Fragmentation of Criminology: A Challenge or a Chance?

Criminology has been changing in a fragmental paradigm, which explains how the discipline emerged, evolved, and developed. Accordingly, four periods are recognized: “outgrowth,” “emergence,” “dispersion,” and “increasing micro-criminologies/accelerating” period. Meanwhile, the increasing micro-criminologies based on the fragmental paradigm have changed the dominant pattern of criminology from theorization to conceptualization and transformed it from empirical theories into critical perspectives. The fragmental paradigm also acts in the form of two contractionary and expansionary models to combine and disseminate the traditional and current trends at two levels of integrative and global criminologies. Finally, the present paper explores the advantages and challenges of fragmental paradigm and by introducing an archipelago template for a better explaining and understanding the paradigm and concludes that fragmentation of criminology can be viewed as a chance for developing the discipline, particularly in the light of new areas like Asian criminology in the era of new micro-criminologies of the third millennium.