Travels of the Criminal Question

Dario Melossi is a Professor of Criminology in the Faculty of Law at the University of Bologna.Máximo Sozzo, Professor of Sociology and Criminology in the Faculty of Social and Juridical Sciences at the National University of Litoral.Richard Sparks is Professor of Criminology in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh.

• 1. Introduction. Criminal Questions: Cultural Embeddedness and Diffusion Dario Melossi, Máximo Sozzo and Richard SparksPart I. Cultural Embeddedness of Punishment2. Concepts of Culture in the Sociology of Punishment David Garland3. Neoliberalism's Elective Affinities: Penality, Political Economy and International Relations Dario Melossi4. Theorising the Embeddedness of Punishment David NelkenPart II. Diffusion of Post-Fordist Penality5. State Form, Labour Market and Penal System: the New Punitive Rationality in context Iñaki Rivera Beiras6. Post-Fordism and Penal Change: The New Penology as a Post-Disciplinary Social Control Strategy Alessandro De GiorgiPart III. Travels of Discourses of Criminology and Crime Prevention 7. Lombroso's 'La Donna Delinquente': Its Strange Journeys in Italy, England and the USA, Including Scenes of Mutilation and Salvation Nicole Rafter8. The Governance of Crime in Italy: Global Tendencies and Local Peculiarities Rossella Selmini9. Cultural Travels and Crime Prevention in Argentina Máximo Sozzo

It is impossible to do justice to a collection as rich as this within the limits of a journal book review. I can do no better than to encourage the reader to lay their hands on this anthology and explore the depth and breadth of each different analytical format, as presented by the various contributors....the themes which are presented in the papers in this collection are essential for a developed understanding of the future of criminology, and in general to understand analytical sociology. In addition, cultural richness acts as a springboard for deciphering the sociology of law, which can open windows of understanding into the exploration of cultural differences historically, economically, politically and ethically.The collection is a credit to the editors and to the Onati workshop tradition. It would also be remiss not to compliment Hart Publishing for their adventurous collaboration with the ISIL, which enables much wider access to what would otherwise be a limited and even monastic research experience. This is one of the best collections in the Onati series to date, and merits the careful consideration of those interested in cultural theorising as it relates to law, criminology, anthropology and applied sociology.