Suchergebnisse

When criminologists consider war, it is most often as a form of governmental white-collar crime. This article expands upon the criminology of war by focusing on how culture and public opinion contribute to the opportunities for war seized upon by policymakers. (Culture and public opinion can also serve as a control on war, but that is not my focus here.) The successful elite promotion of war in the public mind is indirectly criminogenic, or at least crime-enabling. This article offers an initial theoretical framework for examining indirect contributors to aggressive war, particularly culture and ideology, that exist long before military action. A sociocultural approach to the criminology of war reveals that elite criminal military action depends on the partial ideological 'enlistment' of the public. Just as we will never understand street crime without paying attention to the culture and society in which it is committed, we must consider the structural and cultural processes that form the background to war. This argument focuses on the United States, but applies broadly to all contemporary nation-states. Adapted from the source document.