BOOK Review Masculinities in the Criminological Field: Control, vulnerability and Risk

while the 1990s saw an explosion of criminological interest in the study of masculini-ties, the 21st century has been much slower to advance understanding of the maleness of crime. why that should be probably had as much to with the false promise of an easy answer to a central criminological question more than disinterest in the subject matter. The sociological insight that gender is a relational phenomenon multiply frac-tured across a range of other—sometimes more acute—inequalities presents a formi-dable aetiological challenge to anyone looking to explain male criminality, leave alone change the behaviour of particular men (Connell 2000). At the same time, the obser-vation from within (Jefferson 1997) and without (Segal 1990) criminology that many men’s experiences of masculinity entail feelings of powerlessness remains hard to rec-oncile with the conceptualization of subordination intrinsic to most feminist analyses of violence against women. within this context, the Nordic anthology Masculinities in the Criminological Field is truly to be welcomed. including the introduction, the book comprises 14 contributions, all informed by new empirical data, organized across the three sections: ‘institutional Settings’, ‘vulnerabl