Critical Historical Criminology in the Antipodean: Unthinking History and Criminology in the Global South

Abstract

This paper makes a call for a critical historical criminology of the antipodean and the Global South. It makes a preliminary argument for a critical historical criminology that is against method and in favour of political alliances with critical perspectives that can enrich historico-criminological understandings in an antipodean and Southern context. In particular, this paper explores the potential for a politico-academic alliance between critical historical criminology and postcolonial studies, Southern theory and Indigenous research. Such politico-academic alliances reveal that critical historical criminology is best understood as a negation of both criminology and history and that historical criminology does not have to be understood as a new sub-discipline and academic specialism at the intersection of history and criminology. On the contrary, this paper argues that historical criminology can be approached as a critical attempt to 'unthink the social sciences' and to 'de-discipline ourselves'.