Anthropology of Criminality: On the Current State of Research

Abstract

This article is an introduction to the issue’s special theme on “Anthropology of Criminality: Delinquence as a Component of Traditional Culture in the Past and Present”, featuring contributions by Svetlana Sidneva, Alexander Novik, Oxana Fais-Leutskaia, Alexander Chernykh, and Angelina Potasheva. We assess the developments in, and the current state of, anthropological studies of criminality, focusing on delinquent behavior as a sociocultural phenomenon and taking the cases of several European and Russian regions. This direction of studies still has not been sufficiently explored to date, and perhaps it has been mainly pursued in connection with traditional societies of the Global South. The case studies presented in these contributions are relevant and important, for they help us consider delinquency as based on the remnants of custom law systems and having its expressions in the emic views and notions of the locals and their folklore. The studies draw on ethnographic field research and attempt to offer novel anthropological analyses and reconstructions of the situation in various communities of Greece, Albania, Sardinia, and Russia.