On Old Folks and Things That Pass Away: Criminology in 2018

Abstract

In previous chapters, I sometimes referred to this chapter. It was written on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Dutch crimino-logical association. I was working at the Dutch Antilles at the time, ‘temporarily selling my soul.’ But after two years of selling out, I returned to academia and wrote this piece. It was published in the anniversary book and has hardly ever been referred to since. Looking back, it was one of the moments when I wrote about things taking place ‘outside’ the ‘mental prison’ of police research and criminology and one of the occasions when I charged into ‘normal science’. In retrospect, I can see that it is also one of the works in which I tried to break away from the common sense of policing and security. Factual policing and security no longer fit 30-year-old routines and one-sided social science. Therefore, I imagined myself at a criminological conference in 2018. This experiment also — at least to me — was one of the earlier ventures into narrative knowledge. As mentioned in the introduction to this book, I love working at the intersections between social science and literature or, more broadly, popular culture. I recommend Vincenzo Ruggiero’s (2003) Crime. Literature. Sociology of Deviance and Fiction as a fine example of this type of work. In literary writing, we are not restricted by the rules and regulations of normal science.