Modernity, Post Modernity, and
Late Modernity
What do we really know?
 Do you think there is an answer to everything?
 Give
an example of a problem that has no
right/definite answer.
 Theoretical causes of crime as an example...
 What comes to mind when you hear the term
modernity?
The Enlightenment.
 1700’s.
 Intellectual movement.
 Focus on natural rather than religious explanations
for events.
 Re-emergence of ideas from classical Greece that the
scientific method can be a valid source of human
knowledge.
 We can explain and change the world around us.
 “Dare to know! Have courage to use your own
reason” (Kant, 1784)
The birth of modernity.
 The ‘Great transformation’.
 3 inter-related processes.
 1st- the Enlightenment.
 2nd – Industrialisation.
 3rd – Capitalism.
 “in his ambiguous position as an object of knowledge
and as a subject that knows” (Foucault, 1973, p. 312)
Modernity.
 ‘A period of finding the truth’ (Weber, 2010).
 Crime – viewed now as ‘free will’ rather than
inherent sinfulness.
 Classical criminology – 1700’s.
 Beccaria (1764);
 “A punishment may not be an act of violence, of one,
or of many against a private member of society; it
should be public; immediate and necessary; the least
possible in the case given; proportioned to the crime;
and determined by the laws
Modernity
 Prevention.
 Henry Fielding – Bow Street Magistrate.
 1750’s ‘gin craze’.
 Socialised justice – Bow Street Runners.
 = ‘experimental criminology’.
Modernity.
 The positivist movement.
 1800’s.
 Lomboroso – the criminal human.
 Refocused criminological thinking from the workings
of the criminal law to an understanding of the
criminal ‘type’.
 Science based; i.e. personality types.
 Crime is due to internal and external factors.
Modernity.
 Human progress.
 Social problems can be solved through science.
 The penal systems that we know today also
emerged from this period (Hudson 2003).
 Rehabilitation is based on principles of changing
behaviour through the application of science.
 View
crime as the result of biological,
psychological, economic, political, social or
cultural factors (Barak 2001).
Postmodernity.
 Postmodernism is an intellectual movement which
highlights the contingent nature of human
knowledge, holding that accounts of the world are
social
constructions
which
do
not
exist
independently of the social actor and the language
they use to describe the world around them
(Silverman, 2007)
Postmodernism
 There are no universal laws or theories and are critical of





positivism;
The idea of a consensus is challenged and society is characterised by
beliefs that are often in conflict. This can sometimes be referred to
as a ‘plural society’.
Comfortable accepting doubt, uncertainty, and relativism and they
challenge claims to universal knowledge.
Theories are socially constructed illusions.
Postmodernism is NOT a theory since it rejects the ability of any
theory to capture the chaos of the world.
BUT… Scientists can’t be 100% sure of their theories but… ‘They are
reliable enough to have contributed substantially to historically
unprecedented advances in knowledge and technology
(Schwendinger et al. 2002: 57).
Post Modernity
 Think about illness: We have a realisation that there
are complex interacting factors that lead to the
development of any disease, both biological, social
and the choice of the individual.
 For postmodernists, you cannot have a unitary cause
of crime.
 There is no one story to be told of crime.
Structuration theory.
 Structure.
 Agency.
 Macro.
 Micro.
 External forces.
 Internal
 Examples -
motivations.
 Own will.
education,
religion,
politics.
 Structuration tells us that humans behave according to a




pre-existing social structure. Thus, behaviour is
determined according to the rules of that particular
social structure.
It is the repetition of acts that sustains the structure.
Traditions, institutions, moral codes, and established
ways of doing things.
BUT... The structure and rules are not permanent and
can be changed by human action.
This can be changed if people ignore them or replace
them.
How do these changes really occur?
 We have to think how society has changed and how
we’ve come to see the world differently.
 We have to make significant choices about our lives
from every day decisions about what to wear, leisure,
and social life to decisions about relationships and
occupations.
 Early societies did not allow for this as people were
given clearly defined roles e.g. no upward mobility.
 Giddens sees connections between the macro and the
micro.
 We can’t just place these changes within the actions
of the individual. The changes must lie somewhere
between the macro and the micro forces.
 The changes in marriage, relationships, and visible
sexuality developed as a result of the decline in
religion.
 Thus, social changes were brought about because
people started to view the world differently.
Think about homosexuality
 The Bible, New Testament: death
 Adoption and Children Act 2002
 Civil Partnership Act 2004
 Same sex marriage
Leviticus 20:13 ‘If a man also lie with
mankind, as he lieth with a woman,
both of them have committed an
abomination: they shall surely be put to
death; their blood shall be upon them’.
The Buggery Act 1533
The Sexual Offences Act 1967:
decriminalised homosexual acts
in private.
Criminal Justice and Public
Order Bill 1994: Age of consent
lowered to 18.
Adoption and Children Act 2002,
Civil Partnership Act 2004.
Marriage (same sex couples) Act
2013.
Postmodernity and crime.
 The world is characterised by diversity and




fragmentation.
Marked by uncertainty.
‘Crime’ is a social construction.
‘Crime’ is an expression of the viewpoint of those in
power of how people should behave.
There needs to be a new definition of ‘crime’.
Postmodernity and crime.
 Causes of crime – can never truly be understood as
each crime and criminal is individual.
 The individualism of identity in postmodern society
means that the social causes of crime are
undiscoverable.
 Control of crime- surveillance, monitoring etc.
So what are late modernists?
 Late modernists accept some of the positions of
postmodernists.
 Humans still strive for progress, albeit with less
idealism that we will have a crime-free society and a
magic tablet to cure cancer.
 Late modernists recognise that crime is complex and
not reducible to a single cause.
 What is modern life like for you?
 What do you find easy and difficult about it?
 What sort of things do you struggle with in modern
life? E.g. Choices you have to make related to career,
relationships, and everyday decisions?
 What is it in your life that helps you to cope with
modern day demands?
‘The Vertigo of Late Modernity’ (Jock Young 2007)
 The conditions of late modernity are characterised
by:
Human spirit always striving but never fulfilled;
 A sense of ‘disembeddedness’ of every day life ‘culture and norms
have become loosened from their moorings’ (Young 2007 cited in
Newburn 2009:181);
 Pluralism of values;
 Individualism (constructing your own destiny and narrative);
 A sense of detachment and an awareness of having choice and
freedom;
 The foundations of our identity are tied up in work, family, and
community – these are now shaky and uncertain for us;
 Contradiction and paradox.

 Take work as an example. What is this ‘supposed’ to
provide for us? According to Young, reward and social
mobility (but often fails to deliver);
 Promotes consumerism so we can achieve self-realisation
and happiness (but creates a sense of hollowness, a need
for never-ending extravagance – and it ends up
disappointing us)!
 Sustains family life (but intrudes upon it with long
commutes so that the family home becomes a place of
tiredness and irritability);
 For the middle-class, you work to pay for your ‘sparkling’
family home and pay a nanny to care for your children
while both you and your partner are out to work.
The Perfect Family House and Life
 It seems real in glossy
magazines but in reality
it can seem all too fake
(Young 2007).
 For the working-class,
both partners need to
work to make ends meet
at the expense of family
and community.
 BUT....
Jock Young
 Young
also points out,
‘None of this should deny
for an instant the perennial
human
joys
of
companionship and work,
marriage and partnership,
raising children and the
comforts
of
neighbourliness.
It
is
simply to note that it is
precisely these parts of
human fulfilment that
suffer most... The shoe
pinches where it is needed
most’ (cited in Newburn
2009:182).
Jock Young continued...
 We live in a world now where there is an ideal for self-
development, self-discovery, and personal achievement
but this can be difficult to achieve.
 Young argues that it isn’t surprising that at no time in
history has there ever been such a demand for
fictionalised narratives: soap operas, thrillers, romantic
novels. They also outline a beginning, middle, and an
end.
 Represents substance and fulfilment.
 ‘Vertigo is the malaise of late modernity: a sense of
insecurity, of insubstantiality and of uncertainty, a
whiff of chaos and a fear of falling. The signs of
giddiness, of unsteadiness, are everywhere....’ (Young
2007 cited in Newburn 2009: 184).
 So what happens as a consequence? We become
obsessed with rules!
 We insist on clear and ‘uncompromising lines of
demarcation between correct and incorrect
behaviour’ (Young 2007 cited in Newburn 2009:
184).
Jock Young (2007)
 Thus, we have:
 A decreased tolerance to deviant behaviour;
 Disproportionate response to rule-breaking;
 Simple punishment starts verging on being vindictive;
 Ever-expanding prison rate;
 Draconian drug laws;
 Obsession with political correctness;
 A want to fit people into rigid ethnic categories;
 Zero-tolerance in the U.S;
 ASBO enters the English language and jobs being advertised
for ‘Anti-Social Behaviour Co-ordinators’;
 Moral panics (Cohen 1972).
Garland – The culture of control.
 Denial and acting out
 A way to eliminate the negative consequences of
crime;
 Restore public confidence;
 Proposals have no basis in reality and are not
successful;
 Demonizes particular crimes and criminals.
The New Punitiveness
 Explanations for the ‘punitive turn’ and the expanding
prison population have been examined within the more
general changes in the social, political, economic, and
cultural organisation i.e. the conditions of late
modernity.
 So how has the ‘popular punitiveness’ (Bottoms 1995)
been constructed? Examination has focused on:
 Increasingly harsh and ‘uncivil’ politics on law and order
(Hogg and Brown 1998);
 Economic and social restructuring in late modernity
characterised by the decline of the welfare state and the
rise of neo-liberalism.
 The emergence of a ‘risk society’ (Feeley and Simon
1992) and the ‘new penology’ of statistical techniques
(Feeley and Simon 1994).
 A racialised criminalisation of minorities and
immigrants (Wacquant 2001, 2002).
‘Risk, Power and Crime Prevention’ (Pat O’Malley 1992)
 Situational crime prevention- barely deals with
individual offenders, uninterested in the causes of
crime, and hostile towards correctionalism.
 Its primary concern is crime control as risk
management (Reichman 1986).
 The Risk Society.
 Crime can be controlled by altering the environment.
Situational Crime Prevention
 It has been very successful in the UK, the US, and
Australia (at least politically as a programme of crime
control);
 Rejection of causal explanations of crime and focuses on
the targets of crime rather than on the offenders.
 It depicts a rational choice individual who thinks in costbenefit terms and therefore rejects the conditions that
might give rise to the offender’s actions. ‘They are free to
commit crime or not to commit crime’ (O’Malley 1992
cited in Newburn 2009: 375).
 The
‘politics of failure’ provides the backdrop of
justifying punitiveness. If correction and deterrence
don’t work then this must be replaced with what’s left:
punishment, retribution, and incapacitation.
 Moves the victim of crime into the key focus. ‘Protect the
public’!
 Prevention is now also the responsibility of the victim.
Thatcher said, ‘We have to be careful that we ourselves
don’t make it easy for the criminal’ (Age, 28th September
1990 cited in Newburn 2009:376).
 Reduces pressure on the police and an increase in private
security.
Recap
Modernity (certainty, truth 17th C. onwards)
Postmodernity (social construction, no reality 1960s)
Late Modernity (challenges both)
Risk Society
Recommended Reading
 Feeley and Simon (1992) ‘The New Penology’;
 Young (1999) ‘Actuarialism and the risk society’;
 O’Malley (1992) ‘Risk, power and crime prevention’;
 Shearing and Stenning (1987) ‘Say ‘Cheese’!: The
Disney order that is not so Mickey Mouse’.
 These articles can all be found in Tim Newburn’s
(2009) Key Readings in Criminology.
 Garland, D. (2001) ‘The culture of control’, Oxford
university press; Oxford.