Book Review: The Vertigo of Late Modernity (2010)

Book Review: The Vertigo of Late Modernity, by Jock Young Mathieu Deflem deflem@sc.edu www.mathieudeflem.net Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2011. Review of The Vertigo of Late Modernity, by Jock Young. Unpublished book review. Available online at www.mathieudeflem.net.

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Prefatory Note This book review was originally solicited by the editors of the journal Sociological Inquiry. It was submitted in September 2008 and accepted for publication, though there was some delay because of space restraints. After a change of editors at the journal, the review was still not published by August 2011. Upon an inquiry by email, the new journal editor informed me that the review would not be published because of alleged substantive considerations concerning my discussion of the merits of the work. I leave it to the reader to draw appropriate conclusions. Review I enjoy writing reviews of books, but I do not always enjoy the books I review. I must also admit that I often enjoy writing reviews of books I do not enjoy reading, though sometimes I do not. There is a certain measure of irony in this experience, but I do not think it is particularly dizzying. I did not enjoy reading The Vertigo of Late Modernity by Jock Young, who presently holds academic at the University of Kent and at John Jay College, and I will make it (very) clear why. Most basically, this book presents itself as a sweeping study of the conditions of our present age, but it actually fails to offer a question which it wishes to address. It is not a characteristic of the condition of late modernity that no clarity in formulating questions and suggesting directions can be expected from its observers. Yet, from the very beginning of this text, a multitude of often rather vague questions is introduced. At one point this book is about ‘cultural borders’ (p. 1), then it deals with a politics of hiatus (p. 11), and then eventually with late modernity’s vertigo, here defined as a ‘sense of insecurity of insubstantiality, and of uncertainty, a whiff of chaos and a fear of falling’ (p. 12). I would say there is quite more than just a whiff of something very unpleasant in these pages. What are the themes that this book deals with? Young begins with a discussion of processes of inclusion and exclusion to show how both are intertwined. Applied to economic and other inequalities, the emphasis is mostly on the underclass, the members of which are subject to a double stigmatization of poverty and a lack of respect. But as meritocracy crumbles, a search for a new politics of identity is on the rise. Work is devalued for those who cannot but serve the middle classes and others who are higher up on the socio-economic ladder. In matters of crime, the underclass also gets the brunt of all the blame. Economic poverty breeds criminality, and new moral panics over criminal epidemics are created and sold to the public. A process of othering, as Young calls it, is applied as well to immigrant groups and, of course, to the terrorist who comes from outside the Occidental world. How to evaluate this book? A clear line of thinking can be discerned in the development of Young’s work, from the initial promise of a critical criminology in the 1970s, through the demise thereof during the 1980s and 1990s in the form of a cunningly constructed left realism, to the present phase of works that are (by definition) much harder to define. It is within this trajectory that we find Young’s present story —a narrative, I suppose— which deals with so-called liquid modernity, in which all is in flux and motion. Nothing is clear. Everything is ambiguous. Social theory is easy under these circumstances, for it can never be wrong, let alone falsifiable or more or less valuable. And the manner in which the presumed ambiguities of nowadays are conceptually addressed cannot reveal clarity either. If the 19th century was an age characterized by an avalanche of numbers, the present time has brought about a deluge of buzz words. Paradox, contradiction, disembeddedness, fluidity, and othering, to name but a few of those that are encountered in the pages of Young’s book. The essence of the story, if there is one to be discerned, is that in the global era of today things are always changing and nothing stays the same. While flexible and filled with the potential for reinvention, late modernity also brings about ontological insecurity, Young writes. But apparently these conditions do not hold true for its critics, for they are secure more than ever in both their work and their thinking. Therefore, it makes all too much sense that in this book a shift is suggested from economy to culture. Of course, there is such a shift —at least for those who can afford it. Sadly, however, if there is anything that has been subject to exclusion in this kind of scholarship it is precisely any sense of realism.

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Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2011. Review of The Vertigo of Late Modernity, by Jock Young. Unpublished book review. Available online at www.mathieudeflem.net.

Book review: The Sociology of Deviance (2010)

Book review: The Sociology of Deviance, by Robert J. Franzese Mathieu Deflem deflem@sc.edu www.mathieudeflem.net This is an online copy of a publication in Teaching Sociology 38(4):392-393, October 2010. Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2010. The Sociology of Deviance: Differences, Tradition, and Stigma, by Robert J. Franzese. Teaching Sociology 38(4):392-393.

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The sociology of deviance remains one of the most beloved specialty areas of our discipline, at least among many of our students, if not always among many of our fellow scholars. The field is also richly filled with textbooks of all kinds. So it may be difficult to see why another textbook in the sociology of deviance is needed and what such a book could contribute to our teaching that other books have not yet been able to accomplish. Despite conditions, Robert Franzese has written a textbook on deviance, one that he introduces in the preface as having a central focus on differences. Thus, Franzese’s book presents a specific angle from which it reviews various traditions in the sociology of deviance. The particular approach of the book is further clarified by the subtitle, especially the addition of the term stigma, which is conceived as a tribute to the work of Erving Goffman and to emphasize the merits of societal reaction perspectives. How, then, is the book structured, and what are its main merits and limitations? The book contains an introductory part and two main parts on theory and substantive issues, respectively. The various chapters are introduced by means of illustrative cases to facilitate students’ understanding into more abstract issues in the sociology of deviance. The author introduces a general definition of deviance based on extant conceptualizations from the literature. In specifying broad models of deviance, the author again relies on existing conceptualizations, specifically those forwarded by Alex Thio and Ruth Shonle Cavan. A second introductory chapter briefly introduces the central methodological social science perspectives of ethnography, survey research, and secondary data analysis. The second part of this textbook focuses attention on the main theoretical approaches in the study of deviance. The author first briefly reviews the theories and then proceeds to offer lengthier overviews of a variety of theories. The theories that are discussed in this book squarely fall in the category of the usual suspects. First, the author discusses anomie and strain theory as it was developed by Robert Merton. Next, a chapter is offered on contemporary strain theories, such as those developed by Robert Agnew and by Richard Rosenfeld and Stephen Messner. Next up in the overview are the control theories of crime, especially those that were developed by Travis Hirschi and, later, in collaboration between Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson. Chapter 7 then focuses on the center piece of this book, devoting a discussion on societal reaction theory. Besides the leading proponents of labeling theory, this chapter also includes the works of Edwin Sutherland and Ronald Akers. Conflict and feminist theories are the subject matter of the last theoretical chapter. The final part of this book reviews a number of substantive topics on deviance, specifically, suicide, violence, substance abuse, mental disorders, sexual deviance, and elite and power deviance. I can be brief about these chapters because they each follow the same structure of first offering rather lengthy reviews of empirical trends on these behaviors and next, in a shorter section, offering an overview of some of the major theoretical explanations. In the theoretical sections, the author’s orientation mostly favors societal reaction perspectives. I can generally be rather straightforward in my evaluation of this book. I do not find that it offers much new under the sun and nothing much of value in the few instances when it is more original. There is not much here that can be learned that cannot already be learned in other textbooks. The one main contribution of this book is that it offers both theoretical and substantive discussions, a very useful combination that is not often explored in other textbooks. However, the two main parts of the book do not hold together besides a general orientation toward societal reaction theory. The qualities of each of the three parts are also rather limited. The chapters in the introductory part are but summaries of what other scholars have argued, without the author offering much of a general orientation to how these ideas hold together. The second, theoretical part of this textbook reveals many shortcomings as well. The way in which the central ideas in the sociology of deviance are structured reveals an astonishing ignorance of both the history and the systematics of the sociology of deviance. For instance, anomie and strain theory is discussed before differential association theory is explained. No discussion is presented of the Chicago School. Control theories receive a separate chapter, while Sutherland’s work is squeezed into the chapter on societal reaction. Within each chapter, similar intellectual blunders are committed. The work of Albert Cohen is explained before the writings of Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin, but after the much more recent work of Agnew and Messner. Feminist theories are merged into a chapter on conflict perspectives. The intellectual blunders in this book are too many to mention. By example, the author’s brief excursion on Talcott Parsons is stunning in arguing that Parsons had only an indirect influence on the sociology of deviance by having been a mentor to Robert Merton. Remarkably, Parsons’s lengthy chapter on deviant behavior and the mechanisms of social control in his influential book The Social System is ignored. Analytically, also, this textbook’s notion of deviance as difference is unsatisfying on its face. There are many differences in the human condition that do not constitute deviance. In this book’s part on substantive issues of deviance, the readers are spared many of the intellectual limitations of the theoretical part. Yet instead, they are exposed to a largely descriptive presentation of data that in the present era could just as easily have been gathered from a good Internet search. In sum, this book does not make a useful contribution to our teaching of the sociology of deviance. In fact, I fear that it is books like these that give the field of the sociology of deviance the bad reputation that it often has on the part of those who are not familiar with the very best research and teaching materials that our field has to offer.

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Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2010. The Sociology of Deviance: Differences, Tradition, and Stigma, by Robert J. Franzese. Teaching Sociology 38(4):392-393.

Book Review: The New International Policing, by B.K. Greener (2010)

Posted on Mathieu Deflem's Publications site.

Book Review: The New International Policing, by B.K. Greener. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ISBN: 0-230-57390-8 (hardback). £50.00. xv + 192 pp. Mathieu Deflem deflem@sc.edu www.mathieudeflem.net This is an online copy of a print publication in Global Change, Peace and Security 22(1):152-153, 2010. Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2010. Review of The New International Policing, by B.K. Greener. Global Change, Peace and Security 22(1):152-153.

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The world of international policing is extremely varied and extensive, today more so than ever before. The rise of international policing is not only a function of the increasing demands for the policing of international crime, but also relates to the variation in international policing on a conceptual level as various forms can be distinguished. Traditionally most developed has been the study of comparative police systems across the world. Effectively linking the police systems of different nations, international police cooperation among the world’s law enforcement agencies, both on bilateral and multilateral levels, has taken on increasing relevance from the early twentieth century onwards. And, arguably of most growing relevance in recent decades has been the involvement of civilian police in peacekeeping missions in various post-war societies. Interestingly, there existed a literature that was especially well developed in the period between the two world wars of the previous century that went under the heading of “international police,” but that dealt, not with law enforcement, but with the establishment and maintenance of international peace among nations. What is interesting about recent developments is that international peacekeeping missions have increasingly included criminal law enforcement tasks, thereby effectively transforming the former metaphor of international policing into a reality involving civilian police institutions. Within the broader field of international policing, Beth Greener’s book specifically focuses on the involvement by civilian police in peacekeeping missions in a variety of contexts. Noting that such efforts are on the rise under the auspices of political bodies such as the United Nations, the European Union, and various nations, Greener’s study is concerned with unraveling the history and present dynamics of the police involvement in peacekeeping operations. The work is oriented at both the audience of international relations scholars and police professionals. Her analysis starts with a brief overview of the history of police involvement in peacekeeping. Noting that such efforts were already taken after World War II, when the allied powers sought to restore civilian police in Germany and Japan, Greener observes a trend for the United Nations to take on such tasks as CIVPOL (civilian police) operations, denoting clearly the difference with the UN’s military operations. In various post-conflict societies, such as Cyprus in the 1960s and Namibia and Panama in the 1980s, CIVPOL programs were implemented. These efforts evolved from relatively passive monitoring programs to more active efforts, involving police development through training as well as participation in law enforcement operations. In the remainder of the book, Greener analyzes various cases of civilian police in peacekeeping in more detail. In a chapter on Kosovo and East Timor, the author pays particular attention to the problems associated with the UN strategies to develop new police institutions as part of a comprehensive law-and-order approach. The imbeddedness of policing in a broader field of social and political factors is acutely felt in these societies. The chapter on the Solomon Islands, a chain of more than 900 islands north of Australia, narrates the involvement in police missions by the Australian Federal police and the police from other nations in the region. Initiated in 2003, following a period of ethnic tensions on the islands, this program has been fairly successful as it has relied on a considerable foreign presence and was tailored towards the specific needs of the region. Turning attention to the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan, it is shown that enormous difficulties can be faced in the police missions of peacekeeping operations. In the case of the building of a new civilian police in Afghanistan, where German police took on a leading role, the focus was too narrowly tailored towards law enforcement issues irrespective of larger societal conditions. In the case of Iraq, central problems emerged with the US-led efforts to form an Iraqi civilian police because of the reliance on military forces and private contractors as the United States does not have an appropriate national police to handle such tasks. In the book’s final two chapters, Greener discusses the challenges and future of police involvement in peacekeeping missions. Most central are the problems with the changing relationship between police and military, whereby it may become necessary for police to take on military roles, leading to a militarization of policing, but whereby it is also more likely that the military takes on traditional police tasks. Given the likelihood that police efforts in peacekeeping operations will continue to take place in the near future, Greener recommends that police officials are aware of and be prepared to take on necessary operational challenges, yet also that broader social and political conditions are adequately addressed. The literature on various aspects of international policing has expanded very considerably over the past two decades. Greener’s book is a welcome addition to this scholarship especially in that it discusses an often ignored aspect in the world of international policing as well as in the scholarship on international relations and global peace. Rather than being analytically oriented at developing or applying a theoretically informed social-science perspective on policing and/or nation-states, the book is primarily informative in describing the involvement of police in various peacekeeping missions. This focus is acceptable, in my mind, given the relative novelty of the book’s topic. I would only have wished that Greener had been more clear in specifying that the involvement of civilian police in peacekeeping is only one dimension of international policing. The author’s use of the term ‘international policing’ might obscure the fact that police agencies are in a variety of ways no longer restricted in their activities to the boundaries of national states and otherwise confined localities. However, in thoughtfully addressing aspects of the law enforcement role in post-conflict societies, which is arguably the as yet most neglected aspect of international policing, Greener’s work may serve as a useful guide for our further exploration of the shifting relations and possibly blurring boundaries between police and military in times of both war and peace.

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Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2010. Review of The New International Policing, by B.K. Greener. Global Change, Peace and Security 22(1):152-153.