Subcultural theory and cultural criminology have traditionally viewed ‘underground’ youth movements as providing images of deviance/resistance which the cultural industries harvest to turn a profit. The logic follows that street and sub cultures imbue products with a ‘transgressive edge’ that increases their appeal within youth markets. This paper uses the example of UK ‘grime’ music to demonstrate how this dynamic cannot be viewed as applying universally in contemporary times. Where their street orientated content is censured, many grime artistes express a desire for commercial success which would ultimately emerge through muting their rhetorical links to crime and violence and explicitly championing ‘mainstream’ values. This case is used as an empirical cue to explore the use and critique of the concept of ‘resistance’ within cultural criminology and subcultural theory. The paper problematizes commodification of resistance discourses as they apply to the rugged culture of the streets and indeed its supposed ‘oppositional’ character where disadvantaged urban youth clearly embody and practice the logic of neoliberalism. It furthermore suggests that certain critiques of cultural criminology go too far in denying any meaning to criminality and subcultural practice beyond consumer desire. Ultimately, the concept of ‘defiance’ is suggested as a useful tool to understand the norms of and behaviours of the excluded.

In this article on the social production of the book Outsiders, I will situate its production in the daily practice of the social worlds in which Becker was involved. Therefore I focus on the relations, interactions and situations which were relevant for the form, content and success of Outsiders. For data, I use fragments from my email communication with Howard Becker, the collected interviews and other publications which show that Becker seeks to demystify Outsiders. My main contribution is that I use Becker’s own words to demystify the ethnographic practice of Outsiders and describe its mundane backstage reality, which is described by Fine as ‘the underside’ of ethnography (1993).

This article deals with the performance of ‘street credibility’. A dramaturgical analysis of the lyrics and videos of 15 rap artist from The Hague sheds light on the various ways they try to achieve a credible street reputation as rappers. In their frontstage presentation they highlight their street knowledge, strike violent poses, and claim affiliation to certain infamous local gangs or neighborhoods. Backstage, however, these performances are being deconstructed by other actors who participate in the local street culture and who form a critical, metaphysical audience of the presentations of the rappers.

The social history of jazz music in America since 1880 has been described as a movement out of the inauspicious background of night clubs and brothels in the urban underworld. In 1980 Ronald L. Morris has published a book, Wait until dark, fostering a contrary view (that should inspire criminology). Morris claimed that until 1940 the ‘mob’ had promoted jazz music as gangsters hired black musicians without concern for the law and the conventions of racial segregation. There is some evidence that even during the 1950s the jazz scene of New York City and Las Vegas had also been partly organized by the mafia.

Over the past couple of decades, the Netherlands unmistakably has developed into a Garlandian style culture of control. A distinct feature of this Dutch culture of control is the increasing interconnectedness between crime and migration in both public and political discourse. As a result of the growing urge to control potential dangerous others, various stop & search powers have been implemented. Besides by their proactive nature, these powers are defined by the fact that they give a fair amount of discretion to individual police officers in deciding who to stop. In this article, while drawing on criminological, sociological and social psychological literature on stereotyping and the rise of a crime complex, the authors will argue that the structural and cultural changes fuelling the emergence of a the typical Dutch culture of control might also affect the individual choices made by police officers in such a way that it fosters ethnic profiling.

The central question of this article is whether biographies can be a source for criminological research on white-collar crime and how they can contribute to the explanation of white-collar crime. To answer this question, 35 Dutch biographies were studied. Following the legal ambiguities of white-collar crime, not all of these biographies are about criminal offences. And following the dominant anthropomorphic approach to corporate crime, some of these are corporate biographies. Many biographies confirm current criminological explanations of the causation of white-collar crime. Yet, biographies also offer additional insights, for instance about the causal relevance of the private life of white-collar offenders.

This article examines the silence of control agents. It is often said that control agents as representatives of the risk society are obsessed with control activities and fact-finding, and that rule breakers are regularly exposed by negative publicity. The author takes the contrary position that even major cases demonstrate the persistence of silence on the part of control agents. He distinguishes between two types of silence: denial and secrecy. Denial means that control agents saw nothing while they could have discovered wrongdoing. He points to the fact that this denial in the face of knowledge is the result of sociological ambivalence: control agents are often forced to reconcile conflicting interests, which supersede the importance of supervision. The article shows that secrecy plays an important role in trust relationships between control agents and the objects of their supervision. Secrecy enables control agents to better obtain information. In effect, with regard to the supply of information and the scrutiny of the objects under supervision, control agents are dependent on the cooperativeness of the objects of supervision. These days, much emphasis is placed on breaking the walls of silence. Perpetrators, victims and witnesses, as well as control agents, are being encouraged to break the silence through the use of star witness arrangements, whistleblower arrangements, witness protection, and reporting centres. But is this effective? The author suggests that maintaining secrecy is essential and that those measures limit the space for control agents to develop trust relationships with the objects of supervision, and thereby the opportunity to engage in fact-finding.

This article discusses tropical deforestation from a cultural criminological perspective, by using qualitative methods such as ethnography and interviews, and by emphasizing the difficulties, dangers and dilemmas of ethnographic research. Case studies include timber smuggling from Indonesia to Malaysia and deforestation for bauxite, soy and timber in Brazil’s Amazon. Also described are meetings with (Dutch) timber traders, policy makers and law enforcers. Tropical deforestation is responsible for a great deal of harm, crime and violence, mainly committed by ranchers and loggers. Victims are humans (including humanity’s oldest societies), future generations (considering the impact on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change) and non-humans (with risks of extinctions).