Postmodern criminology: Mapping the terrain

An affirmative postmodern criminology is in its developing stages. This article provides some examples of some of the methodological and conceptual tools for inquiry. Accordingly it draws from chaos theory, catastrophe theory, and topology theory, focusing on psychoanalytic semiotics and three exemplary topological constructions: the Mobius band, the cross-cap, and Borromean knots. The relevance to doing critical criminology is indicated by focusing attention on some selected criminological theories that have affinities for an integrative approach, particularly those on “edgework,” “invitational edge,” and the “foreground factors.” This emergent state is more in tune with modeling and with explaining dynamic, nonlinear, transformational states (complexity theory).