Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• farhad Allahverdi

Assistant Professor, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Mazandaran, Mazandaran, Iran.

Abstract

Over the past two decades, narrative criminology has emerged as a theoretical approach that emphasizes the constitutive, directive, and justificatory power of stories in the formation of criminal action. Adopting an immanent critique - an evaluation based on the standards the approach itself has set - this article examines whether narrative criminology has managed to move beyond the prevailing assumptions of mainstream criminology, or has merely reproduced classical concepts in new language. The findings indicate that the approach faces three fundamental misconceptions (reducing it to a research method, treating it as truth-discovery, and conflating it with mere storytelling) and two structural limitations (narrative silence and the politics of narrative). The central argument of the article is that the "tension between narrative and its non-discursive remainders" - such as traumatic silence and the embodied, habitual dimensions of action - is not an epistemological flaw, but rather the very condition of possibility for narrative criminology itself. Narrative criminology remains faithful to its theoretical promise only when, aware of these limitations and attentive to the role of power in the production, consumption, and appropriation of stories, it commits to partial and situated explanations of crime narratives and redefines itself as a "boundary-conscious analytical lens".

Keywords

• Narrative Criminology
• Narrative Turn
• Crime Stories
• Narrative Causality
• Narrative Silence
• Politics of Narrative