Abstract
This chapter provides an introduction to the book and a general overview of the key themes discussed throughout. It establishes the need for a queer criminology, canvasses the existing research, and critically examines the ways in which queer work has been utilised in criminology and criminal justice studies to this point. It argues that there is significant scope within queer criminology for a greater engagement with the critical, disruptive, and deconstructive aspects of queer scholarship and politics.
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Notes
- 1.
Throughout this book, I will employ a range of terms to refer to the many communities that might be considered sexuality- and gender-diverse. I will generally utilise the terms ‘LGBTIQ people’, ‘LGBTIQ communities’, or ‘queer communities’ unless a specific context warrants otherwise. With these terms, I primarily wish to capture those who are positioned outside normative frameworks relating to sexuality and/or gender, specifically heteronormativity and gender binaries. I use these terms partly for variety, partly because they are less unwieldy than others, but in full recognition of their limitations (and the failures of language in this regard more generally). I acknowledge that not all people who might fall under these terms will necessarily agree with their inclusion (for example, Davis 2015, 138–139) or with the use of the term ‘queer’. Furthermore, I do not imply that the experiences and struggles of these communities are equivalent. I will expand on these debates in the next chapter.
- 2.
- 3.
Importantly, not all of the studies discussed here are strictly criminological, nor do they necessarily refer to themselves as ‘queer criminology’. I am interested here in the diversity of criminal justice-related research that has engaged with the notion of ‘queer’, and/or has been positioned as a part of queer criminology, even if so labelled after the fact.
- 4.
Notably, not all such insights are unique to, or originated within, queer theory. For example, the critique of essentialised identities and a concern with their regulation has been central to a variety of critical perspectives such as feminist criminologies and counter-colonial criminologies (see Chapter 5), as well as work on victims of crime (Walklate 2011, 54–58).
- 5.
In this book, I will try to avoid using the term ‘queer criminology’ where possible, preferring terms such as ‘queer criminological scholarship’, or ‘queer scholarship in criminology’. While these are more clumsy, and certainly not removed from the problems discussed above, they are an attempt to reference the fact that ‘queer criminology’ can and does include multiple, diverse forms of scholarship. ‘Queer theory’ and ‘criminology’ are not singular objects—they are best described in the plural, and the possibilities of their interaction reflect this plurality.
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Ball, M. (2016). Introduction. In: Criminology and Queer Theory. Critical Criminological Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-45328-0_1
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