Crime, Violence and Masculinities: Research Paths and Understanding

Providing a detailed survey of the author’s work over three decades, this book chronicles Tomsen’s studies of interpersonal violence and masculinities, which initiated new approaches and topic areas and informed related theorising.

These novel approaches in social science research sparked new pathways of understanding, which are outlined and evaluated in discussions of contemporary research and theoretical debates regarding masculinities and violence. The work reflects phases of study concerning (1) public (and related ＂private＂) urban male violence; (2) anti-gay/anti-queer assaults and homicides, hate crimes, and the ambivalent official responses to these; (3) the ambiguous views of violence and different masculinities that are generated and circulate in criminal justice systems, and in popular (film and online) culture; and (4) frames of understanding masculine violence that have emerged in recent decades to further explain and address the apparent intractability of much offending, its relationship to related forms of social privilege or disadvantage, and preventive measures and programmes that are intended to counter this.

Crime, Violence and Masculinities provides insight into the long-term production of knowledge about masculinity and gendered violence that will benefit readers engaged in researching these topics, as well as those with an interest in research results and their translation into related theory more broadly.

Stephen Tomsen is Professor of Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Sydney. Previously, he held visiting professorships and fellowships in the United Kingdom (Birkbeck College, Keele University, and the University of Manchester); the University of Washington (UW/Seattle); Leiden University and the Netherlands Ministry of Justice (Den Haag). He was a member of the sociology group at Macquarie University in the 1980s, and then a pioneer in the development of nightlife ethnographies, queer criminology, and crime and masculinity studies - which all developed as new academic fields in the 1990s and 2000s. Stephen is especially known for research on violence, victims, gender, sexuality, drinking and drug use, and the policing of social order. In 2018, he was awarded a life membership of Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras recognising more than forty years of social activism and contributions to the LGBT community.