Resisting the Bombing of Civilians: Challenges from a Public Criminology of State Crime

In: Social justice: a journal of crime, conflict and world order, Band 36, Heft 3, S. 78-97

Abstract

Kramer, Michalowski, and Chambliss (2010) have recently made a case "for" a public criminology of state crime. A public criminology would bring criminology into "a conversation with publics, understood as people who are themselves involved in a conversation" (Burawoy, 2007: 28). This article will analyze certain challenges that such a public criminology can mount to the bombing of civilians; it may contribute to the public discourse about how to resist this form of state crime. A public criminology of state crime can: (1) challenge the denial and normalization of the aerial bombardment of civilians, (2) challenge the political impunity and legal immunity of the state officials who commit these war crimes, and (3) challenge empire, one of the primary structural contexts within which state criminality occurs. Before these challenges can be analyzed, however, it will be helpful to sketch a theoretical narrative of how the area bombing of civilian populations evolved during World War II and became normalized, that is, accepted and approved within American political culture. Adapted from the source document.