THE COSMOPOLITAN ETHIC AND AN EMERGING GLOBAL CRIMINOLOGY
David O. Friedrichs, Professor
& Distinguished University Fellow
Dept. of Sociology/Criminal Justice
University of Scranton
Scranton, Pennsylvania 185104605, USA
For: The International Society for Universal Dialogue
Eighth World Congress
Beijing
July 23-28, 2009
Abstract
The field of criminology has historically been characterized by a strong dose of parochialism, and a predominantly positivistic orientation. This paper advances the argument that in the increasingly globalized, postmodern world of the 21st century, with immense challenges toward ensuring a sustainable human environment for the future, such an orientation is wholly inadequate. On the one hand, the field of criminology must engage much more fully with the fundamental philosophical issues that underlie any coherent and effective understanding of crime and its control. The basic significance of classical metaphysical, epistemological and ethical issues in this context is addressed. On the other hand, the field must reconfigure the scope of criminological concerns to address transnational and international forms of crimes which threaten the well-being of humanity going forward. This paper delineates the evolution of a criminology of the crimes of the powerful, originating with 20th century attention to white collar crime and moving on to crimes of transnational corporations, international financial institutions, and states. Genocide, crimes of war, and the immense moral conundrums involved with humanitarian intervention are now being studied by a small but growing cohort of criminologists. This paper considers the claims of those who now argue that the notion of “social harm” should be adopted in place of the conventional conception of crime, and that zemiology – or the study of harm – should replace criminology. It addresses the increasing significance of human rights as an alternative discourse in relation to the problem of crime. It demonstrates the significance of rapidly developing dimensions of globalization and the postmodern for crime and its control. Those who now participate in global criminology must grapple with notions of sovereignty and universal jurisdiction, nationalism, and legitimacy. Within this context the processes of transitional justice have to be analyzed. A global criminology must adopt a coherent understanding of the present world order, including claims of an emerging American empire. The potential of the evolving global justice movement is also of relevance here. A key issue for students of global criminology, going forward, is to make sense of the parameters and the potential for global governance. Above all, however, this paper seeks to demonstrate the immense significance of an enduring philosophical ethic of cosmopolitanism, if we are to respond effectively to the challenges of crimes of the powerful during the course of the 21st century.
I Introduction: Universal Dialogue and the Criminological Contribution
The city of Beijing in the People’s Republic of China, early in the 21st century, would seem to be an especially appropriate venue for the promotion of universal dialogue on such fundamental issues as world peace, social justice and human rights. In the mid-20th century period Time/Life publisher Henry Luce famously declared the 20th century to be “the American century” (White 1996: 8). It seems highly unlikely that any such declaration will be made in the mid-21st century period, although it is possible that a credible claim will be made on behalf of “the Chinese century,” or “the Asian century.” Ideally, however, the 21st century will not be dominated by any particular country, or region of the world, but will be “the universal century,” a century where cooperation between the world’s many different countries for the collective well-being and greater good of humanity becomes the dominant theme. I take such an objective to be a guiding premise for the International Society for Universal Dialogue, and my own participation in this conference is driven by a profound conviction that no possible objective (or goal) could be of more transcendent importance than this one. Accordingly, this paper concludes with some observations on a cosmopolitan ethic in relation to an emerging global criminology.
Participants in the International Society for Universal Dialogue are principally philosophers. Where does a criminologist fit in? I take as a basic premise that crime and its control endures as one of the central challenges for the realization of a harmonious future for humankind. As someone with a long-standing interest in philosophy, and a firm conviction that a sophisticated criminology must be rooted in systematic attention to fundamental and enduring philosophical issues, I have welcomed an opportunity to engage more fully with philosophers on issues of transcendent importance to all of us.[1] Criminology as a disciplinary, in my view, has been excessively positivistic in orientation, and somewhat parochial in the scope of its concerns. The current dominant theory within the field, Hirschi and Gottfredson’s “general theory of crime,” exemplifies – to my mind – some of these limitations.[2] In the sections that follow, I address more fully some emerging, non-parochial initiatives that have been pursued by some criminologists.
2 Criminology in Transition
The contours of the criminological enterprise inevitably change over time. At the outset of the nineteenth century, for example, we have the English Magistrate Patrick Colquhoun (1800), in his A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, surveying the many forms of conventional crime plaguing the London of his time, some of the reasons for such offenses, and the justice system remedies. At the outset of the twentieth century, we have August Drahms (1900), in his The Criminal, also surveying the various forms of conventional criminality, but in this case informed by a Lombrosian biological determinism that was quite typical of the criminal anthropology of that period. At the outset of the twenty-first century criminology has become a vast and multi-faceted enterprise, with an especially broad range of substantive foci, theories and methods, but conventional forms of crime and their control remain the dominant concerns. We can speculate on the future direction of the field of criminology during the course of the new century. One can state with some confidence that the contours of the field will be significantly transformed during the course of this century. But it seems worthwhile to differentiate between the direction a twenty-first century criminology is likely to take and the direction that it should take.
If one holds the conviction that those who will live out their lives during the course of the new century will contend with immense challenges, then the urgency of promoting a criminology that addresses these challenges in some form becomes quite imperative. These challenges include the question of whether human beings will be able to maintain a sustainable environment, surviving catastrophic climatic changes, destruction of diverse species and ocean life, new infectious disease pandemics and pathogens, extreme destitution in developing countries, unstoppable global migrations, economic and political crises and collapses, escalating international terrorism, large-scale inter-group and nationalistic wars, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and nuclear apocalypse (Martin 2006). And these challenges all too often encompass at their core large-scale crimes of powerful political and private sector entities.
If criminology as a field of academic endeavor survives the present century it seems quite certain that attention to the whole range of “conventional” forms of crime, and their control, will be one part of the work of this field. A principal objection to the character of contemporary criminology, however, is one of proportionality. An “inverse” hypothesis of criminological concerns can be posited: that is, there is an inverse relationship between the level of harm caused by some human (individual or organizational) activity, and the level of criminological concern. Those who have now called for a supranational, international, transnational, or global criminology are at a minimum calling for a fundamental realignment of criminological concerns, and for far more attention proportionally to the large-scale forms of harm as opposed to the more conventional smaller-scale forms of harm characterized as conventional crime.
What will the status of supranational, international, transnational or global criminological concerns be at the outset of the twenty-second century? Hypothetically, there are several alternative scenarios. Supranational concerns could inform the dominant framework and focus of criminology; they could have parity with conventional, domestic concerns; or they could remain marginal to the mainstream of the discipline. Of course other scenarios are possible, including that criminology as a discipline will have evaporated, and that contemporary criminological concerns will have been absorbed piecemeal into other trans-disciplinary paradigms. The present alternatives, then, seem to be between criminologists maintaining a criminological identity and framework while engaging with disciplines and concerns transcending traditional criminological parameters, and criminologists abandoning their disciplinary identification, simply becoming part of an interdisciplinary endeavor addressing international crime issues. Within critical criminology, there is some division on these options. I basically favor the former option, on the pragmatic grounds that those who come out of a criminology background are more likely to have some impact if this option is embraced as opposed to the alternative. If critical criminologists abandon criminology as a discipline, its conventional crime and crime control focus is simply likely to become reinforced.
Criminology has been largely retrospective or present-focused, explaining crime and its control in the past and the present. A “prospective” or “anticipatory” supranational criminology ideally identifies emerging conditions conducive to fostering increases in supranational forms of crime, and identifies as well optimal policies and practices that prevent, deter, or at least limit such crime. Some criminologists bemoan the relative neglect of criminological research by public policy makers (e.g., Smith, 2006). Although this neglect can be explained in different ways, there is often a fundamental disconnect between both the outlook and the agenda of policy-makers and politicians, and those who produce criminological research. Even mainstream criminology produces much research at odds with political objectives, although a significant proportion of such research has been supportive of these objectives. Criminology as a discipline has been criticized, by those on the left, as serving the interests of the state (Hillyard , Sims, Tombs & Whyte 2004). From a progressive vantage point, then, an immense conundrum for a supranational criminology is this: How would such a criminological endeavor avoid being co-opted by the state to serve its own purposes, and in doing so become complicit in the expansion of state power and oppression?
The establishment of a supranational criminology that realizes a fundamental impact both in the realm of scholarship and policy confronts some immense challenges. But if one adopts the position stated earlier, that potential supranational crimes of the future collectively pose a devastating threat to human existence and in the extreme case to the survival of the species, then it would seem that criminological engagement with international crime and its control is quite imperative.[3]
3. International Crime and Supranational Criminology: Terminological Confusion
Criminologists who address international and transnational forms of crime and the control of such crime have adopted different terms for the criminological enterprise with which they are engaged. This generates a certain level of confusion. Accordingly, some clarification of the optimal meaning of different branches of such criminological inquiry would seem worthwhile. I will here simply define these related or interrelated criminological enterprises quite concisely: A comparative criminology addresses the nature of the crime problem and the form and character of criminal justice systems in countries around the world; a transnational criminology is focused principally upon transnational or cross-border forms of crime, and endeavors on various levels to control and respond effectively to such crime; a global criminology is best applied to the study of the evolving context within which crime and criminal justice now exists; and an international criminology focuses on international crime – or crime that is specifically recognized widely across nations as crime against humanity – and international law, as well as the institutions of international law. In my understanding, the newly introduced term supranational criminology adopted by European criminologists, based especially in the Netherlands, corresponds most closely with an international criminology.[4]
Admittedly, there is considerable overlap between the forms and foci of the different non-traditional branches of criminology just identified, and these terms have been applied quite interchangeably. Some questions that arise in this context are as follows: Can one move toward a resolution of this terminological confusion? Can one achieve some consensus on the optimal use of such terminology? What is the interrelationship of the key foci of these different forms of emergent branches of criminology? Can “canonical” works within each of the criminological branches delineated here be identified, and does such an exercise bring commonalities and differences between them into sharper focus? In many of the growing number of surveys of different forms of transnational and international crime there is often some lack of coherence in the ordering of the topics subsumed under that heading: e.g., terrorism, organized crime, sex trafficking, crimes of states, and so forth. Is there a logical ordering for this range of activities? Is the transnational element proportionally equivalent for all these forms of crime? Can this be reliably measured? Does it make a difference in terms of analysis?
4 Crime, Social Harm and Supranational Criminology
The appropriate meaning of the key term “crime,” and its relationship to the notion of social harm (Henry & Lanier 2001), obviously represents one key point of departure for a supranational criminology.[5] The promotion of a “social harm” approach embraces this notion as a more appropriate focus of concern and interest than crime in the conventional sense (Hillyard, Pantazis, Tombs & Gordon 2004; Pemberton 2004). Criminologists who identify with the supranational criminology project should also engage with the work of “social harm” criminologists, with obvious intersecting points of interest. But how broadly does one stretch the notion of social harm to intersect in relation to “crime,” in some sense? Some criminologists and social philosophers (.eg., Gordon 2004; Pogge 2005) have characterized poverty as the world’s largest source of social harm, a function of historical crimes by Western developed nations, complicit in millions of preventable deaths, and an on-going massive crime against humanity. If one accepts such claims worldwide poverty is encompassed within the framework of a supranational criminology. But such a diffuse conception of crime has the cost that it deflects attention and resources from more narrowly defined forms of international crime, and creates an overwhelming, unfocused criminological perspective. Any such costs of these more diffuse conceptual frameworks have to be evaluated in relation to benefits. A second issue that arises in relation to the “social harm” project is an evaluation of the costs and benefits of literally abandoning criminology, possibly in favor of zemiology, the study of harm itself. Finally, to the extent that the “social harm” approach is associated with the abandonment of even a pretense of objectivity and neutrality, as opposed to direct advocacy on behalf of those identified as the socially harmed, the costs and benefits of such a stance must also be weighed.