Beginning with an appreciation of the classicist approaches to thinking about crime, social disorder, surveillance and punishment by sociologists and criminologists from the nineteenth centuries, though much of their work has been criticized and subsequently modified, these early thoughts provide very useful road maps into contemporary debates about crime, disorder, social problems and problem populations, and what’s to be done about them. We will then look at more recent accounts of crime that came into prominence during the latter part of the twentieth century in the USA, UK, and in Asia, and assess the limits and possibilities of criminological theorizing in the current global and local contexts.

Many of these numerous and diverse approaches to crime and crime control can be seen as a response to earlier theories – challenging them, debating them, extending them, or even a resurrection of part of them. Finally, the course will encourage students to see the relevance of criminological perspectives to their field research and prepare them for their dissertations.