Criminologies of the global south: critical reflections

This article attempts an ambitious undertaking by scholars collaborating from far flung parts of the globe to redefine the geographic and conceptual limits of critical criminology. We attempt to scope, albeit briefly, the various contributions to criminology (not all of it critical) from Argentina, Asia, Brazil, Columbia and South Africa, in alphabetical order. Our aim is not to criticize the significant contributions to critical criminology by scholars from the Global North, but to southernize critical criminology—to extend its gaze and horizons beyond the North Atlantic world. The democratization, decolonization and globalization of knowledge is a profoundly important project in an unequal and divided world where knowledge systems have been dominated by Anglophone countries of the Global North (Ball, this issue; Connell, 2007). Southernizing fields of knowledge represents an important step in the journey toward cognitive justice as imagined by de Sousa Santos (2014). While we can make only a very small contribution from a selected number of countries from the Global South, it is our hope that others may be inspired to join the journey, fill in the gaps, and bridge global divides