The making of the professional criminal in Turkey

MERCAN B. A.

ETHNOGRAPHY, cilt.21, sa.1, ss.92-112, 2020 (SSCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 21 Sayı: 1
  • Basım Tarihi: 2020
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1177/1466138118779604
  • Dergi Adı: ETHNOGRAPHY
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, FRANCIS, IBZ Online, International Bibliography of Social Sciences, Anthropological Literature, Index Islamicus, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Social services abstracts, Sociological abstracts
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.92-112
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: dispositional theory of action, primary habitus, crime, criminal habitus, burglary, EXPERTISE
  • Ankara Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

This article explores how the subject becomes a professional criminal, setting out the life experiences of a group of (ex-)offenders in Turkey who have desisted from crime for 15 years. By analysing the socially-individuated trajectories of offenders, it analytically traces out how the primary habitus inherited from lower-class, migrant, doorkeeper cosmology fits in with the secondary criminal habitus: a bodily-mental, informally-trained capacity to carry out burglary. The formation of criminal habitus is dissected into conative, cognitive and affective components to demonstrate how specialist (physical) breaking and entering skills, maintaining composure, self-confidence, resourcefulness and fluency in the Turkish subcultural language of the street are developed in such a way as to professionalise the modus operandi of burglary. Undertaking the dispositional theory of action, the primary contribution lies in exploring the formative principles of the bodily and mental dispositions necessary to commit a criminal action in a non-Western context.