This concluding chapter returns to one of the most important tasks of southern and all those other criminologies that question the universalist pretensions of conventional criminology and its tendency to use the Global South as, at best, a place to collect data, but rarely if ever as a source of theory. Using the African onto-epistemology of Ubu-Ntu (more commonly referred to as ubuntu) as an example, it suggests that theories from the Global South may provide insights into criminological problems involving crime, violence and ways of preventing and responding to them. It uses two case studies from contemporary South Africa—a violence prevention programme in a densely populated urban township and a shooting incident in a deeply rural area—to illustrate the possibilities. The central argument it advances is that, by giving us the tools to recognise and understand ways of being and knowing beyond the compass of criminological theorising from the Global North, Ubu-Ntu, as southern theory, represents an important, indeed essential, resource in expanding and clarifying our thinking about crime and justice.

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Reflections: Why Use Theory from the Global South?

  • Bill Dixon,
  • Sindiso MnisiWeeks

摘要

This concluding chapter returns to one of the most important tasks of southern and all those other criminologies that question the universalist pretensions of conventional criminology and its tendency to use the Global South as, at best, a place to collect data, but rarely if ever as a source of theory. Using the African onto-epistemology of Ubu-Ntu (more commonly referred to as ubuntu) as an example, it suggests that theories from the Global South may provide insights into criminological problems involving crime, violence and ways of preventing and responding to them. It uses two case studies from contemporary South Africa—a violence prevention programme in a densely populated urban township and a shooting incident in a deeply rural area—to illustrate the possibilities. The central argument it advances is that, by giving us the tools to recognise and understand ways of being and knowing beyond the compass of criminological theorising from the Global North, Ubu-Ntu, as southern theory, represents an important, indeed essential, resource in expanding and clarifying our thinking about crime and justice.