A new approach to 'Third World' criminology is called for and I will propose in this thesis that the study of 'crime' in the 'Third World' should produce a 'cultural criminology' based on the 'cultural specificity' of a particular society. Central features in achieving 'cultural criminology' are cultural specificity and the cultural context within which all social interaction is located. Cultural specificity as applied to a society is primarily derived from ethnographic materials and should include an account of the pre-history and historical changes within that culture, an analysis of the commonalties and differences (where there are diverse cultures within a State) and an explicit statement of local definitions and conceptions of notions such as 'offence', 'justice' and 'reparation'. To be culturally specific is to present a "bottom-up" approach complementing and informing the customary analyses grounded in the political, economic and structural aspects of a society. This study seeks to determine cultural specificity in four societies within the nation of Papua New Guinea, a country made up of many diverse cultural groups and where more than 8000 languages are spoken. Western notions of "crime" and "offence" are discarded in favour of a search for local definitions and a central theme of this work is the cultural specificity of 'violence'. The notion of 'violence' is problematised and replaced with a contextual analysis of 'responses to injury' (grievances). Linking this analysis with a reinterpretation of decisions of the National and Supreme Courts in serious crimes of 'violence' produces knowledge about a range of responses, beliefs, values, expectations of conduct, the centrality of relationships, requirements for reciprocity and reconciliation, notions of justice and justifications, which, when taken together tend to suggest that despite modernisation, changes have been appropriate into a local conceptual framework for responding to and dealing with injuries.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:596335 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Banks, C. L. |
| Publisher | University of Cambridge |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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