Notes on Critical Social Justice, Knowledge Construction, and Sociological Imagination
Critical Social Justice, Knowledge, and Criminology: Study Notes
Opening quotes and framing
- The first duty of society is justice (Wendell Phillips).
- Title slide references social problems: (In)equality & (In)justice.
Week One outline (Week One IV. Social Problems, Inequality, and Crime)
- 1) What is a critical social justice approach?
- 2) Understanding the social construction of knowledge
- 3) Using the Sociological Imagination
- 4) Unpacking Criminological Knowledge
Taking a critical social justice approach
- Strive for intellectual humility.
- Recognise the difference between opinions and informed knowledge.
- Let go of personal anecdotal evidence and look at broader societal patterns.
- Notice your own defensive reactions and use these reactions as entry points for deeper knowledge.
- Recognise your own social positionality (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, ability-status) and how this informs your perspectives and reactions to course material.
- Social positionality: how who you are shapes what you notice, question, and value.
The World is Just — a nuanced stance
- THE WORLD IS JUST. There is some justice in this world. There is no justice in this world.
- This framing suggests that justice is not absolute; there are degrees and contexts of justice and injustice.
Does not mean all knowledge is relative: The Social Construction of Knowledge
- Perspectives on deviance and crime are never neutral scientific matters; they are political as well as scientific concerns.
- They are connected to the historical organization of both power and knowledge.
- Question: Who gains and who loses as certain perspectives take on the accent of truth?
- To ask this question is to theorize, not only about deviance, but also about how various theories of nonconformity contribute to or challenge existing relations of power (Pfohl, 1986).
An engineer's bridge vs a sociologist's bridge
- Metaphor: engineering (technical, objective) vs sociology (social, interpretive) bridges between knowledge claims.
The Sociological Imagination: Looking across time
- By moving from our time to other times, we destabilize our own social reality and challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about how modern society is ordered.
- This helps develop critical thinking.
- Looking at other places and cultures complements the imagination, challenging the view that many social relations are natural.
- Power and knowledge: acknowledging that dominant explanations may reflect interests of those in power.
Using the sociological imagination: looking across time
- Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons? (M. Foucault)
- Historical trajectory: 17th-century Dutch workhouse; late 18th-century American proto-prison; evolution to the modern prison in the early–mid 19th century ( Rubin )
- The idea that punishment institutions are part of broader social technologies of control.
Using the sociological imagination: ‘crime’ and ‘criminals’
- Definitions of crime are contextual; what is a crime in one society may be permitted in another.
- Crime is ALWAYS socially defined; defining what constitutes “crime” is a central criminological concern.
Formal/Legal Definition of Crime
- Crime as breaking the law: defined by legislative codes identifying behaviors punishable by the state.
- This is the most common definition but also the most problematic for criminologists.
- Problems with the formal/legal definition:
1) Crime becomes whatever the state says it is.
2) State definitions may fail to capture or address serious harms.
3) State definitions may be beholden to specific political or social interests.
Criminal vs Criminalised
- “Criminals are created through a social process that involves the person who broke the law and the reactions of others (police, courts, lawmakers, citizens).”
- It’s not merely what someone did that makes it a crime; it is how others perceive and react to it.
- The act is criminalized through social processes; the impact of criminalization varies across societies and over time.
- Power influences who is targeted by the criminal justice system.
- Reference: Mark Israel (Isral), 2006: 11–13 (emphasizes social process of criminalization).
Looking at other places: Data glimpses
- California County Juvenile Detention Facilities: Rated Capacity vs Average Daily Population (2007–2017).
- Figures show trends in facility capacity and actual daily populations over time.
Looking at other places: Trends in youth arrest (California, 1978–2015)
- Figure 1: Trends in arrest rates for Californians under age 25, 1978–2015.
- Categories and notes:
- 20-24: ≈ -50\% change (from peak to later years)
- 18-19: ≈ -70\% change
- 12-17: ≈ -80\% change
- <12: ≈ -95\% change
- Data sources: DOL (2011, 2015, 2016, 2016a). Population for 10–11 used to calculate rates for under-12 category.
Using the sociological imagination: to unpack mainstream criminological knowledge
- Mainstream (orthodox, administrative) criminology has a narrow focus that omits more than it sees.
- Example critique: a criminology of violence that omits violence of war, genocide, the state (e.g., police brutality) and harms caused by imprisonment.
- Tension between positivistic (scientific) research methods and transformative aims.
- Concepts: “Dangerous knowledge” vs transformative knowledge production.
What constitutes knowledge? Where does it come from? Whose knowledge is it?
- Is the scientific method infallible?
- Could social life be researched in different ways?
- Power is important in shaping what is studied, how it is studied, and what counts as evidence.
- In this course, aim toward transformative criminological knowledge.
Orthodox criminology and power
- Orthodox criminology is driven by administrative concerns of the powerful.
- It presents problems as obvious and uncontested and sets the research agenda for social scientists.
- Example critique: prioritizing research on the “evilness” of young people or on drugs/alcohol rather than examining structural oppression or the social dynamics of transgression.
- Quote from (Young, 2011): highlights researchers’ poverty of lived experience and exclusion from the worlds they study (quantitative distance).
Ethical, philosophical, and practical implications
- Recognize how power shapes knowledge production and policy.
- Embrace critical, reflexive stances to better address social harms beyond legal definitions.
- Promote transformative knowledge that can inform more just social practices and policies.
Key terms to remember
- Critical social justice approach
- Social construction of knowledge
- Sociological imagination
- Social positionality
- Criminalisation
- Orthodox vs transformative criminology
- Power/knowledge dynamics
- Dangerous vs transformative knowledge
Quick reference: core quotes to recall
- The first duty of society is justice (Wendell Phillips).
- “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (Foucault; Rubin reference)
- Criminalisation: it is the social process that makes acts criminal, not merely the act itself (Isral/Israel, 2006).
Summary takeaway
- Criminology should connect empirical observations with broader questions about power, justice, and social structures.
- A critical social justice lens seeks to broaden inquiry beyond state-defined crime, incorporate diverse perspectives, and aim for transformative outcomes in policy and practice.