Cultural and Criminal Studies

Author: Li Xihai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: I first got to know Professor Li Xihai through his academic journal. Professor Li has long served as the editor-in-chief of Shandong Police Journal, which has consistently highlighted criminal law, been distinctive, and academically outstanding, with a high citation rate and thus deeply favored by the academic community. Upon reading this academic journal, I felt that it was like its editor—meticulously pursuing innovation in every aspect, from overall planning to section design, from academic guidance to nurturing new talent. Innovation is a prominent feature of this journal. In the early 1990s, I read Professor Li’s book Criminal Investigation Thinking. This book pioneered the study of criminal investigation thinking in China, applying general research findings in the field of thinking science to criminal investigation, revealing the patterns and characteristics of investigative thinking. It holds significant importance for the investigative subjects to achieve scientific and modern thinking methods, thereby improving investigative efficiency and case-solving levels. The book broadened the scope of criminal investigation research, demonstrating an innovative spirit in its topic selection, system construction, and theoretical explanations. It clearly exhibited the characteristics of emerging and interdisciplinary fields, leaving a deep impression on me.
Like his academic journal, Professor Li’s scholarly monographs prioritize theoretical innovation as their fundamental value. This is a key reason for his continuous success in academic research. Professor Li has always attached great importance to the theoretical study of criminology, not only through his edited journal but also through his own research, achieving outstanding accomplishments in this area. He has long been concerned with the relationship between culture and crime. I remember that in the early 1990s, he published an article titled Culture, Cultural Environment, and Juvenile Crime. Due to its novel perspectives, it was regarded as one of the representative theoretical viewpoints in the study of the origins of crime and was summarized as the "Cultural Nature Theory." Whether this summary is accurate or not is debatable, but it is a fact that the paper had a certain influence in academia due to its innovative ideas. This book, Culture and Crime Research, is essentially a comprehensive expansion, enrichment, supplementation, and development of the theoretical viewpoints presented in that paper.
The study of the relationship between culture and crime is not only correct but also highly important. Culture not only influences the emergence of crime but can also define (or redefine) crime. For example, regarding the act of a mother committing suicide with her two children, different countries have entirely opposite judgments on whether it constitutes a crime. The relationship between culture and crime is fundamental, and to some extent, it can even be described as an "ultimate" relationship. Therefore, this topic has long attracted the attention of criminologists, who have conducted various studies on it. Western criminological theories such as the "Culture Conflict Theory" and the so-called "Subculture Theory" are influential in this regard. The renowned Chinese sociologist and criminologist Yan Jingyao, as early as the 1930s, paid attention to this issue. In his doctoral dissertation, China’s Crime Problem and Its Relationship with Social Change, he dedicated a chapter to "The Culture of Criminals" and proposed the famous arguments that "to understand crime, one must understand the culture in which it occurs" and "crime can only be fully explained by culture." These insights have deeply inspired later scholars.
Research on the relationship between culture and crime by foreigners and earlier Chinese scholars is not scarce. However, this relationship remains an eternal research topic. Culture is concrete—it is specific to a particular time and place. Different countries, ethnic groups, regions, and periods have different cultures, making the study of the relationship between culture and crime a perpetually relevant academic topic worthy of continuous innovative research by criminologists.
Furthermore, if the relationship between culture and crime is fundamental, then the academic research level of a country on this issue should also be one of the important indicators of the country’s overall criminological research level. I believe that as criminological research in China continues to flourish and develop, new achievements in the study of culture and crime will continue to emerge. However, for a long time, the Chinese criminological community has not placed sufficient emphasis on this issue, resulting in limited achievements, particularly in comprehensive, systematic, and in-depth academic monographs on culture and crime. This is a pity for the field of Chinese criminology. Professor Li’s academic work is an innovative attempt in this area, to some extent filling this gap, and thus its publication is worth celebrating.
This book treats culture and crime as a whole, conducting a comprehensive and systematic study. From the ontological study of culture and crime to its general and classified research, it explores the relationship between culture and crime in a layered manner. It not only delves into the fundamental theories of culture and crime but also reveals the impact of various cultural forms on crime, while emphasizing the role of subcultural forms in specific crime types. This multifaceted approach provides a relatively complete theoretical framework for the topic, demonstrating its innovative nature.
The book actually takes the intersection of cultural studies and criminology as an entry point to study crime, thus exhibiting the characteristics of interdisciplinary and marginal fields. This requires the author to be familiar with and understand the basic theories and latest research findings in cultural studies. As the content of the book shows, whether in its ontological, general, or classified research on culture and crime, it fully reflects this point. Particularly in the studies of cultural environment and crime, cultural communication and crime, cultural consumption and crime, and cultural conflict and crime, the cultural theories involved are not only specific but also cutting-edge.
Since crime is a complex social phenomenon with complex psychological motivations, research in this area involves theoretical knowledge from multiple disciplines, such as sociology and psychology. In the classified research, due to the need to clarify the relationship between various subcultural forms and specific crime types, it involves knowledge from more specific disciplines. For example, studying market culture and economic crime involves economics; studying gang culture and organized crime involves history; studying power culture and corruption crime involves political science. From the perspectives of numerous disciplines, this cross-disciplinary study of crime offers fresh angles and knowledge, another manifestation of its innovation.
The challenge of this research lies in grasping the entry points for the connection between macro cultural phenomena and crime and the mechanisms influencing crime. Professor Li does not shy away from these difficult issues, confronts them directly, and works hard to overcome them, thus arriving at many unique theoretical insights. This once again demonstrates the author’s innovative nature. For instance, when studying the mechanism of cultural environment influencing crime, the book argues that the impact of cultural environment on the socialization process of individuals lies in creating specific external conditions for the interplay of their animalistic and cultural natures. A good cultural environment can promote the reinforcement of cultural nature and the weakening of animal nature, creating favorable conditions for cultural nature to overcome animal nature. A poor cultural environment, however, can lead to the weakening of cultural nature and the strengthening of animal nature, providing necessary conditions for animal nature to break free from cultural nature. Criminal behavior is the result of the malignant expansion of animal nature and the exclusion of cultural nature, so a poor cultural environment acts as a catalyst for crime.
Similarly, when studying the mechanism of cultural conflict leading to crime, the book argues that cultural conflict can trigger crime not only because it causes conflicts in behavioral norms but also because it fosters the formation of criminal psychology and weakens criminal control, including legal and moral control. Cultural conflict weakens legal control because it creates confusion in value choices, and it weakens moral control because it leads to confusion in personality worship. These views are very fresh.
It can be said that this book, like Professor Li’s previous academic works, prioritizes theoretical innovation as its most important pursuit. "Innovation is the soul of a nation’s progress and the inexhaustible driving force for a country’s prosperity," and it is also the lifeblood of scientific research. In today’s increasingly academic environment, vigorously advocating and encouraging an innovative spirit should be a top priority. I sincerely hope that the field of criminology will see more innovative works in the future.