Lois Presser and Sveinung Sandberg (eds), Narrative Criminology: Understanding Stories of Crime

Authors

Adam Veitch, Kansas State University

Abstract

"Over the last two decades there has been an epistemological push in the social sciences to bring narrative into the methodological fold. Narrative social science is steeped in theories of humans as story tellers. The foreword to Narrative Criminology argues that this theoretical line of thought originates in Jean-Paul Sartre’s belief that people are fundamentally storytelling creatures, or “homo narrativus.” The guiding thought here is that stories are central to understanding how and why we act in society. We are all storytellers, and we enjoy sharing tales with an audience. Furthermore, the way that we construct stories of our social lives is central to our subjective identities. Despite the importance of narratives in everyday life, the movement to narrative methodologies is seen as somewhat radical. Narrative methods remain on the fringe of many social sciences, finding their way in through the side doors of qualitative critical sociology, criminology, and other areas. Various qualitative styles of criminology are a part of the critical perspective that examines agency and power within society, however narrative criminology examines similar topics through the means that individuals tell tales of crime and identity."

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Veitch, Adam (2016) "Lois Presser and Sveinung Sandberg (eds), Narrative Criminology: Understanding Stories of Crime," Qualitative Criminology (QC): Vol. 4: No. 2, Article 6.
Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/qc/vol4/iss2/6