Theorising Green Criminology

Selected Essays

Rob White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367776138
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000451085
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Rob White's pioneering work in the establishment and growth of green criminology has been part of a paradigm shift for the field of criminology as it has moved to include crimes committed against the environment. For the first time, this book brings together a selection of White's essays that explore the theories, research approaches and concepts that have been instrumental to our understanding of environmental harm and eco-justice.

The book provides an additional foundation for scholarship that goes beyond expression of opinion or immediate empirical finding; the emphasis is on systematic analysis and theoretically informed consideration of complex realities. It serves as a platform for further debate and discussion of green criminology's theories, perspectives, approaches and concepts and their application to specific sub-areas such as environmental law enforcement, wildlife trafficking, pollution and climate change. Its aim is not to provide answers, but to stimulate further dedicated theoretical contemplation of environmental harms, threats to biodiversity and extinction of species.

This is essential reading for all those engaged with green criminology, as well as criminological theory, eco-justice and environment and sustainability studies.

1

Theory, research and practicein green criminology

DOI: 10.4324/9781003172093-1

Introduction

This book provides a dedicated exploration of theories, research approaches and concepts relevant to green criminology. It does this in the form of previously published essays that deal with philosophical, ethical and contentious issues, historical, contemporary and future. It brings these materials together for the first time in the one volume. In doing so it presents writings within three broad thematic areas: theory and concepts (tools which are designed to explain events and issues); knowing and not knowing (social constructions of knowledge production, distribution and reception); and responding and acting (interventions and changing existing trends and practices).

There are many green criminology titles that deal with theory – for example, Green Cultural Criminology (Brisman and South, 2014); Southern Green Criminology (Goyes, 2019); and Green Criminology and Green Theories of Justice (Lynch, Long and Stretesky, 2019). In some cases, recent contributions portend to create new distinctive areas of theoretical understanding and practical application, with titles such as Climate Change Criminology (White, 2018a) and Wildlife Criminology (Nurse and Wyatt, 2020). Some of these works focus on specific theoretical issues, some reflect rather narrowly defined political approaches, some are designed to stretch the green criminological imagination in new directions, and some are reactions to dire and escalating existential threats. Monographs and Handbooks also generally incorporate theoretical contributions interspersed with empirical studies and particular topical investigations.

All writing (and thereby, all theory) reflects particular standpoints, specific viewpoints and arbitrary selections of what to include and exclude. The present work is no exception. As explained later in this chapter, the choices herein reflect my own individual preferences, biographical trajectory, geographical location and personal philosophical leanings. But hopefully these, too, will connect with others with similar queries and/or sharing experiences that we have in common. For others, hopefully there is enough here to stimulate and provoke so that continued work and dialogue continues on what I certainly feel are important theoretical and ethical questions of the day.

This chapter outlines the present state of green criminology and new directions in regards issues, theories and innovative research. It provides a brief history of green criminology since the 1990s to the present. It describes the global expansion of green criminology, its main subject areas and identifies several key texts. The discussion refers to the undertaking of green criminological research, including new methods such as visual criminology, and identifies new directions for green criminology, some of which originate from within the field and others linked to global changes in climate and biodiversity.

A note on green criminology

This section provides a brief outline of green criminology and how it is applied to issues of environmental crime and harm. From my perspective, green criminology – in whole and in part – focuses on the nature and dynamics of environmental crimes and harms (that may incorporate wider definitions of crime than that provided in strictly legal definitions), environmental laws (including enforcement, prosecution and sentencing practices), environmental regulation (systems of administrative, civil and criminal law that are designed to manage, protect and preserve specified environments and species, and to manage the negative consequences of particular industrial processes) and eco-justice (the valuing of and respect for humans, ecosystems, non-human animals, and plants).

Given the range of essays included in this book there is no real need to summarise each and every green criminology approach and perspective here. Suffice it to say that green criminology includes criminological research and scholarship comprised of a number of distinct theoretical approaches, and that these collectively deal with many different environmental and animal rights issues. Within this wide umbrella of concerns and considerations there are notable differences regarding focus (for example, specific environmental crimes and harms), orientation (for example, exposition of harms through to environmental crime prevention techniques), perspective (for example, human-centred or ecology-centred) and politics (for example, liberal centrist to anti-capitalist anarchist).

The kinds of harms and crimes dealt with by green criminology likewise vary greatly. They encompass a range of issues related to pollution, wildlife trafficking, illegal waste disposal, threats to biodiversity and human-generated contributions to climate change. They include both legal and illegal environmental harms, and harms pertaining to natural resource use involving extraction, contamination and transformation. The scale of harms is also significant insofar as it ranges from the local to the transnational and global, and back again.

Much of the research and scholarship within green criminology is bound up with national considerations relevant to the specific researcher and scholar. Writers frequently draw upon their own ‘backyard’ for examples, thereby affirming the domestic relevance of what it is they do and well as the relative ease of doing research in familiar territory. They also tend to rely upon publication outlets that reflect their particular peer groups or professional associations. This, too, is changing as more green criminologists appreciate the global interconnectedness of environmental issues and as they respond to longstanding issues pertaining to ‘whiteness’, ‘colonialism’ and ‘Indigeneity’. To this list we could also add ‘heterosexism’ and ‘ageism’, and of course ‘speciesism’. Moreover, as the types and scale of the environmental problems change and escalate, there is a natural tendency to want to communicate with others elsewhere about dilemmas experienced increasingly everywhere. Contemporary green criminology is expanding its horizons in many different directions.

The history of green criminology is likewise global, although this is perhaps more contentious since recognition of this de-privileges at the same time that it universalises. Its origins do not lie in one moment, one voice or one seminal article. Rather, concern about environmental harm has been evident over many decades and across the cultural and linguistic divides, from Latin America to Slovenia (Goyes and South, 2019; Eman et al., 2009). It is not owned nor founded – merely found. Ecological injustice and social injustice have long been recognised and for many decades and centuries experienced first-hand. The labels may change, but the investigations and the activism have persisted throughout the years, well before the advent of what we call today ‘green criminology’.

Just as its past is shrouded in cultural and colonial mystery and subject to myriad influences, the future of green criminology is ambiguous and uncertain. Here, however, this is not simply due to intellectual fortitude, hegemony, ascension or retreat. Rather, especially in the context of rapid climate change, the exploitation of the natural environment is becoming undeniably problematic for each and every one of us. Planet Earth and its resources are what sustains humanity and other, non-human, living entities. These environmental goods and services are diminishing rapidly, putting all into peril. Existential threats arising from human-centred natural resource exploitation necessarily puts into question the dominant worldview of anthropocentrism which justifies and perpetuates such exploitation. The conclusions are clear and simple: we must value nature for its own sake, for our sake.

Environmental harms, however, are not only global in impact and thus geographically dispersed and widespread but have distinctive impacts at local and regional levels. And vice versa, since what happens locally impinges upon the health and wellbeing of the whole. An Australian popular song (widely adopted today as an anti-racist anthem) signals that ‘We are one, we are many’, and this is affirmed in the interrelationships of ecology and humanity on a world scale. This is likewise reflected in the uptake in green criminological research in recent years.

There are now a number of textbooks and handbooks specifically on green criminology, as well as edited collections and authored books that provide increasingly global coverage of environmental crimes. The academic (English-speaking) universe used to revolve around the metropoles of the United States and the United Kingdom, with support from satellite nations such as Canada and Australia. Today, the intellectual domain is increasingly more inclusive of continental Europe, Africa, and South America, and formerly peripheral countries such as Mexico, Vietnam, Colombia and China (Arroyo-Quiroz and Wyatt, 2018; Brisman and South, 2020; Cao, 2017; Gladkova, Hutchinson and Wyatt, 2020; Goyes et al., 2017; Sollund, Stefes and Germani, 2016; Goyes, 2019; Wong, 2019).

Learned societies around the world likewise increasingly feature green criminology sections and forums, from the European Society of Criminology to the Asian Criminological Society, the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology to the American Society of Criminology. The British Society of Criminology has its own green criminology section; the International Working Group on Green Criminology continues to provide an international connection for like-minded scholars.

The expansion of green criminology is not only evident in the English-speaking world. Non-English publications in languages such as Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese and French now feature a rapidly growing number of books and articles about green criminology and environmental crimes. There has been considerable interest of such topics in Iran, Indonesia and China, and these countries, too, are producing local versions of green criminology texts as well as contributing to world literature on environmental crime. The Earth speaks to all and everyone is now speaking about the Earth.

Biography, geography and perspective

Interestingly enough, and reflective of the discussion above, how I talk about the environment is not necessarily how you speak about the environment. Indeed, this is one of the key messages of the present book. My world is not your world, even though we both share and inhabit it.

To illustrate my point, take a look at the two world maps included in this chapter. Now consider the following.

In Map 1.1 (the ‘usual’ world map, which has the Atlantic Ocean at its centre), the place where I live is remote and far, far away. My country (Australia) and place of residence (Tasmania) is positioned way down in the right-hand corner, tucked away from everything and everyone. I used to jokingly begin my conference presentations with ‘I live at the end of the world to speak about the end of the World’. The most important or meaningful (read, metropole) place in my universe in Map 1.1 is centred ‘up there’ (in this case meaning England, the relevance of which flows from the British invasion of this continent over 200 years ago) or ‘over there’ (referring to the United States, to which, because of the Second World War, Australia became a staunch ally). Each of these places is close to the centre on this map, but incredibly distant from where I currently reside. In Map 1.1, the world revolves around these late great imperial powers of the northern hemisphere.

Map 1.1 Map of the world, by political divisions, Altantic centred

In Map 1.2 (which places Asia and Australia at its centre), I am indeed significant. I look each way and see the world as islands and archipelagos and as great land masses off to the left and to the right. This is the world which I inhabit, and which positions me in my own particular and peculiar geographical location. It is also familiar in an existential sense. Australians often holiday in Indonesia (the island of Bali to be precise) and with our ‘cousins’ across the Tasman Sea in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Beyond these relatively short flights (between 3 and 7 hours depending upon place of departure – Australia is a very big country), our next ports of call tend to be Singapore, Thailand (Phuket and Bangkok), Malaysia (Penang and Kuala Lumpur) and the Philippines as well as Hawaii and Vietnam (all within 8 to 10 hours flight time). For London and New York, the time increases to a full 24-hour day’s travel and more.

As a classroom exercise, I frequently ask my students to name a specific country and identify three key environment issues pertaining to that country. I then ask them to point out on a map where in the world that particular country is. In this way we try to ‘learn the planet’ as we find out where things are, who and what lives there, which countries are close by, and how topography, ecology, biodiversity and seasons operate in different contexts. My ‘summer’ begins 1 December – when does yours? Where we live directly impinges upon how we, literally, feel and associate with the natural world and those around us. And the more we learn about others, the less arrogant and assuming we ought to be. Ideally, at least. A world so full of wonder should make us hesitate to privilege, or denigrate, that which is simply most familiar or known to us.

How we think about ourselves and the world around us thus matters – a lot. It is also bound to have an influence on how we explain and communicate about the world(s) we inhabit. Hence, the importance of abstract thought that is attached, not detached, from context.

Map 1.2 Map of the world, Asia/Australia centred

Theory and concepts

The title of this volume is ‘theorising green criminology’. By ‘theorising’ I refer to efforts to categorise the world around us. To do that we use a variety of conceptual tools, including theories (at various levels of abstraction – for example, evolution is a general theory of biological/ecological development, quantum theory that of matter/energy, and so on); concepts (terms of analytical explanation, such as animal or ecosystem); models (for instance, different types of social movement activism, ranging from cooperative to conflictual); and perspectives (that tend to be broader worldviews, such as ecocentrism and anthropocentrism).

All of these terms are highly contested in regards definitions and descriptions. They defy common sense approaches that simplify and somehow try to intuitively describe the world around us without selection or direction. Language creates the reality reflective of the concrete. It is the search for patterns, reliability and continuity. The point of theorising is to deploy and engage with systems of classification that allow us to make sense of that which confounds and confuses. Ambiguity and the apparently illogical can be integral parts of such systems of explanation (witness Heisenberg’s ‘principle of uncertainty’ in the field of quantum physics).

Yet, the point of theory and concepts is to try to move us closer to explaining the world around us. That is, analysis is about developing systems of classification that help us to make sense of the jumble of our senses and voluminous flows of information and data. We need mind mechanisms that...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Theory, research and practicein green criminology
• PART 1     Theory and concepts
• PART 2     Knowing and valuing
• PART 3     Responding and acting
• Bibliography
• Index