Over the past decades the burgeoning and arguably revolutionary academic movement of de-colonial thinking and Southern Epistemologies in social sciences have started to challenge Western hegemonic knowledge. This de-colonial shift, has arguably forced Western forms and production of knowledge to start acknowledging the pivotal importance of incorporating Southern perspectives into their realms. While there is a growing awareness in various strands of social sciences on Southern perspectives, arguably Criminology is with few exceptions (e.g. Agozino, 2003; Aas, 2012; Lee and Laidler, 2013), still a discipline of the West (or the North) and particularly U.K. and U.S. dominated. Hence it is still blind to the subalternization of knowledge that was built into colonialism (Mignolo, 2000; Dussel, 1993). That is, that it remains blind to the fact that during the long process of colonisation, during which Criminology emerged, up until the contemporary state of globalisation, the European frame and conception of knowledge has “subalternized other types of knowledge” (Mignolo, 2000:13). Consequently, although colonialism has ended, coloniality- the hegemony of Western knowledge over other types of knowledge- has not within the realms of Criminology (Quijano, 2000).
This paper aims to contribute in putting an end to coloniality and starting to place southern perspectives in their rightful and visible position within Criminology. By adopting the de-colonial perspective of “border thinking” (Mignolo, 2000:84) which calls us to think both from western and local traditions of knowledge, the paper will draw on the work of the Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969) and his interpretation of ‘black’ delinquency at the beginning of the 20th Century. It will be argued that while Ortiz was initially influenced by Lombroso (1835-1909), the Italian father of Criminology and particularly his typology of the atavist criminal (born criminal), this influence was very short lasted. Ortiz shifted very quickly his interpretation by historically contextualising ‘black’ criminality and tracing its roots to the slave trade, colonialism, imperialism and crimes of the white and powerful elites of that time. At the same time he critically interrogated the role of science and particularly of Individual Positivist Criminology as represented by Lombroso’s work, in reproducing racism and perpetuating negative racial stereotypes on Afro-Cubans, in a way that served the maintenance of power for the white elites. These forms of critical interrogation of crime and in the social construction of the criminal did not emerge in the West (U.K. and U.S.) until the 1960s-70s (namely with the development of Marxist and then later from the 1990s onwards of Critical and Cultural Criminology). In other words, this paper will show that Criminology as a discipline would have developed its critical lens much quicker if it had incorporated developments of knowledge in the South. Arguably a more fulsome consideration of perspectives stemming from the South can actually change the whole historical disciplinary trajectory as we know it so far and as such, they are important to be considered.
References:
Aas, KF (2012) ‘The earth is one but the world is not’: Criminological theory and its geographical divisions. Theoretical Criminology, Vol. 16(1): 5–20.
Agozino, B (2003) Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason. London: Pluto.
Dussel, E. (1993) “Eurocentrism and Modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt Lectures)”, Boundary 2, Vol. 20 (3), pp. 65-76
Lee,M. and Laidler, K.J. (2013) "Doing criminology from the periphery: Crime and punishment in Asia", Theoretical Criminology, Vol. 17(2):141-157
Mignolo, W.D. (2000) Global Histories/ Local Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Chichester, West Sussex: Princeton University Press
Quijano, A. (2000) “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America”, Translated by Michael Ennis, Nepantla (Views From the South), Vol.1.3: 533- 580