Constitutive criminology

rdf:langString Constitutive criminology

rdf:langString Constitutive criminology is an affirmative, postmodernist-influenced theory of criminology posited by Stuart Henry and Dragan Milovanovic in Constitutive criminology: beyond postmodernism (1996), which was itself inspired by Anthony Giddens' The Constitution of Society (1984), where Giddens outlined his theory of structuration. In this theory, crime is conceived as an integral part of the overall production of society and is a co-production of human agents and the cultural and social structures they continuously create. This theory defines crime as the harm resulting from humans investing energy in relations of power that denies or diminishes those subject to this investment, their own humanity. From the perspective of constitutive theory, a criminal is viewed as an "excessive investor" while the victim is known as a "recovering subject".