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Cultural Criminology of War

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The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and War

Abstract

Criminology can help clarify how political–economic, institutional, and cultural forces promote criminal aggressive war. This requires drawing on sociology, history, and public opinion and communications research. An important cultural contributor to criminal war is elite legitimation of war by ideological ‘enlistment’ of the public. The cultural and psychosocial mechanisms that contribute to individual-level public support for war can be illuminated using Galtung’s theory of US imperialist culture. The results of this legitimation include socialization promoting fear, alienation causing a pessimistic view of human nature, definitions of the situation suppressing past in-group violence, obedience to authority, and normalization of deviance. These and other processes result in widespread, though not permanent or universal, apathy or enthusiasm about ones’ own nation perpetrating aggressive war.

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  1. Iona College, New Rochelle, NY, USA

    Josh R Klein (Associate Professor)

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  1. Josh R Klein
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  1. Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool, UK, LIVERPOOL, United Kingdom

    Ross McGarry

  2. Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool, UK, Liverpool, United Kingdom

    Sandra Walklate

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Klein, J.R. (2016). Cultural Criminology of War. In: McGarry, R., Walklate, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43170-7_20

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