Green Cultural Criminology Research Articles

Criminal Consequences of Unsustainable Food Systems: Ethical Issues and Future Prospects

A major worldwide issue, criminal aspects of unsustainable agricultural systems pose serious concerns to environmental stability, biodiversity, and food security. The necessity to address environmental harm from a legal and regulatory perspective is highlighted in this survey of the literature from a variety of disciplines that looks at the connections between criminal activity and unsustainable practices in the food business. The analysis delves into foundational works that stress the need for more study on the criminal elements of unsustainable food production, distribution, and consumption. By highlighting the importance of ecological justice and sustainability in regulatory responses, green cultural criminology provides a framework for understanding how environmental harms are criminalized or disregarded within legal systems. According to the study, food fraud is a major problem in the food industry since it uses dangerous or low-quality substances to trick customers. The accidental encouragement of biodiversity loss and ecological disturbance is further highlighted by the connection of illegal wildlife trading with the food business. Age-related environmental crimes such as pesticide abuse, water pollution, and land degradation are major contributors to global environmental deterioration. Context-specific research is essential to address regional issues, but few studies have examined the criminal consequences of unsustainable agriculture systems in Jordan. Increase food supply chain transparency, promote multidisciplinary collaboration, and strengthen regulatory frameworks and enforcement. Ecologically conscientious and secure food systems include fighting food sector corruption, promoting sustainable farming, and raising awareness. To promote environmental stewardship and resilience, it is crucial to identify and address the criminal components of unsustainable food systems. Promoting sustainability, protecting the environment, and guaranteeing global food security all need cooperation between academics, politicians, and stakeholders. Collective action is needed to pave the road toward greener and more secure communities, and establishing sustainable food systems is a crucial first step.

Ecocide and Khattam-Shud

Abstract In the spirit of green cultural criminology, which considers the way(s) in which environmental crime, harm, and disaster are constructed, represented, and envisioned by the news media and in popular cultural forms, and narrative criminology, which explores how stories can influence (promote, curb, prevent, or resist) action, including harmful action, this provisional article seeks to intercede (although, perhaps, “intervene,” in the McGregorian sense, is more accurate) in the debate, of sorts, between the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh and the British critic, editor, and theorist Mark Bould. Whereas Ghosh, in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), laments the failure of contemporary literature to engage with climate change, Bould, in The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture (2021), considers whether all stories might be stories about climate change. Taking Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) as an example, this article argues that this phantasmagorical tale about the problems of censorship could be applied to and analyzed in the context of climate change. The article considers how we might tell (more, better) stories of climate change and concludes by calling for a marshalling of diverse stories to reflect the most pressing issue of our time.

Eating E.T.: Carnism and Speciesism

This article takes as its point of departure an event in which a plant-based version of the space alien, the Extra-Terrestrial (‘E.T.’), from the science fiction film bearing its name, was barbecued and served as a meal to participants at a conference. The soy dish produced different reactions: some laughed, while others seemed appalled. These different sentiments provide the basis for a broad green cultural criminology analysis of the traditions of meat-eating, tracing its role in human history and in the barbecue. The purpose of this is to explore why humans treat different categories of animals so differently. To understand the reactions the meal produced, the article addresses two contrasting aspects of the human–non-human animal relationship—‘carnism’ and ‘pet-keeping’—and contemplates these in relation to the reactions to eating E.T. The goal is to expand on the study of the human–animal relationship, particularly speciesism—understood as ideology and practice that legitimise and produce animal abuse through the analytical concept categorical discriminatory speciesism.

Internalisasi nilai pelestarian alam dan pendidikan karakter melalui representasi kejahatan lingkungan dalam sastra anak karya Okky Madasari

The subject of this research is Mata dan Rahasia Pulau Gapi by Okky Madasari. I adopt green cultural criminology and narrative criminology to analyze how the writer describes environmental crime phenomena in her work as a medium for internalizing the value of conservation and character education for children’s readers. This study was designed using the children's literature research method and note-taking technique. The results of this study found that the novel contains two forms of environmental crimes, namely crimes against historical sites and crimes against wildlife. I also found that the author makes the representation of the character's resistance to environmental crimes as a strong message to readers that children have a role as agents to encourage public awareness of environmental issues. In addition, moral licensing by the perpetrators of environmental crimes in this novel is the author's effort to cultivate a critical attitude in child readers.

Biting back: A green-cultural criminology of animal liberation struggle as constructed through online communiques

This article conceptualises animal liberation direct action in green-cultural criminological terms. To do this, it draws on Johnston and Johnston’s methodological approach and undertakes qualitative content analysis of animal liberation communiqués published on the website, Bite Back. Whilst a significant body of scholarly literature has discussed animal liberation struggles, this article develops an understanding of these often-criminal acts and events within a cultural criminological context. Findings from this analysis reveal three themes. First, activists variously resist and embrace the state and media’s ‘terrorisation’ and discursive delegitimating of animal liberation struggle. Activists wilfully play on the framing of themselves as terrorists. Second, activists are also able to re-contextualise what might otherwise be seen as minor, apolitical events into a much broader liberation struggle. Third, animal liberation activism is frequently and explicitly connected to other emancipatory struggles. To conclude, the article argues that animal liberation activists engage in direct action on a local level, and strategically promote hyper localised instances of direct action globally through online communiqués. In doing so, animal liberation activists engage in a ‘prefigurative integration’ of what might otherwise be dismissed as isolated hyper local ‘petty events’ within a global struggle against violence, exploitation and oppression.

Green Criminology and Rhetoric of Public Opinion: Online Commenting on Gas Rigs Near Israel's Coast

ABSTRACT This study identifies the key themes in online commenting on news reports about gas rig placements near Israel’s coastline. We employed an inductive thematic analysis to study 1276 comments and three main themes emerged from the analysis: (a) views on protesting against the rigs; (b) criminal labels; and (c) dangers of nearshore rigs. Although the majority of the comments supported the protest against the rigs, there was no consensus. The commenters who supported the protest described the acts that lead to environmental harm as criminal, deviant and corrupt. They also criticized the Israeli government and considered capital-government relations as the driving mechanism to place the rigs near the coast. The discussion addresses the meanings of the themes in the context of green cultural criminology, rhetorical strategies, including politics of definitions and causes, the rhetoric of rectitude and rationality, domain statements, and Aristotle’s rhetoric framework (logos, pathos, and ethos).

Southern Green Cultural Criminology and Environmental Crime Prevention: Representations of Nature Within Four Colombian Indigenous Communities

This exploratory study develops a “southern green cultural criminology” approach to the prevention of environmental harms and crimes. The main aim is to understand differing cultural representations of nature, including wildlife, present within four Colombian Indigenous communities to evaluate whether they encourage environmentally friendly human interactions with the natural world, and if so, how. The study draws on primary data gathered by the Indigenous authors (peer researchers) of this article via a set of interviews with representatives of these four communities. We argue that the cosmologies that these communities live by signal practical ways of achieving ecological justice and challenging anthropocentrism.

Immunity to Environmental Crime, Harm and Violence: An Ongoing Pandemic and a Possible Narrative Vaccine.

As of June 2020, there have been at least 2,540 mass shootings since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, CT, on December 14, 2012. Some have suggested that the repeated trauma of these massacres has created a collective "emotional numbness," lessening our empathy. This article asks whether a similar phenomenon is occurring with respect to environmental crime and harm. It considers whether we have developed "compassion fatigue" regarding environmental violence and contemplates a "workout regimen" for empathy for Gaia's suffering. In so doing, it seeks to engage with emerging work in the penumbra of narrative criminology and green cultural criminology.

The Fable of The Three Little Pigs: Climate Change and Green Cultural Criminology

This paper builds on previous calls for a green cultural criminology that is more attuned to narrative, as well as a narrative criminology that does not limit itself to nonfictional stories of offenders, in two ways. First, it considers how a particular kind of environmental narrative—that of climate change—appears, as well as criticisms thereof. In analysing and assessing existing climate change narratives, this paper contemplates the approach of heritage studies to loss and the (theme of) uncertainty surrounding climate-induced migration and human displacement. Second, this paper allegorises the fable of The Three Little Pigs as a story of climate change migration—an aspect of climate change that is misrepresented (and sometimes missing) in the discourse. This paper concludes with additional arguments for approaching, reading and analysing stories regarding human–human and human–environment relationships.

Earth–world–planet: Rural ecologies of horror and dark green criminology

This article responds to green criminology. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of the coal-producing region of Appalachia and the processes of mountaintop removal mining, the article engages contemporary philosophy, ecocriticism, and “dark ecology” to suggest that green criminology rethink its linguistic categories and epistemological assumptions. The article employs an analysis of some examples of horror cinema to suggest criminological engagement with “ecologies of horror” and the “horrors of ecology” that condition life in the shadow of harmful modes of resource extraction. It concludes with some thoughts on the potential of a “dark” green and green-cultural criminology.

What’s in the Water? How Media Coverage of Corporate GenX Pollution Shapes Local Understanding of Risk

Media coverage of water pollution has been a topic of theoretical examination and empirical testing. Still, green criminologists have not fully explored issues relating to water pollution. This paper draws from the environmental literature on risk society and criminology’s crime news frame to explore media coverage of corporate deviance through the lens of green cultural criminology. A content analysis of local newspaper articles in a southeastern city analyzes constructions of corporate deviance, risk, and blame regarding the discovery of GenX. Results demonstrate how media discourse around risk and science plays an important role in shaping concerns about corporate environmental pollution. Magnification of risk and uncertainty draws the public’s attention to issues of regulatory enforcement and funding. At the same time, risk is minimized by corporate and regulatory officials who urge the public to wait for more research before introducing new laws and regulations while also individualizing the blame.

Video Methods, Green Cultural Criminology, and the Anthropocene: SANCTUARY as a Case Study

ABSTRACTDocumentary criminology is a burgeoning, open-ended methodological technique that crafts and depicts sensuous knowledge from the lived experiences of crime, transgression, and harm. This ‘video ethnography paper’ examines my 74 minute documentary, SANCTUARY, as a case study to demonstrate how documentary criminology draws upon green cultural criminology, video methods, and sensory studies to provide an experiential understanding of crime (in this case, against donkeys) and rehabilitation in the contested notion of an ‘anthropocene’ epoch. I trace how documentary criminology can evoke and enact the lived experiences of “donkey rehabilitation” as sensuous scholarship.

On Narrative and Green Cultural Criminology

This paper calls for a green cultural criminology that is more attuned to narrative and a narrative criminology that does not limit itself to non-fictional stories of offenders. This paper argues that (1) narratives or stories can reveal how we have instigated or sustained harmful action with respect to the environment and can portray a world suffering from the failure to effect desistance from harmful action; and (2) narratives or stories can, may and possess the potential to shape future action (or can stimulate thought regarding future action) with respect to the natural world, its ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole. A wide range of fictional stories is offered as examples and illustrations, and the benefits of a literary bend to the overall criminological endeavor are considered.

Perceiving and Communicating Environmental Contamination and Change: Towards a Green Cultural Criminology with Images

In this article, we will respond to recent calls for a ‘green cultural criminology’ by attempting to open the way for new visual explorations of environmental harms and crimes, and by suggesting some methodological perspectives that can be advanced by the use and analysis of the photographic image. To demonstrate the power, potential and possibility—as well as some potential limitations—of a green cultural criminology with images, we draw on two ethnographic studies carried out in Huelva (Spain) and central Appalachia (United States). The described methods have the advantage of (1) bringing together the multiple and complex experiences of those who live in polluted areas; (2) considering the cultural meaning given to experiences of ecological change and destruction; and (3) exploring how those experiences are represented, communicated and understood. We conclude with a call to use qualitative visual approaches for carrying out research in an emergent green cultural criminology designed to develop a complex understanding of the multiple forms of environmental harms and crimes.

Green Criminology and (Constructions of) Environmental Crime and Harm: A Review Essay

Brisman and South: Green Cultural Criminology: Constructions of Environmental Harm, Consumerism, and Resistance to Ecocide. Routledge, Oxford and New York, 2014, 162 pp Brisman, South, and White: Environmental Crime and Social Conflict: Contemporary and emerging issues. Ashgate, Farnham and Burlington, 2015, 328 pp

‘Life-Stage Dissolution’, Infantilization and Antisocial Consumption

Hayward (2012, 2013) asserts that the opposition between adolescence and adulthood is increasingly challenged as late-modern capitalist culture artificially extends the former. Hayward introduces the concept of ‘life-stage dissolution’—and its attendant bidirectionalprocesses of ‘adultification’ and ‘infantilization’—to propose that it isbecomingdifficult for young people to differentiate and disassociate themselves from the generation immediately ahead of them and vice versa. This article makes a contribution to a ‘green cultural criminology’ (Brisman and South, 2013b, 2014) by extending Hayward’s argument to the realm of environmental harms and concerns. It provides examples of ways in which ‘life-stage dissolution’ and the resulting ‘generational mulch’ impede efforts towards environmental protection that might take into account future generations, and it explores how such responsibility is denied even while scientific awareness grows that over-consumption is damaging the environment that future generations will inherit.

Green cultural criminology: constructions of environmental harm, consumerism, and resistance to ecocide

1. Introduction: greening criminology and connecting to the cultural 2. Overview of cultural criminology 3. A green field for cultural criminology 4. Constructions of Environmental Harm 5. Consumption, environment, health and happiness 6. Marketing and consuming nature and the natural: water, quarantine and infantilisation 7. Resistance to Environmental Harm 8. Conclusion and Future Directions.

Toward a Green-Cultural Criminology of “the Rural”

There are many connections between the various strands of critical criminology. Previously, we highlighted common issues between green and cultural criminology, while also noting some of the ways that each perspective could potentially benefit from cross-fertilization (Brisman and South in Crime Media Cult 9(2):115–135, 2013, Green cultural criminology: constructions of environmental harm, consumerism and resistance to ecocide. Routledge, Oxford, 2014; McClanahan in Crit Criminol. doi: 10.1007/s10612-014-9241-8 , 2014). In this article, we extend our analysis to consider green, cultural and rural criminologies through the exposition of several key issues, including “the rural” as local context in which exploitative global forces may exercise power; agribusiness and the food/profit chain; farming and the pollution of land, water and air; and finally, cultural/media images and narratives of rural life. We focus more specifically on this final intersectionality through an analysis of Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom (2010), analyzing his depictions of rural people, environmental activists, and the rural environment through the issue of mountaintop removal. We conclude our article by identifying several examples of key directions in which the intersectionality of green, cultural and rural criminologies might proceed, including trafficking and abuse of farmworkers, harms associated with the cultivation of quinoa, and a critical interpretation of media and popular narrative depictions of environmental issues within rural contexts.

Hunting Worlds Turned Upside Down

When asked by one of the editors of this special issue to consider submitting an essay on the significance to cultural criminology of a certain seventeenth-century Dutch painting that we had pointedly brought to his attention, one of us happily replied that we would attempt it. As likely authors, however, we soon began to mutter to ourselves that for our purposes, we were unable to distinguish with much satisfaction between cultural criminology, green criminology1 and visual criminology.2 We remain unable to do so. This seems not least because on numer‐ ous points and issues – power, inequality, spectacle, exclusion and suffering, for example – the chosen concepts and concerns of each of these evolving perspec‐ tives intersect with and blend into those of the other two. To the emerging perspective of what its exponents have recently dubbed a ‘greencultural criminology’ (Brisman & South, 2013), this essay seeks to add an explora‐ tory historical case study of ‘the visual’: Life of a Hunter (c. 1647-1650) by the Dutch painter Paulus Potter. In keeping with the spirit of Brisman and South’s consideration of ‘the cultural significance of the environment’ (2013: 130 [empha‐ sis in original]), our aim here is to examine how, on occasion, the production and consumption of a certain image simultaneously manages to reflect the prevailing cultural standards of an era and to show the way to their erosion and possible transcendence. In approaching our task, we are also motivated by a shared inter‐ est in the current movement towards a nonspeciesist criminology.3 (By ‘nonspe‐ ciesism’ we refer to and embrace what is surely one of the most daunting tasks facing criminology, namely, disengagement from the historical dominance of human interests over those of animals in discourses of abuse, cruelty and harm.)

Green and Grey: Water Justice, Criminalization, and Resistance

Since its initial proposal in the 1990s, ‘green criminology’ has focused on environmental crimes and harms affecting non-human and human life, ecosystems, and the planet as a whole. Describing global trends toward privatization of water supply systems and the criminalization of several water conservation activities and tactics, this paper employs theoretical perspectives offered by green, cultural, and critical criminologies, focusing on overt resistance to water privatization and oppressive regulations governing rainwater storage and residential water recycling. Taking a critical theoretical perspective, this paper examines water access and autonomy, individuals and groups openly resisting the criminalization of household water reuse and storage, and the cultural significance of water. This paper concludes with an exploration of the potential benefits of a green cultural criminology.