Colin Sumner

Criminology Through the Looking-Glass

David Moxon

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030369408
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030369415
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the work of criminologist Colin Sumner. It re-presents his arguments and ideas on Marxism, ideology, censure, deviance, crime, underdevelopment, social control and the media; situating them in their wider social context. Moxon argues that Sumner should be restored within the criminology discipline as a pioneer who has produced works of great theoretical sophistication and insight. By systematically considering Sumner's entire output, the book shows how his thought involved a gradually deepening understanding of his core notion of ideological censure. His writing is also marked by a growing unease with the effects of late modern capitalism and the quagmire of censoriousness rife in the 21^st century. This book makes clear that Sumner's work was remarkably prescient, and his ideas may help up to make sense of complicated times.

© The Author(s) 2020

D. MoxonColin Sumner Palgrave Pioneers in Criminologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36941-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

David Moxon¹  

(1)

Sheffield, UK

 

 

David Moxon

Sometime after the year 2000, a young criminologist will provide a biographical account of Colin Sumner’s contribution to critical criminology during his sojourn at the Cambridge Institute. Several dozen students […] from the UK and from other countries have now passed through postgraduate studies which were exceptionally informed by his presence.

—Brogden (1993: 304)

Abstract

This chapter introduces the book. It outlines the intention of the book to take a fresh look at the work of Colin Sumner, placing it in its disciplinary and wider social context. The sometimes divisive and controversial nature of Sumner’s work is noted, and it is suggested that despite being a distinctive and important thinker who has produced works of great theoretical sophistication, his influence in criminology has not been as great as it might have been. It is suggested that Sumner’s work has involved a gradually deepening understanding of his core notion of ideological censure, which has given his career a remarkable consistency and clarity of purpose. An outline of the book is provided, and it is noted that the book will refer extensively to original sources, chiefly in order to act as a corrective to some of the misconceptions that abound about Sumner’s work.

Keywords

SumnerCriminologyCensure

End Abstract

It was with a certain degree of prescience that Mike Brogden opened his review of Imperial Policing (Ahire 1991), a book written by one of Colin Sumner’s erstwhile students at Cambridge. While a digest of Sumner’s time at Cambridge has yet to appear, the present book at least partly affirms Brodgen’s confident prediction by offering an assessment of Sumner’s entire work and career to date, including but not limited to his Cambridge years. What Brogden did correctly identify was the sense that Sumner’s contribution to criminology, through both his writing and his teaching, had reached the point where it was deserving of recognition in some way. By 1993, Sumner was well known as a “combative” (Rock 1988: 193) criminologist who had long been part of the radical faction of the “fortunate generation” (1988: 190), but had counter-intuitively landed a position at the Cambridge Institute of Criminology where he had been in post for the best part of a decade and a half. What is now Sumner’s best-known work, The Sociology of Deviance: An Obituary (1994), would be published just a year later.

But this does not tell the whole story. Sumner’s direct and uncompromising style, his longstanding commitment to Marxism or at least a Marx-inspired worldview, his refusal to shy away from criticism of the work of others, and a barely disguised contempt for the direction of the discipline as a whole was not to everyone’s taste. Indeed, the reception to The Obituary only seemed to reinforce Sumner’s status as a polarising figure in the discipline, particularly in North America. As a result, his standing as one of criminology’s most distinctive and important thinkers was never really consolidated, and his early semi-retirement from academia in 2002, though later aborted, saw him increasingly move towards the fringes of the conversation in the discipline at a time when his contemporaries were cementing their legacies.

Against this background, this book takes a fresh look at the entirety of Sumner’s work with the aim of restoring his standing in the discipline. He should be thought of as a criminological pioneer who has produced works of great theoretical sophistication which were well ahead of their time. By systematically considering Sumner’s entire output, the book will show how his thought has involved a gradually deepening understanding of his core notion of ideological censure, a slowly unspooling appreciation of the ramifications of that singular theoretical insight which first appeared in his PhD. This has given his career a remarkable consistency and clarity of purpose. His thinking has been vindicated by the rise of a hyper-individualised, aggressive neo-liberalism where anxious, atomised subjects busy themselves by angrily censuring each other across vast chasms of misunderstanding; his latest works, dripping with contempt for late modern capitalism and its effects, are those of a scholar still aghast at the state of the contemporary social world and still restlessly trying to understand it.

This book, then, is fundamentally a technical exercise designed to showcase Sumner’s work. It aims to re-present his arguments and ideas and act as a resource for those interested in exploring his thinking. At each step Sumner’s work will be situated in its disciplinary and wider social context, as he himself would no doubt recommend. Chapter 2 looks at his early work, up to and including Reading Ideologies (1979) and taking in his remarkable PhD (1976). During this period he outlined rigorous theoretical positions on deviance and ideology, underpinned by a non-dogmatic Marxism. The rest of his career has seen him explore the ramifications of the perspective he developed in these early years, and apply his underlying methodological approach and theoretical position to related areas of thought. Chapter 3 focusses on his work through the 1980s and early 1990s, including the often-neglected Crime, Justice and Underdevelopment (1982) and the landmark collection Censure, Politics and Criminal Justice (1990), where his theory of social censure was given its most comprehensive exposition. Chapter 4 turns its attention to his best known, most controversial and much misunderstood work, The Sociology of Deviance: An Obituary (1994). Chapter 5 looks at what followed in the wake of the Obituary, including those works produced during his truncated retirement from academia, as well as the controversy that the Obituary itself had generated. Chapter 6 brings the story up to date, assessing his most recent contributions which were written after he returned to the academy with a post at Cork. The final chapter will make some concluding observations about the nature of Sumner’s oeuvre and its contemporary significance.

Perhaps more than others, Sumner has suffered from the trend in academia towards simplified, textbook-friendly summations of scholarly work, for his is a complex, cumulative and multifaceted project. As Tierney (2010: 1) puts it, “sometimes the ideas and theories of classic, or at least frequently referred to, writers suffer the fate of messages in Chinese whispers: the original message becomes distorted, or caricatured or oversimplified.” Sumner himself, in an essay on Habermas, has suggested that “there is rarely a substitute for the original texts” (1983: 157). In this spirit, and in order act as a corrective to some of misconceptions that abound about Sumner’s work, this book refers extensively to the originals. It helps that Sumner is an endlessly quotable author who writes with force and panache. Thus it is better we allow him to speak for himself. This approach also has the advantage of bringing some of Sumner’s words, many contained in what are now difficult to find hard-copy editions of long-defunct publications, to a new audience and will hopefully help to preserve them for posterity. One consequence of this approach is that in places the book might appear somewhat repetitive. This is because Sumner’s body of work is characterised in part by a constant series of iterations as he continually refines his basic themes and as he responds to changed contexts with delicately shifting emphases. In this way the book should hopefully provide the reader with a reasonably accurate sense of the precise nature and feel of what we might refer to, hopefully not too bombastically, as the Sumnerian project.

References

1. Ahire, P. (1991). Imperial policing: The emergence and role of the police in colonial Nigeria, 1860–1960. Buckingham: Open University Press.
2. Brogden, M. (1993). Review of Ahire’s Imperial policing: The emergence and role of the police in colonial Nigeria, 1860–1960. British Journal of Criminology, 33(2), 304–305.Crossref
3. Rock, P. (1988). The present state of criminology in Britain. British Journal of Criminology, 28(2), 188–199.Crossref
4. Sumner, C. (1976). Ideology and deviance. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.
5. Sumner, C. (1979). Reading ideologies: An investigation into the Marxist theory of ideology and law. London: Academic Press.
6. Sumner, C. (Ed.). (1982). Crime, justice and underdevelopment. London: Heinemann.
7. Sumner, C. (1983). Law, legitimation and the advanced capitalist state: The jurisprudence and social theory of Jurgen Habermas. In D. Sugarman (Ed.), Legality, ideology and the state (pp. 119–158). London: Academic Press.
8. Sumner, C. (Ed.). (1990). Censure, politics and criminal justice. Buckingham: Open University Press.
9. Sumner, C. (1994). The sociology of deviance: An obituary. Buckingham: Open University Press.
10. Tierney, J. (2010). Criminology: Theory and context (3rd ed.). Harlow: Pearson.

© The Author(s) 2020

D. MoxonColin Sumner Palgrave Pioneers in Criminologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36941-5_2

Begin Abstract

2. Sumner and Ideological Censure

David Moxon¹

(1)

Sheffield, UK

David Moxon

Abstract

This second chapter focusses upon Colin Sumner’s work during the 1970s which furnished the methodological approach and the notion of ideological censure that have provided the foundation stones for the remainder of his scholarly career. The chapter opens with a discussion about the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Sumner and Ideological Censure
• 3. After Censure
• 4. Sumner and the Death of Deviance
• 5. After the Death of Deviance
• 6. Sumner and the Looking Glass
• 7. After Sumner?
• Back Matter