A rapidly growing field of research and practice, restorative justice has primarily found its gravitational centre within the criminal justice system, as an alternative of dealing with the aftermath of crime. Less explored remains the application of restorative justice in complex, urban, or intercultural contexts, an application which raises a whole set of conceptual and practical challenges. This article is based on an action project which aimed to research conflict narratives in intercultural contexts and transform them through restorative praxis. Mostly used in educational, organizational, and health care settings, action research remains an underused but a highly interesting methodology for criminology and criminal justice research. Its alternative epistemology makes it particularly apt for scientific projects that aim both at investigating crime and justice related issues and at engendering change, either at the level of criminal justice or communities. Although action research has focused mostly on creating change at the level of practical knowledge, when conceived in a critical manner, action research aims not only at improving the work of practitioners, but also at assisting them to arrive at a critique of their social or work settings. Practice concerns at the same time problem setting or problem framing. By zooming into one of the case studies of the project, more specifically the social housing estates in Vienna, I focus in this article specifically on the tensions and dilemmas created by processes of engagement in a problematizing approach to the context and to practice. During these processes, together with other social actors, such as inhabitants and professionals, we named problems (in our case social conflicts) and framed the context in which we addressed them. I argue that participatory forms of inquiry, such as action research, should actively reframe rather than merely describe contexts and problems they work with.

The politization of the concept of genocide by Western states has been severely criticised, because it has led to an impunity for genocidal crimes. In certain instances however, such criticism has contributed to the dynamic of victimization, instead of resisting it. The article discusses how Professor Edward S. Herman and journalist David Peterson’s staunch criticism of the politics of genocide amounts to a brazen denial of the genocide against the Tutsi which recycles much of the extremist discourse of the former Rwandan authorities that were implicated in genocide. In this case Herman and Peterson’s resistance against the politics of genocide has profound implications, several of which the article will address.

This article deals with three questions. What did resistance mean in the 1970s and what does it mean today? Have the rituals of resistance changed over time? What is the status today of moral panic theory? These questions directly refer to ‘Resistance Through Rituals’ (1976) and ‘Policing the Crisis’ (1978). For that reason, one of the authors answers these key questions in a contemporary framework of hegemony, security and neoliberal politics, and points to the continuing relevance of the political and critical tradition of British cultural studies.

Cultural criminology has been criticized for not taking enough notice of classical anthropological debates on the concept of ‘culture’. This article responds to that. It analyses anthropological conceptualization from an initial essentialist to a social constructivist approach of ‘culture’. The constructivist approach can prevent cultural criminologists from focusing too much on ‘exotic subcultures’ and neglecting broader socio-cultural developments. The article treats the structure-agency debate and its relevance to cultural criminology. In conclusion, cultural criminology from a dynamic constructivist concept of culture is best equipped for studying crime and reactions to crime in the current era of globalization.