Hermann Mannheim - Comparative Criminology

In 15 Volumes

First published in 1939
by Routledge

Reprinted in 1999, 2001
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

1965 Hermann Mannheim

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

The publishers have made every effort to contact authors/copyright holders of the works reprinted in The International Library of Sociology. This has not been possible in every case, however, and we would welcome correspondence from those individuals/companies we have been unable to trace.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Comparative Criminology A Text Book - Part Two

ISBN 0-415-17732-4

The Sociology of Law and Criminology: 15 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17832-0

The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17838-X

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

VOLUME TWO

The sociology of crime has as its main object the relationships between society and its individual or corporate members as far as these relationships may have some bearing on crime. Moreover, as mentioned in our methodological chapters, the criminological significance of certain social institutions, of certain areas, and of the age and sex factors are also within the scope of the sociological approach to crime, although age and sex have important biological and psychological implications and areas have important physical aspects, too. Before going into the details of all these problems certain preliminary observations are, however, not out of place. The sociological interpretation of crime is, perhaps even more than its biological and psychological counterparts, affected by the subjective value judgments of the individual observer.

A society can be understood and judged only against the back-ground of its own peculiar culture, its norms and values. Whether this culture, these norms and values are good or bad, how far they and the many conflicts between one norm of conduct and another, between one value and others can be regarded as generating criminal behaviour, or at least contributing to itall such questions are likely to be answered in different ways by different observers. We have already pointed out in Chapter 3,11(b), that it is not the business of the criminologist as such to pronounce value judgments and that this rule should be observed especially with regard to findings which seem to lay bare the criminogenic effect of certain more general aspects of our culture.

We have now reached the stage in our discussion where those previous remarks are of immediate practical significance. We should not allow our personal views and prejudices on the great moral, political, cultural, social and economic issues of our time unduly to colour our interpretation of the socio-criminological scene; and as far as it is humanly impossible to prevent the intrusion of those views and prejudices they should at least be made clear to the reader; moreover, a moralizing attitude should be avoided even where the temptation is strong to disapprove of certain features of our society. It is our task to explain rather than to accuse. This is a platitude, but it needs saying more than once. Sweeping generalizations based on limited factual material are likewise a mistake, and, finally, no concepts should be used which have not been clearly defined or, where no such clear definition can be given, the reasons should at least be indicated.

(a) Crime is only one, and certainly not the most important of the many problems confronting a particular society, and it can be understood only against its whole cultural background. What do we mean by culture? Philosophers, cultural anthropologists, sociologists, and many others, including some criminologists, have tried to define it, the philosophers mostly in general terms, the others in more concrete ways, either by working out the characteristics of a specific, for example American, culture or by comparing the different features of primitive and more advanced, or of aristocratic, bourgeois and working-class cultures. In recent years special attention has been paid to the evil effects of an inferior type of mass-culture and of the delinquent subculture. With the exception of these two phenomena, which have been subject to strong criticism and will be discussed later on, definitions of culture in general tend to be framed in objective, neutral terms, i.e. accepting its existence as a social fact without expressing any criticisms of the good or bad qualities of a specific culture. This applies especially to the anthropologists who have given so much thought to, and collected so much material on, the diffusion of culture, i.e. the transference of culture traits from one area to another, or from one part of culture to another part,countries and at certain periods this mode of life is comparatively stagnant, in other areas and at other times it is subject to rapid changes.

One of the most stimulating, but also most controversial discussions of the subject of culture is T. S. Eliots book Notes towards the Definition of Culture., attacks mainly Eliots contention that culture is essentially a minority phenomenon. Wollheim, too, uses a non-anthropological, subjective interpretation of culture, arguing, probably too optimistically, that mass culture possesses certain elements which raise it above the level of a mere anthropological phenomenon: in coherence, that is, though not, of course, necessarily in quality (p. 8). His main problems: What is wrong with mass culture, with middleclass culture, with the structure of culture in general? are quite clearly problems of evaluation.