A new paradigm in criminology: censure, harm and pathology

Professor Colin Sumner
Tuesday 7 November, 4pm - 5.30pm, ARC/014
Production team: Lydia Watt, Eve Lewis, Joseph Watters, Rebecca Smith, Megan Hutchinson and Molly McMunn

Seminar Synopsis

Reflecting current debates around the world, and in Ireland today, this talk will raise the issue of whether criminology is upside down, ignoring serious social harms, including state crimes, yet censuring the victims of intergenerational trauma, and also in reverse order, in assuming that society creates crimes and criminal law rather than the crimes of the powerful creating society and its laws. There is a need for a new paradigm in the study of crime and anti-social behaviour, one which recognises that the biggest crimes and most anti-social behaviours are rarely punished, or even defined as crimes, and that such criminal outrages are fundamental for modern societies. The talk draws upon the 2015 Truth & Reconciliation Final Report in Canada, and the story of Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. Its key thesis is that we need to understand not just the power of elites but the ideological reversals.

Professor Colin Sumner

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Professor Colin Sumner is Head of the School of Sociology, Philosophy, and Criminology at University College Cork, Ireland. He has published two monographs, Reading Ideologies (1979 Academic Press) and The Sociology of Crime and Deviance: an Obituary (1994/2012 Open UP, Continuum and CrimeTalk Books), and edited several collections such asCrime, Justice & Underdevelopment (1982) and The Blackwell Companion to Criminology (2004). His work has been hailed as "transformative" of a sub-discipline within sociology (see Amatrudo 2017 Social Censure and Critical Criminology: After Sumner) whilst others reject it, claiming the persistence of a universal moral code (see Dellwing et alThe Death & Resurrection of Deviance, 2014 or Hendershott's The Politics of Deviance, 2004). Colin co-founded the international journal Theoretical Criminology and launched Ireland's first undergraduate criminology degree in 2014.

Directions and Parking:

Please see the University campus map for the location of ARC/014 which is in the Alcuin Research Resource Centre. The building is opposite the Alcuin Teaching Block (Seebohm Rowntree Building) reception. The room is on the ground floor at the far end from the main entrance, around the corner, behind the lift. The closet public car park is Campus North car park. Parking costs £1 per hour and you can pay using coins or via a mobile phone via the RingGo parking. For information on public transport to the University please see the Travel and Transport webpages.