PHASE FOUR OF SOCIAL CONTROL AND THE CHANGING WORLD

Abstract

1. Introduction The regular thinking in social science has related crime with the state power and control institutions, but not with the sphere of culture. That false theoretical dichotomy between culture and formal social structure, ignoring their close and natural interconnections should be discarded. The organisation of society and culture on the one side and state institutions on the other side, obviously function hand in hand, because they are intertwined. Human life proceeds in communities, where informal social relations prevail, and the conceptions, for which the state, on the strength of the formal rules it has established, is by and large external. Social science must be able to enclose the cultural reality and the elements of social structure into coherent theoretical framework embracing them both. Cultural-civilisational analysis focuses on crime-related symbols, signs and messages conveyed through them. In accordance with Talcott Parsons the cultural system includes all man-created symbols, providing purpose to their life; culture is the most powerful actor in society. Dominating values are essential, transmitted from generation to generation, governing the development of society and organised social structure. Cultural system thereby affects social patterns of conduct, shaping personality and giving meaning to human existence (Parsons 1951). Underlying cultures are values, and cultural contradictions amount to opposition in values. The meanings of the same pattern of conduct can be similar while they can easily differ in different cultural environments. Mechanisms of estimating events actually taking place may also drastically differ. According to an integrated approach, crime is inherent in cultural phenomena. Through law enforcement the social reality is formed, because controlling crime not only secures public order and safety, but creates daily a certain socio-cultural environment. Therefore such control is a crucial issue as seen from the nationbuilding and political-technology aspects, because the criminal justice system is related to cultural self-assertion. What the criminal justice system and its parts (e.g. police, courts, prisons) of a given state look like, and how they function is established by the legal culture, proceeding from dominating conceptions, respected in that society and considered normal and equitable. Discussions on the links between crime and culture in criminology have not even started. Traditional confines have been maintained, and regular domains have been handled. Little is known about different civilisations in the matters of crime, there is no general model for carrying out the respective comparative studies. The failure to perceive a wider perspective prevents distinguishing between significant aspects and those of little significance, instead focusing on issues of tertiary import (e.g. some intra-civilisation variations). What we call introspective perspective in criminology has turned out subjective and inefficient. Consequently, not much has been created in the theoretical aspect; in research of crime the developments taking place in other (research) domains have mostly been postponed. Advances in technologies have produced seminal novel information, which however is not systematised nor analysed for lack of relevant theories. This is the root source of problems arising when we compare crime in different civilisations-cultures and the practices of crime control. A solution could be negotiated by the approach where crime and all relevant phenomena are consistently regarded against the cultural background. In that case 'culture' would not be just another variable or factor, but the determination of the whole context, where the cause-effect relations actually work, thus making it possible to elucidate and understand these relations. Such mental move could also be defined as 'cultural turn' for criminology, where crime analysis would by underpinned by a certain representation of human environment. …