What's History to Do with Criminology?
Roberto discusses history’s role and the value of historical research in criminology, arguing the field ignores the past due to two reinforcing factors.
Dr Roberto Catello - Senior Lecturer in Criminology, School of Social and Cultural Studies at Victoria University of Wellington
In this session, I discuss the role of history and the value of historical research in criminology. I argue that mainstream criminology remains largely uninterested in the historical past because of two mutually reinforcing factors: first, the positivistic and applied origins of scientific criminology compel criminologists to cling to a narrow view of their craft as 'a science of the criminal' that ought to help in the fight against criminality in the present. Second, the dominant school of historiography since the early-19th century (namely, historicism) openly rejects the notion that the study of the past can tell us something 'useful' about the present, thus reducing historical inquiry to the task of showing 'what happened' in the past. The combination of these two factors explains why the criminological study of the past is seen by many as an academic hobby rather than a serious criminological specialism. The only way forward for 'historical criminology', then, is to transcend both positivism and historicism.
Dr Roberto Catello is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Victoria University of Wellington and a Honorary Fellow with the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.
This seminar will be held in person.