Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Note on Terminology
- About the Author
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Beyond the Wall
- 1 Reimagining a Black Art Infused Criminology
- 2 The People Speak: The Importance of Black Arts Movements
- 3 Shadow People: Black Crime Fiction as Counter-Narrative
- 4 Staging the Truth: Black Theatre and the Politics of Black Criminality
- 5 Beyond The Wire: The Racialization of Crime in Film and TV
- 6 Strange Fruit: Black Music (Re)presenting the Race and Crime
- 7 Of Mules and Men: Oral Storytelling and the Racialization of Crime
- 8 Seeing the Story: Visual Art and the Racialization of Crime
- 9 Speaking Data and Telling Stories
- 10 Locating the Researcher: (Auto)-Ethnography, Race, and the Researcher
- 11 Towards a Black Arts Infused Criminology
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2021
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Note on Terminology
- About the Author
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Beyond the Wall
- 1 Reimagining a Black Art Infused Criminology
- 2 The People Speak: The Importance of Black Arts Movements
- 3 Shadow People: Black Crime Fiction as Counter-Narrative
- 4 Staging the Truth: Black Theatre and the Politics of Black Criminality
- 5 Beyond The Wire: The Racialization of Crime in Film and TV
- 6 Strange Fruit: Black Music (Re)presenting the Race and Crime
- 7 Of Mules and Men: Oral Storytelling and the Racialization of Crime
- 8 Seeing the Story: Visual Art and the Racialization of Crime
- 9 Speaking Data and Telling Stories
- 10 Locating the Researcher: (Auto)-Ethnography, Race, and the Researcher
- 11 Towards a Black Arts Infused Criminology
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
First, I would like to say thank you to those who have purchased my book, as I hope you will take from its contents what you need. Writing Reimagining Black Art and Criminology has been a troubling, evocative, and humbling experience in equal measure. However, at a time when increased right-wing populism continues to undermine progressive ideas about racial parity, I was constantly reminded that the struggle is far from over and must continue. Undeterred by this state of affairs, my new book seeks to bring urgent attention to a provocative criminological perspective viewed through the lens of ‘black art’. To the cynics, critics, and race deniers, I say “welcome”. Exploring the arts and creativity in relation to crime and its formations is not a new phenomenon. O’Brien (2008) connects Victorian poetry to developments in the Victorian discourse on crime. Jacobsen (2014) provides a context to reconsider and reimagine how criminological knowledge may be creatively, poetically constructed, obtained, corroborated, and applied. Saleh-Hanna (2010), similarly, sees black resistance through the use of music. Zoboi and Salaam (2020) have also written a novel in verse about a black boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. In essence, what I am putting forward here is not new, but instead is part of a continuum of art-infused criminological thinking and expression. The need for revision of our current thinking using creative means is upon us. Hartney and Vuong (2009) see non-white peoples across the world as being alarmingly overrepresented in the criminal justice system. While Lammy (2017) asserts that if the agencies of the criminal justice system cannot provide evidence-based understandings of racial disparities, then reforms should be introduced to address this differential racialization of crime and its formations. Ferell (2014) argues that criminology remains largely a self-perpetuating practice that lacks the ability to look outside itself. Ferell further points out that: ‘Criminology today is crippled by its own methodology, its potential for analysis, critique and appreciation lost within a welter of survey forms, governmental data sets and statistical manipulations’ (2014: 285). Travis et al (2005) see the unprecedented levels of incarceration and re-entry for black offenders as having widespread and poorly understood consequences for their families and the communities they come from.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Reimagining Black Art and CriminologyA New Criminological Imagination, pp. viii - xvPublisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021