Crime as an assemblage

Abstract

This article seeks to make an original contribution to criminology and the sociology of crime and punishment by elaborating the 'assemblage', a concept which originates in the collaborative poststructuralist philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and discussing its ontological implications for researching crime. I will first introduce the concept and its application. I then discuss the relationship between the assemblage and Michel Foucault's concept of the dispositif. I demonstrate how the assemblage could be used to analyse crime events and discuss questions of change and scale within the assemblage. I conclude by outlining some implications for how adopting this concept would change the way we practice and research crime and punishment.