Historical criminology: the interdisciplinary divergence and convergence

Abstract

Interdisciplinary research and practice has now become an imperative and challenging approach of advancing knowledge and innovations. This technique involves a fusion of two or more academic and professional disciplines and synthesizing them with the aim of enriching overall research and development outcome, as well as overcoming the deficit of traditional mono-disciplinary pedagogy. Interdisciplinary activities therefore encourage scholars and practitioners to think across traditional boundaries imposed by their disciplines’ methodology and perspectives in order to achieve innovations for solving societal problems. As the fields of sociology and history, more narrowly, sociological criminology and penology history, developed into professionalized disciplines in the past decades; there have been calls for interdisciplinary alignment between members of and spotlights of the two disciplines. Such calls, termed by Paul Lawrence as ‘manifestos of collaboration’1 have been heard from authors like Davies and Pearson (1999); Emsley and Robert (1990); Lévy and Robert (1984), among others. In recent times, a number of writers have reflected on the gains that historians and criminologists stand to derive from each other’s research data and findings, while the initial disciplinary apathy which accentuated divergence between the two disciplines have now eroded. There has also been a rise in the level of inter-domain penetration. While more criminologists have now recognized the need to interrogate the past in their explanation of current crime trend and criminal justice systems, penology historians have also come to appreciate the imperative of leaning on current criminological findings in their normative attempt to link the past with the future.