Criminalization

Anthropologists have had a long‐standing interest in crime and criminalization in different parts of the world. Although criminal anthropologists of the late nineteenth century influenced understandings of criminals and criminal behavior through an embrace of social Darwinism and positivistic methods, anthropological inquiries on criminalization have since problematized beliefs about who commits crime and what constitutes lawbreaking across societies and contexts. What then has anthropology contributed to knowledge about criminalization? How are anthropological studies of criminalization distinct from knowledge produced by criminology, the discipline whose primary object of inquiry is crime? And are there synergies between them?