Interrogating Popular Culture: Deviance, Justice, and Social Order

Edited By Sean E. Anderson and Gregory J. Howard

When ti first appeared in 1993, the Journalof CriminalJustice and Popular Culture was breaking ground in more ways than one. At that point,the idea of electronicpublication was still innovative in itself, but more adventurous still was the whole notion of a serious academic journal devotedto the interaction of criminal justice and popular culture. Historically, criminologists and criminal justice scholars had usually viewed themselves a s objective social scientists whose highest goal was to analyze the problems of crime and deviance in terms of rigorous quantitative or qualitative research, which often meant denouncing the vulgarand harmfulmyths presented by the m e d i aa n dpopular culture. From the 1970s, however, newer scholarship, influenced by media research and particularly the cultural studies movement, showed how impos- sible it was to frame problems without paying due attention to the role of popular culture, which performed s o crucial a role in shaping the social and political attitudes not merely of the "uninformed masses," but also of legisla- tors, experts and policymakers.

Harrow and Heston Publishers Guilderland. New York. 1998. 144p.