Mooney, Gerry and Hancock, Lynn
(2011).
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| DOI (Digital Object Identifier) Link: | http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1080/09627251.2011.550156 |
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| Google Scholar: | Look up in Google Scholar |
Abstract
According to the old adage, ‘the devil makes work for idle hands’! For many, the connections between poverty and crime are a matter of common sense; little scrutiny is required. Our concern is to look at how common sense understandings are re-made and to challenge some common misconceptions about poverty and crime.
We have used the word ‘myth’ in our title, but we are not referring to simple falsehoods about poverty and crime – although de-bunking these is important. Rather, we wish to apply Flood’s (2002) discussion of ‘political myths’ in this context. As Flood (2002) puts it: ‘a political myth can be said to exist when accounts of a more or less common sequence of events, involving more or less the same principal actors, subject to more or less the same overall interpretation and implied meaning, circulate within a social group’. We are concerned with how political myths are circulated, the authority and the pervasiveness of the messages, and the functions of these myths.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
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| Copyright Holders: | 2011 Centre for Crime and Justice Studies |
| Academic Unit/Department: | Social Sciences > Social Policy and Criminology |
| Interdisciplinary Research Centre: | International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research (ICCCR) OpenSpace Research Centre (OSRC) |
| Related URLs: | |
| Item ID: | 29715 |
| Depositing User: | Gerry Mooney |
| Date Deposited: | 10 Oct 2011 08:31 |
| Last Modified: | 26 Oct 2012 04:43 |
| URI: | http://oro.open.ac.uk/id/eprint/29715 |
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