Routine Activity and Rational Choice : Volume 5

Two new criminological approaches are defined and applied to categories of crime in Routine Activity and Rational Choice, now available in paperback. Routine activity analyzes the criminal event, and avoids motivations and psychology as topics for discussion, whereas rational choice approaches crime as purposive behavior designed to meet the offender''s commonplace needs, such as money, status, sex, and excitement. These conceptual models are both employed to analyze such crimes as drunk driving, gun use, kidnapping, and political violence. This volume discusses the relationship of these theories to more traditional approaches to crime studies.The Advances in Criminological Theory series encourages theory construction and validation in the articles and themes selected for publication. It also furthers the free exchange of ideas, propositions, and postulates. Following publication of the first volume, Michael J. Lynch of Florida State University asserted that "Advances in Criminological Theory is to be applauded as an attempt to revive criminological theory by providing an accessible outlet." Contributions to this volume include: Pierre Tremblay, "Searching for Suitable Co-offenders"; Raymond Paternoster and Sally Simpson, "A Rational Choice Theory of Corporate Crime"; Richard B. Felson, "Predatory and Dispute-related Violence"; Gordon Trasler, "Conscience, Opportunity, Rational Choice, and Crime"; Ezzat A. Fattah, "The Rational Choice/Opportunity Perspectives as a Vehicle for Integrating Criminological and Victimological Theories"; Patricia L. Brantingham and Paul J. Brantingham, "Environment, Routine, and Situation"; Maurice Cusson, "A Strategic Analysis of Crime"; Richard W. Harding, "Gun Use in Crime, Rational Choice, and Social Learning Theory."

Structuralism began in linguistics and was enlarged by Claude Levi-Strauss into a new way of thinking that views our world as consisting of relationships between structures we create rather than of objective realities. The Age of Structuralism examines the work of seven writers who either expanded upon or reacted against Levi-Strauss.In a panoramic overview of the origins of deconstructionism and its critics, Edith Kurzweil offers a lucid and penetrating portrait of the movement that dominated French intellectual life for much of the postwar era, and which continues to influence the French intellectual milieu. She explains Levi-Strauss''s strikingly original contributions, then proceeds to illuminate the ideas of crusaders and critics. The key figures dealt with include: Louis Althusser, who reinterpreted Marxism through a rereading of Marx''s texts with the help of structuralist techniques; Henri Lefebvre, who remained faithful to Marx''s humanism and was one of the earliest and most vehement critics of structuralism; Paul Ricoeur, whose phenomenology sought to reconcile ethical theory and intellectual pursuits; Alain Touraine, a socialist whose sociology of political action led him to dismiss structuralist concerns; Jacques Lacan, who criticized ego-oriented psychoanalytic theory and practice, and whose own work emphasized linguistic structures in psychoanalysis; Roland Barthes, whose literary criticism, in its determination to reject all false notions and systems, led to a highly idiosyncratic approach that drew upon all systems; and finally, Michel Foucault, whose social histories of deviance, medicine, psychology, grammar, language, sexuality criminology, have reexamined every facet of social theory.Placing these major figures in the context of political, historical, and psychoanalytic currents of the time, The Age of Structuralism is a commanding and far-reaching study of a decisive epoch in intellectual history. Kurzweil''s new