Nicole Rafter
This book is a critical summary and exegesis of the work of Nicole Rafter, who was a leading scholar of the history of biological theories of crime causation as well as a profound theorist of the role of history within criminology. It introduces Rafters key works and assesses her contributions to the fields of feminist criminology, cultural criminology, visual criminology, and historical criminology. It also explores her theorization of criminologys identity, scientific status, and possible futures.
While many books on criminological theory explain and historically contextualize theory, they do not interrogate the production of theory or the epistemological assumptions behind it. Drawing on the world of Nicole Rafter, this book offers an accessible handbook to her extensive historical studies and to how her work demonstrated the importance of historical theory to criminological knowledge. Furthermore, the author brings Rafters historical research to life and shows how it speaks to contemporary issues in criminology and punishment.
Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminological theory, intellectual history, sociology, comparative criminology, and feminist criminology.
Chase Burton is Assistant Professor of Law and Society at Leiden University. He received his Ph.D. and JD from the University of California, Berkeley. His work has been published in journals such as Law and Social Inquiry and The British Journal of Criminology.
Routledge Key Thinkers in Criminology
The more a discipline matures and develops the more interesting it becomes to document and reflect upon its history including its key figures. The history of criminology includes a set of key thinkers who have defined the subject, renewed its theory and refined its methodology.
The volumes in this series are stand-alone introductions and critical examinations of the life and work of key thinkers in criminology. These volumes collectively contribute to writing and rewriting criminologys history by adding a distinctive line of inquiry: the focus on the ideas of some of the most inspiring figures from its past.
Edited by Tom Daems, University of Leuven
Kelly Hannah-Moffat, University of Toronto Mississauga
Shadd Maruna, University of Manchester
Tim Newburn, London School of Economics and Political Science
Michel Foucault
Mariana Valverde
Edwin H. Sutherland
David Friedrichs, Isabel Schoultz and Aleksandra Jordanoska
Barbara Wootton and the Legacy of a Pioneering Public Criminologist
Philip Bean
Nicole Rafter
Chase Burton
Formore information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Key-Thinkers-in-Criminology/book-series/RKTC
First published 2022
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2022 Chase Burton
The right of Chase Burton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised 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.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-0-367-54739-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-54740-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-09038-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003090380
This book was mostly written in the year 2020, during political upheaval, global protests, and a year-long pandemic. I wrote it in the Netherlands, where we have had several waves of government-imposed lockdowns in response to the coronavirus. Writing a book in these conditions has been emotionally and logistically challenging. I am deeply grateful to everyone who helped pull me through to the end.
Johann Koehler originally proposed the idea for this volume and often indulged me in discussion of ideas and factoids that emerged while researching it. Abigail Stepnitz and Shikha Bhattacharjee were my source of writing accountability. Much of my thinking about Nicole Rafters work was shaped in conversations with Christopher Tomlins and Jonathan Simon. Several anonymous reviewers provided helpful comments. Caitlin Hoover and Karen Hom helped with editing and referencing several chapters. Claire Zurcher-Hamm helped with editing Chapter 5. Of course, I am solely responsible for any errors that remain.
My greatest thanks to my family for their love and support, and to Caitlin for everything, but especially the music.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003090380-1
Relatively little stands out in the bleary-eyed haze that is my memory of graduate school, but there are a few moments I recall with crystal clarity. One of these moments emerged out of a struggle to develop a coherent analysis of the tensions and contradictions in Cesare Lombrosos criminology. While brushing up on my history to teach biological theories of crime to undergraduates, I learned Lombroso was a more subtle thinker than I had believed. His famous LUomo Delinquente (originally 1876, though I read no Italian and encountered Lombrosos ideas first by way of his daughter Gina English language summary) included arguments about education, disposition, and social structure along with his classic theory of atavism it was more biopsychosocial than crude biological determinism.
At the same time, of course, Lombrosos work is full of strange and alarming remarks that straddle the line between pseudoscience and mythology. The concept of atavism has been thoroughly debunked, and his terms and imagery are often unusual and uncomfortable. He writes that a woman criminal, for example, is a double exception, and consequently [] a monster (Lombroso and Ferrero ). In these moments, Lombroso is anything but insightful, appearing rather as a panicked peddler of popular fears.
The moment of clarity I recall came during a seminar, to which I was admittedly not paying attention. Instead, I was idly entering assorted terms about monsters and criminology into library search engines to see what came up. I came upon an article by Nicole on the topic of Lombroso and vampire imagery. It was a brilliant reading of his florid, violent, blood-soaked fantasies in their cultural context, showing how literary and fictional tastes can influence even a learned positive scientist. Lombroso, they argue, was participating in cultural hermeneutic exchange with the Gothic literature of his time. Perhaps we could place Lombroso next to Bram Stoker on a syllabus. In fact, as Rafter and Ystehede note, Dracula cites Lombroso Mina Harker was an educated woman and used Italian positivism to explain the Counts criminal nature.
