In this interview with René van Swaaningen Jock Young discusses the development of his work from the ethnographic work in Notting Hill that in 1971 led to the The Drugstakers, to the New Criminology of 1973 and Left Realism that emerged in the early 1980s. In his current work on cultural criminology Young invites us to take a closer look at the work of C. Wright Mills on sociological imagination and the power elites and Robert Merton’s on social structure and anomie. According to Young this would make a forceful critique of the current policy-ridden and a-theoretical state criminology is currently in.

This article describes and judges the complex and often contradictory dynamic by which boundaries are constructed and transgressed. This dynamic reveals much about power, meaning, and the political economy of crime and control. The author describes the project undertaken by Critical Mass riders and precarity activists. These projects explore the possibilities of drift as collective experience and collective transgression. The pervasiveness of drift in contemporary society, paired with the subversive cultures of drift emerging around new social movements and alternative spatial practices, point toward a new kind of global collectivity.

In the introduction to this first issue of the Dutch Journal on Culture and Crime, the editors first examine the history of cultural perspectives in criminology and the reasons why this approach is particularly relevant to analyse crime in our globalised consumer societies. Cultural criminology’s social-constructionist perspectives on the key-concepts, culture and crime, are elaborated next, followed by an exposé of the new imaginative meaning of media-studies in our age of information. In the last paragraph the claim is made that, although ethnography plays a key-role, there is a wide variety of research methodologies that can be applied in cultural criminological framework.

Atlas of the Conflict by Israeli architect Malkit Shoshan presents a fascinating historical analysis of a difficult relationship between Jews and Palestinians. It shows, in maps and diagrams, a great discrepancy in perceptions of both people on such issues as borders, land, heritage, water and settlements. Visual research methods, which are used in this project, are important and innovative to get a deeper insight in the nature of this conflict. However some questions about misuse, propaganda and manipulation of information and symbols remain open and can lead to an important discussion in cultural criminology on the relationship between conflict and culture.