Criminology à la Francaise : French academic exceptionalism

Abstract

On 13 February 2012, a decree established criminology as a new discipline in the French university system. Six months later, the new Ministry of Higher Education and Research rolled back the reform and abolished the newly created section of criminology. Because French university governance remains centralized and corporatist, any project that transforms an interdisciplinary field of research into a fully fledged academic discipline is difficult to carry out, all the more when the latter bears a political and utilitarian dimension as criminology does. It comes, then, as no surprise that, in the hyper-disciplined French university, the disciplinary enterprise of institutionalizing criminology is fraught with difficulties, not least of which is the existence of an undisciplined academia.