusing upon biological variables in criminological analysis, what we might call the ‘feedback loop’ which embraces genes and environment, acknowledging the mutuality and plasticity between them. The framework I attempt to develop posits that ‘nurture’ depends upon genes, and genes require ‘nurture’. Genes not only predetermine the broad structure of the brain of Homo sapiens but also absorb formative experiences, react to social cues or, as Hamer and Copeland (1999) suggest, can be switched on by free-willed behaviour and environmental stimuli. For example, stress can be caused by the outside world, by impending events, by bereavements and so on. Short-term stressors cause an immediate increase in the production of norepinephrine and epinephrine, hormones responsible for increasing the heartbeat and preparing the human body for ‘fight or flight’ in emergency situations. Stressors that have a longer duration may activate a pathway that results in a slower but more persistent increase in cortisol. Cortisol can suppress the working of the immune system. Thus, those who have shown symptoms of stress are more likely to catch infections, because an effect of cortisol is to reduce the activity and number of white blood cells or lymphocytes (Becker et al., 1992). As Martin (1997) shows, cortisol does this by switching on genes, and it only switches on genes in cells that possess cortisol receptors, which have in turn been switched on by environmental stimuli, such as stress caused by bereavement. Cortisol is secreted in the first instance because a series of genes, such as CYP17, get switched on in the adrenal cortex to produce the enzymes necessary for making cortisol. There are important implications here which inform my attempt to construct genetic–social criminological theory. For example, Filley et al. (2001) have linked elevated levels of norepinephrine with aggressive criminal behaviour. Hostile behaviour can be induced in humans by increasing plasma levels of norepinephrine, whereas agents that block norepinephrine receptor cells can reduce violent behaviour (ibid.). The enzyme monoamine oxidase is involved in the reduction of norepinephrine, and low levels of monoamine oxidase allow norepinephrine levels to increase (Klinteberg, 1996).

My approach to criminological theorising acknowledges that crime may be socially constructed, in the sense that human actors ascribe meaning to the world, but that there is still a reality ‘out there’, in the sense that environmental conditions are potential triggers of genetic or physiological predispositions towards behaviour that may be labelled criminal. However, that does not mean that behaviour should be viewed as reflecting an inherited, pre-written script that is beyond individual control. For example, reflexive agents possess the agency to choose not to engage in criminal activities where they believe that their actions will harm others and offend ethicosocial codes, or where the rewards are outweighed by negative consequences. Agency, in turn, is influenced not only by morality or reason but also by inherited, constitutional variables. An inherited impulsive disposition may predispose an actor to formulate and act upon potentially criminal decisions. In genetic–social theorising, the biological variable must be considered as one element within multifactorial explanations for crime and criminal behaviour, alongside a critique of agency–structure, micro–macro, time–space and so on.

This genetic–social (Owen, 2009a, 2012a) framework arises in response to what I consider to be the following illegitimate forms of theoretical reasoning: reification, essentialism, duality of structure, relativism, genetic fatalism and the oversocialised gaze. The framework offers a flexible ontology and relies upon a multi-factorial analysis. It is capable of identifying a way forward beyond the anti-foundational relativism of postmodernism and Foucauldian poststructuralism, aspects of our intellectual life that are complicit in the stagnation of critical criminology. An approach which sidesteps the ‘nature versus nurture’ divide which still haunts mainstream criminology and emphasises instead the mutuality between genes and environment is essential if we are to advance upon Shilling’s (1993) starting point for a biological sociology and supersede the biologically top-heavy, largely American attempts at biosocial analysis (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994; Mednick et al., 1987; Mednick and Volavka, 1980; Walsh and Beaver, 2009; Walsh and Ellis, 2003; Wilson and Herrnstein, 1985), which appear to lack a sufficiently sophisticated appreciation of sociological theory that would make them truly ‘biosocial’. These elements combined make a framework that can contribute towards a new direction for criminological theory as part of a return to sociological theory and method in the age of the human genome. Its methodological generalisations, as opposed to substantive generalisations, its lack of ‘bio-phobia’ and its realist social ontology make it a sensitising device with the potential for future theoretical and explanatory use best expressed in terms of large-scale synthesis. My ontological position is, to some extent, influenced by Alain Robbe-Grillet’s (1963: 24) Heideggerian repudiation of ‘words of a visceral, analogical, or incantatory character’, which, one reflects, can arguably be found in Gramscian accounts of hegemony utilised in criminological theorising.

The reader will note that the book consists of four integrated and interlocking chapters. This Introduction is the first of the chapters in which the aims and objectives have been outlined. We now move on to briefly examine the contents of each following chapter and how they fit together. It will be recalled that the ultimate intention here is to develop a metatheoretical framework which will contribute towards post-postmodern theoretical development and towards the building of bridges between the biological and social sciences, and which will also prove its worth in terms of explanatory potential in relation to selected examples of crime and criminal behaviour. We need to examine the individual stages of this process now, as they unfold throughout the following chapters.

Chapter 2 (‘Transitions in Criminological and Social Theory’) reveals how there has been a mounting reaction in contemporary criminology and social theory against the nihilism and paralysis of anti-foundational, relativistic postmodern and poststructuralist approaches. Sibeon’s (1996, 1999, 2004, 2007) anti-reductionist framework is suggested as an initial ‘way forward’ beyond such relativism, but it is observed that it will be necessary to modify the metatheoretical framework so that it includes new meta-concepts such as the oversocialised gaze, genetic fatalism and the biological variable in order to conceptualise the plasticity of the relations between genes and environment in theoretical analysis pertaining to crime and criminal behaviour, and in order to contribute towards the building of bridges between the biological and social sciences. This modification is essential because Sibeon’s anti-reductionism neglects biological variables. The chapter demonstrates how the genetic– social framework (like Sibeon’s original framework) is an example of metatheory. Metatheory is designed to equip us with a ‘general sense of the kinds of things that exist in the social world, and with ways of thinking about the question of how we might “know” that world’ (Sibeon, 2004: 13). It therefore entails a flexible ontology, avoiding the relativism of the cultural turn, and consists of methodological generalisations as opposed to substantive generalisations. Here, I define and cover the ‘cardinal sins’ of reductionism, reification, essentialism and functional teleology out of which Sibeon’s original, anti-reductionist framework, which focuses upon agency–structure, micro–macro and time–space, arose. I examine the merits of a metatheoretical approach which lies in sharp contrast to that of the anti-foundational relativism found in the work of those such as Lyotard (1986–7) and Milovanovic (2013). It is decided that the deficits of postmodern approaches outweigh the merits, and it is reiterated that we require a post-postmodern approach to criminological theorising of the sort employed by Owen (2009a, 2012a). Here, notions of Foucauldian power, often drawn upon by critical criminologists, are also examined. The genetic–social framework employs a modified notion of Foucauldian power, and a demonstration of its usefulness is provided early on in the work, although the ‘real’ application of a modified concept of Foucauldian power to the area of crime and criminal behaviour is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4. It is made clear that a modification of Foucauldian power which entails regarding systemic and agentic powers as autonomous and acknowledging the dialectical relationship between systemic and relational powers can contribute towards conceptualising power relations pertaining to crime and criminal behaviour. The chapter then considers issues pertaining to agency and social action, and the importance of the terms agency–structure and micro–macro is established in relation to how they refer to differing dimensions of social reality. As in previous work of Owen (2009a), a section on the work of Margaret Archer, Derek Layder and Nicos Mouzelis follows in which their considerable scholarly contributions towards post-postmodern social theory are discussed, and I consider how the authors conceptualise agency–structure and micro–macro and deal with the question of whether to employ dualism or duality of structure. It is decided that Layder’s (1997) concepts of social domains are more closely related to Sibeon’s original, anti-reductionist framework. Having examined the concepts and the illegitimate forms of theoretical reasoning (the ‘cardinal sins’ of reductionism, reification, essentialism and functional teleology) which Sibeon’s original framework focuses upon and arises as a critique out of respectively; the problems of relativism and the cultural turn; notions of a modified Foucauldian power; issues pertaining to agency–structure and micro–macro; and the significant contributions of three major theorists towards the post-postmodern transitions in contemporary social and criminological theory, we move towards Chapter 3 (‘Constructing a Genetic–Social Framework’). It is important to keep in mind here the idea that it might be necessary to modify Sibeon’s original theoretical framework to include a focus upon new meta-concepts such as the biological variable, the oversocialised gaze and genetic fatalism in order to progress to the stage where we have a viable sensitising device with which to conceptualise the relations between genes and environment in the context of crime and criminal behaviour.

Chapter 3 takes the suggestion to modify Sibeon’s framework and considers the evidence from evolutionary psychology, behavioural genetics and biological science for, at least in part, biological causality in relation to selected examples of human behaviour. It is the contention here that it is absolutely necessary to do so in order to properly justify the inclusion of new meta-concepts such as the biological variable, the oversocialised gaze and genetic fatalism. Firstly, the genetic–social framework is briefly codified in order to keep the reader on track, so to speak. I then examine the work of several authors who have attempted to straddle the biology/social science divide. In addition to recent attempts by Owen (2009a, 2012a) to apply the meta-concepts of the genetic–social framework to the study of human biotechnology and crime and criminal behaviour, there have been other attempts by Walsh and Ellis (2003) and Walsh and Beaver (2009) to formulate a biosocial criminology, Quilley and Loyal’s (2005) application of Elias’s figurational theories to the task of synthesising the social and biological sciences, and Freese et al.’s (2003) work on ‘biophobia’ which are worthy of mention. The main focus, however, is upon the more well-known attempts by social scientists of the embodied or material corporeal ‘school’ to build bridges between the social and life sciences. Drawing upon the work of the evolutionary psychologist Matt Ridley (1999, 2003), it is demonstrated how genetic predisposition (Ridley employs the phrase ‘determinism’ in the same sense as predisposition (1999: 307)) need not equate to inevitability because of the mutuality between genes and environment. It is suggested here that an acknowledgement of Ridley’s (ibid.) ‘Nature via Nurture’ model is a possible way forward beyond Shilling’s (1993) starting point for a biological sociology, by acknowledging what material corporeal social scientists will not – ‘genes do influence behaviour’ but they can be ‘switched on’ by free-willed, external, environmental stimuli (Ridley, ibid.). I next examine the sources of evidence for biological causality with regard to selected human behaviours, focusing largely upon evolutionary psychology. I consider detailed, in-depth criticisms of evolutionary psychology by those such as David (2002), Rose and Rose (2000) and others, and the contrary evidence in favour of the approach from those such as Curry (2003), Fodor (1983), Pinker (1995, 1999), Tooby and De Vore (1987), Daly and Wilson (1998) and others. It is concluded that we can acknowledge the cogent evidence from evolutionary psychology and related disciplines to the effect that it does seem likely that human beings possess instincts in the sense of unlearned patterns of behaviour, as Hamer and Copeland’s (1999) work on the biology of the sex drive appears to confirm. Following this, I examine the need to incorporate dualism in the sense of a dualistic conception of biology and the social, alongside Sibeon’s dualistic conception of agency–structure. After deciding that a dualistic conception of biology and the social is an effective way of avoiding what Archer (1995: 96) calls ‘central conflation’ (the author refers specifically to Giddensian tendencies to collapse the distinction between agency and structure), I move on to the question of incorporating the biological variable into metatheoretical analysis and into the genetic–social framework itself. Here, the evidence for biological, or partly biological, causality in relation to selected, specific human behaviours such as sexuality (Hamer and Copeland, 1999), stress (Ridley, 2003) and language (Enard et al., 2002) is more closely examined. In the face of the convincing evidence for a biological component to the above behaviours, the decision to incorporate the biological variable into the meta-framework alongside Sibeon’s ontologically flexible notions of agency–structure, micro–macro and time–space, a modified notion of Foucauldian power and dualism, together with an avoidance of anti-foundational relativism and the ‘cardinal sins’ of reductionism, reification, essentialism and functional teleology, is made. It is also decided to incorporate the new meta-concepts of the oversocialised gaze and genetic fatalism too. It is noted at the end of Chapter 3 that we have now arrived at the point of codifying the new, expanded genetic–social framework and applying it to the study of crime and criminal behaviour.

Chapter 4 does indeed codify the new framework, and each of the meta-concepts is applied to selected examples from the literature pertaining to crime and criminal behaviour in order to illustrate the framework’s explanatory potential. Examples include cyber-crime, theories of Globalisation often drawn upon in security studies, the oversocialised perspectives of Environmental Criminology, the reductionism of Marxist Criminology, essentialism in some forms of Feminist Criminology, the misuse of Foucauldian power and the illicit conceptions of the state favoured within Left idealist approaches, the functional teleology inherent in authoritarian populist accounts of hegemony, the neglect of biology within studies of masculinities and crime and so on.

In what follows, I examine recent transitions in criminological and social theory and identify trends towards a post-postmodern criminological and social theory that is better equipped to conceptualise and explain crime and criminal behaviour in the age of the human genome.

2

Transitions in Criminological and Social Theory

There appears to be a mounting reaction in contemporary theory against the ‘cultural turn’ and the extreme relativism of postmodern and poststructuralist theory. Recently, Hall and Winlow (2012: 8) have drawn attention to the urgent need to ‘abandon criminology’s weirdly postmodern, self-referential gaze’. The authors cogently refer to the recent trend in criminology towards rejecting or modifying the orthodoxy that crime and social harm are the products of criminalisation and control systems. Scholars such as Owen (2012a), Reiner (2012), Wieviorka (2012), Wilson (2012), Ferrell (2012) and Yar (2012) are bringing causes and conditions back into play, and into criminological analysis. To an extent, it could be argued that there has been a ‘return to’ sociological theory and method reflected in the work of Mouzelis (1991, 1993a, 1996, 2007), McLennan (1995), Holmwood (1996), Stones (1996), Sibeon (1996, 1997a, 1997b, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2007), Layder (1984, 1994, 1997, 2007), Archer (1982, 1988, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000) and Owen (2006a, 2006b, 2007a, 2007b, 2009a, 2012a, 2012b). This so-called return to sociology has been the ‘accumulation of relatively separate intellectual moves that are a blend of renewed interest in classical sociology and in perennial explanatory problems, together with theoretical reflection arising from critical engagement with comparatively recent perspectives that range from neo-functionalism to actor-network theory’ (Sibeon, 2001: 1).

Whilst theorists such as Gellner (1993) view postmodernity (and, in particular, the Lyotardian version) as practically worthless, here the view is that aspects of it are relevant to the development of sociological theory and method (Lemert, 1993; Sibeon, ibid.) in so far as it rejects ‘modern’ essentialist and reductionist theories. However, despite some useful concepts pertaining to contingency, one concurs with Holmwood’s (ibid.) critique of postmodern theory. If, as Lyotard (1986–7) claims, no coherent theory is adequate, how are we to decide which incoherent postmodern theories are adequate? Here a ‘way forward’ is suggested in the form of an anti-reductionist, post-postmodern sociology. We need a form of sociological ‘realism’, though not in the sense of reductive and reified material evidence. Whilst acknowledging the structural qualities of social systems, an anti-reductionist sociology would recognise that even if social reality is socially constructed, ‘there may still be a socially constructed reality “out there” ’ (Sibeon, 1997a: 3).

Here, I cautiously suggest a modified version of Sibeon’s anti-reductionist framework consisting of methodological generalisations as d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Transitions in Criminological and Social Theory
• 3. Constructing a Genetic–Social Framework
• 4. An Application of the Genetic–Social Framework to the Study of Crime and Criminal Behaviour
• Bibliography
• Index