The Essential Criminology Reader

Front Cover
Westview Press, Apr 29, 2009 - Social Science - 999 pages
Initially designed to accompany Mark Lanier and Stuart Henry’s best-selling Essential Criminology textbook, this new reader is an up-to-date companion text perfect for all students of introductory criminology and criminological theory courses. The Essential Criminology Reader contains 30 original articles on current developments in criminological theory. Commissioned specifically for The Reader, these short essays were written by leading scholars in the field. Each chapter complements one of 13 different theoretical perspectives covered in Lanier and Henry’s Essential Criminology text and contains between two and three articles from leading theorists on each perspective. Each chapter of The Reader features: a brief summary of the main ideas of the theory the ways the author’s theory has been misinterpreted/distorted criticisms by others of the theory and how the author has responded a summary of the balance of the empirical findings the latest developments in their theoretical position policy implications/practice of their theory
 

Contents

1 Classical and Rational Choice Theories
1
2 Biological and Biosocial Theories
31
3 Psychological Theories
69
4 Social Learning and Neutralization Theory
87
5 Social Control Theories
109
6 Social Ecology and Subcultural Theories
129
7 Anomie and Strain Theories
153
8 Conflict and Radical Theories
183
9 Feminist and Gender Theories
203
10 Postmodernism and Critical Cultural Theory
221
11 Anarchism Peacemaking and Restorative Justice
257
12 Left Realist Theories
297
13 Integrated Theories and Pause for Reflection
317
Contributors
355
Index
367
Copyright

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About the author (2009)

Mark Lanier is professor and chair of the department of Criminal Justice at the University of Alabama.  He is the author or editor of multiple books on crime, including The Essential Criminology Reader (with Stuart Henry).

Stuart Henry is professor of criminal justice and director of the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University and visiting professor of criminology at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England. He is the author of more than twenty books including the classic The Hidden Economy.

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