Biographical Lessons for Criminology

Abstract

Returning to criminology's old themes of the life story (Shaw, 1930), this article examines the importance of biography for the discipline's interpretation of people's (essentially men's) `criminal' lives. The article proposes that criminological research can be usefully developed from the single `life story' account or `biography' with criminological inferences. Particular attention is paid to Denzin's (1989: 70) ideas on `epiphany', or significant turning point moments in life, which are introduced in the article as useful for interpreting an individual's relationship to `crime' within broad socio-structural contexts. The `hegemonic masculine biography' is forwarded towards the end of the article as a means by which the individual biography and social structural forces can be interpreted anew in criminology that, as a discipline, continues to focus on the actions and outcomes of anti-social male behaviour.