(De)dramatizing the race question in French criminology textbooks


Julien Larregue, Université Laval; Mélina Chasles, Université Laval

This presentation investigates the role of academics in the making and sustainment of moral panics around immigrants and racial minorities. We analyze how the race-crime relationship has been discussed in 36 French criminology textbooks since the Second World War through content qualitative analyses. In so doing, we are able to identify social lineages where "authoritative" textbooks end up influencing the content of more recent textbooks written by authors who have a similar scientific positioning. Three main positionings can thus be identified: 1) legal scholars-criminologists with high academic capital, whose textbooks offer a comprehensive overview of knowledge on crime, and who devote considerable space to prove that there is a relationship between race and crime; 2) legal scholars who see criminology as peripheral to criminal law and procedure, and whose position is more neutral on the subject of race, which constitutes a secondary issue in their textbooks; 3) sociologists, whose capital is mainly scientific, who have been active since the 2000s, with textbooks focusing more on sociological theory applied to crime and questioning the link between race and crime. While the tradition with higher academic capital and lower scientific capital (legal scholars-criminologists) has played a role in the growing dramatization of racial questions, the tradition with higher scientific capital (sociologists) has always endeavored to attenuate and downplay the moral panic. The debate intensified and polarized over time, in particular since the 2002 presidential « insecurity campaign ».

Non-presenting author: Sacha Raoult, Aix-Marseille Université

This paper will be presented at the following session: