Ultra-realism

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Ultra-realism is a school of thought within the discipline of criminology and the sub-discipline of zemiology. Ultra-realists revisit the fundamental question that underpins both disciplines - why, rather than seek solidarity and cooperation, do specific individuals, groups or institutions choose to risk harm to others as they pursue their own interests?[1]

Early proponents of the ultra-realist perspective are Steve Hall and Simon Winlow. The original ultra-realist concepts first emerged from the mid-1990s onwards in a series of articles and books. The ultra-realist theoretical framework and research-programme began to take a clearly defined shape in three later works.[2][3][4]

The need for revision

Ultra-realism is a new school of thought in western social science.[5][6][7] Ultra-realists focus on the western way of life and its zemiological outcomes.[8][9] Ultra-realism is a revisionist position constructed for the purposes of revisiting the research findings and fundamental domain assumptions of existing schools of thought to evaluate their validity and, where necessary, suggesting further investigation using ethnographic research methods and advanced concepts.

Basic components of the framework

Ultra-realism's initial empirical focus is on broad crime trends[10] that show discernable shifts over time in various locales, regions and nations. Drawing upon the work of criminologists such as Robert K. Merton, Jock Young and Robert Reiner, they connect these trends to shifts in political economy, culture and subjectivity, investigating their forms and dynamic relations, which together create probabilistic contexts at the local, regional and national levels.

Early preparatory work undertaken before the establishment of the ultra-realist name in 2015 drew evidence from the New Deal period in the US, which between 1933 and 1937 correlated with a significant reduction of crime, violence and homicide.[11] This contrasts with the crime explosions in the US and UK during the deindustrialization process of the 1980s.[12] Ultra-realists analysed the decline in traditional crime from the mid-1990s in the context of advances in detection technology and surveillance and increased incarceration rates.[13] They also researched the mutation of criminal markets, a process in which traditional crimes declined as detection and surveillance advanced while criminal markets expanded silently in the background[14] and new forms of minimally reported and recorded crime appeared,[15][16][17][18] much of it online.[19]

Winlow's sociological work on the displacement of traditional working-class identities and cultural pursuits by those promoted by mass-mediated consumer culture indicated that changes were taking place.[20] His research on the drift into criminality added empirical and theoretical weight to Hall's claim that the cultural context of criminality is the combined pacification and intensification of a competitive-individualist norm.[21][22] Further research added detail to the historical intensification of the practices around this norm and explained how an associated subjectivity was normalised and pacified, leading to the emergence of foundational ultra-realist concepts such as the pseudo-pacification process, objectless anxiety and special liberty.[3] Further ethnographic and theoretical work associated these socioeconomic, cultural and subjective shifts with corresponding changes in crime trends and the expansion of criminal markets.[2][23]

The construction of a theoretical framework for a renewed realist analysis of trends in crime and harm led to the establishment of the ultra-realist project in 2015.[24] Ultra-realists agreed with the left realist and early feminist position that critical criminology must take crime, harm and victims more seriously.[25] They borrowed selected concepts from other realist schools of thought - for instance critical realism's notions of depth structures and the causative impact of absence;[26] speculative realism's critique of correlationism and its emphasis on realist contingency and agency in the anthropecene era;[27] Mark Fisher's notion of 'capitalist realism',[28] a culture that normalises and reproduces the cynical, 'zero-sum' subject[29] frequently encountered by ultra-realist ethnographers in their research.[30][23] The ubiquity of an indifferent attitude towards risking harm to others amongst respondents involved in crime and criminal markets prompted ultra-realism's first move towards zemiology.

Ultra-realists drew upon Slavoj Žižek's notion of fetishistic disavowal[31] to formulate their concept of the 'chosen unconscious',[24] which led to the early adoption of Adrian Johnston's transcendental materialism[32] as a basis for the ultra-realist framework. Further theoretical development was prompted by researchers' empirical findings relating to subjectivity, particularly the clear distinction between expressive and instrumental forms of special liberty.[33] The recognition of the use of criminal or harmful means of either remaining in or leaving specific situations led to the current reformulation of the ultra-realist framework,[34] drawing upon the concepts of homeostasis,[35] non-suffering, sacrifice, and existential difficulties in post-normal times.[36]

Ultra-realists replaced the Lacanian notion of 'the void' in the psyche with the fundamental 'molecular question' - to stay or go - at the root of all organisms.[37] This is a bodily demand for a primordial action-oriented metaphysics that only the affective system's[38] deep 'mood' emotions can translate and mediate. Because the molecular body understands only 'non-suffering' as its initial objective, the stay-go decision involves a calculation of sacrifice, which becomes mythologised to dramatize narratives and enhance the emotional credibility of any answers to the molecular question provided by experience, culture and ideology. The more persistent and committed criminals encountered by ultra-realist researchers throughout the social structure had accepted the cyncial belief that the 'zero-sum'[29] world is natural and timeless. The onus is on individuals to stay with it and actively compete against others but avoid sacrifice at all costs by levering themselves up the hierarchy of non-suffering by any means possible, legal or otherwise.[4]

Ultra-realists argue that criminology can make firmer contributions to the pragmatic political interventions required to stabilise economies, reduce sociosymbolic competition, transcend zero-sum subjectivity and restore ethics to the heart of economy, society, culture.[39] In an attempt to lay the foundations for a theoretical framework that encompasses these issues, ultra-realists constructed the following new concepts specifically for criminological and zemiological research:

  • The pseudo-pacification process. Hall's concept, developed since the mid-1990s in theoretical works[21][22][13][40] is an alternative to Norbert Elias's concept of the 'civilizing process'. Pseudo-pacification is a process that emerged in 12th century England in the wake of major cultural, legal and socioeconomic changes. The fundamental claim is that what is mistaken for 'civilizing' momentum is a fragile by-product of the displacement of physical violence as a normative means of ordering and disrupting social systems with rule-bound sociosymbolic competition acted out in commercial life and consumer culture.[41] The relatively early replacement of violence with pseudo-pacified competitive individualism changed trends in crime and harm,[42] accelerated urbanisation, social atomism and marketisation, increased consumer desires and helped Britain become the first fully industrialised nation.
  • Special liberty. Hall's concept of 'special liberty'[3] is a socially unstructured sense of entitlement that defies the prohibition Kant placed on justifying means by ends. It is the culmination of ethically over-inflated but fundamentally cynical motivations and justifications constructed in the minds of those who are determined to achieve personal ends, whether instrumental or expressive, and have fetishistically disavowed the likelihood that their actions will cause harm to others and their environments.[43] Special liberty operates at the boundary of the pseudo-pacification process's normative structure and threatens its stability.[44]
  • Loss, trauma and nostalgia. Winlow's work on the impact of the loss of identities during the process of rapid deindustrialization in the UK demonstrated how this existential trauma added another dimension to material, communal and social loss.[30][20] As new identities were forged in consumer culture's symbolic order,[45] many respondents were also moved by a deep nostalgia that combines cynicism with a sense of marginalisation and loss of hope.[46] Some individuals immersed themselves in criminal markets to compensate for this loss, achieve status and forge a simulated autonomous identity.[2] Others also drifted into far-right politics[47] manifested in the UK riots of 2024.[48]
  • Objectless anxiety. Hall's concept[3] denotes the psychocultural[49] end result of the operation of mass-mediated ideology in support of an existing way of life. Anxiety naturally lacks an object. By constantly ignoring, denying or reframing the real systemic causes of problems and preventing the ensuing anxiety from locating and understanding the appropriate object of fear on which people can act, the natural condition is artificially, systematically and indefinitely sustained. The concept has been deployed by criminologists researching deviant leisure,[50] drug culture[51] and policing.[52]
  • The assumption of harmlessness. Raymen's concept was the product of a search into the historical background of special liberty in an attempt to explore the cultural context that underlies Western liberal societies' understanding of harm.[53] An unwritten rule in liberal thought insists that, where there is initial doubt, an activity should be assumed to be sufficiently harmless to practice before anyone should suspect it might be harmful. Therefore the onus is always on those who wish to prove it is harmful. This concept is one of ultra-realism's theoretical contributions to zemiology.[54]

Methods – ethnographic networks

Drawing upon earlier ethnographic work from Winlow,[30][45] ultra-realists argue that criminological researchers are capable of capturing the details of the drivers behind crime and criminal markets by networking and generating qualitative data from different geographical locations and sections of the population. For example, projects undertaken to examine rioting in various locations of the UK[23] and political protests around Europe[55] revealed both differences and similarities in experiences, interpretations, motivations and outcomes. Networked ethnographers working in various spaces gathered data from observations and interviews[56] to be analysed in the ultra-realist framework. .

Research projects

A number of researchers have used ultra-realist concepts as they construct their research projects and analyze their findings. Ultra-realists criticize 'backwards research' and insist on 'forwards research'.[57] In the period 2015 to 2025 ultra-realism has provided a platform for research in the following areas:

Crime, deviant leisure and consumer culture

Crime, harm and place

Crime, harm, work and employment

Covid, lockdown and social harm

Riots and far-right politics

  • Winlow, Simon; Hall, Steve; Treadwell, James (2017). The Rise of the Right: English Nationalism and the Transformation of Working-Class Politics. Bristol: Policy. ISBN 9781447328483.
  • Winlow, Simon; Hall, Steve; Treadwell, James (2019-03-01), "Why the Left Must Change", Progressive Justice in an Age of Repression, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, pp. 26–41, doi:10.4324/9781351242059-3, ISBN 9781351242059
  • Kelly, Emma; Winlow, Simon (2022). "Traversing the Fantasy: Why Leftist Academics Must Abandon the Myth of Organic Resistance and Think Again About the Problems We Face". Critical Criminology. 30 (2): 237–244. doi:10.1007/s10612-021-09573-1. ISSN 1205-8629.
  • Winlow, Simon (2025). The Politics of Nostalgia: Class, Rootlessness and Decline. Society Now. Bingley: Emerald. ISBN 9781837535514.

Research methods

  • Treadwell, James (2019). Criminological Ethnography: An Introduction. London: Sage. ISBN 9781473975712.
  • Winlow, Simon; Measham, Fiona (2016). "Doing the Right Thing: Some notes on the control of research in British criminology". In Cowburn, Malcolm; Gelsthorpe, Loraine; Wahidin, Azrini (eds.). Research Ethics in Criminology: Dilemmas, Issues and Solutions. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315753553. ISBN 9781315753553.
  • Hall, Steve (2018). "Criminological Ethnography". In Davies, Pamela; Francis, Peter (eds.). Doing Criminological Research (3rd ed.). London: Sage. ISBN 9781473902725.
  • Winlow, Simon (2022). "Beyond Measure: On the Marketization of British Universities, and the Domestication of Academic Criminology". Critical Criminology. 30 (3): 479–494. doi:10.1007/s10612-022-09643-y. ISSN 1572-9877.
  • Armstrong, Emma Katie (2020). "Political Ideology and Research: How Neoliberalism Can Explain the Paucity of Qualitative Criminological Research". Alternatives. 45 (1): 20–32. doi:10.1177/0304375419899832. ISSN 0304-3754.
  • Rios, Gino; Silva, Antonio (2020). Nuevos Horizontes en la Investigacion Criminlogica Ultra-Realismo (in Spanish). Lima, Peru: Universidad de San Martín de Porres. ISBN 9786124460234.
  • Silva, Antonio; Pérez, Jorge; Cordero, Raquel; Díaz, Julio (2025). Researching Social Media with Children. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 9781032506173.

Violence and masculinity

  • Winlow, Simon (2001). Badfellas: Crime, Tradition and New Masculinities. Oxford: Berg. ISBN 1859734146.
  • Ellis, Anthony (2017). Men, Masculinities and Violence: An Ethnographic Study. Routledge studies in crime and society. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 9781138040274.
  • Ellis, Anthony; Winlow, Simon; Hall, Steve (2017). "'Throughout my life I've had people walk all over me': Trauma in the lives of violent men". The Sociological Review. 65 (4): 699–713. doi:10.1177/0038026117695486. ISSN 0038-0261.
  • Kotzé, Justin; Antonopoulos, Georgios A. (2021). "Boosting bodily capital: Maintaining masculinity, aesthetic pleasure and instrumental utility through the consumption of steroids". Journal of Consumer Culture. 21 (3): 683–700. doi:10.1177/1469540519846196. ISSN 1469-5405.
  • Gibbs, Nick (2021). The Muscle Trade: The Use and Supply of Image and Performance Enhancing Drugs. Bristol: Bristol University Press. ISBN 9781529227949.

Crime, harm and glocal markets

  • Hall, Alexandra; Antonopoulos, Giorgios (2016). Fake Meds Online: The Internet and the Transnational Market in Illicit Pharmaceuticals. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137570888.
  • Kotzé, Justin; Antonopoulos, Giorgios A (2023). "Con Air: exploring the trade in counterfeit and unapproved aircraft parts". The British Journal of Criminology. 63 (5): 1293–1308. doi:10.1093/bjc/azac089. ISSN 0007-0955.
  • Bural, Dilara; Lloyd, Anthony; Antonopoulos, Georgios A.; Kotzé, Justin (2023). ""Fake it to make it": exploring product counterfeiting in Türkiye". Journal of Financial Crime. 31 (6): 1451–1466. doi:10.1108/JFC-10-2023-0252. ISSN 1758-7239.

Policing and corruption

  • Brookshaw, Brendan (2024). Addressing Corruption in the Police Service: The Thick Blue Line. Palgrave critical policing studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783031750670.
  • Kuldova, Tereza; Gundhus, Helene Oppen Ingebrigtsen; Wathne, Christin Thea, eds. (2024). Policing and Intelligence in the Global Big Data Era, Volume I: New Global Perspectives on Algorithmic Governance. Palgrave Critical Policing Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783031683251.
  • Kuldova, Tereza; Gundhus, Helene Oppen Ingebrigtsen; Wathne, Christin Thea, eds. (2024). Policing and Intelligence in the Global Big Data Era, Volume II: New Global Perspectives on the Politics and Ethics of Knowledge. Palgrave Critical Policing Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783031682971.

Homicide and serial murder

  • Yardley, Elizabeth; Wilson, David (2015). Female Serial Killers in Social Context: Criminological Institutionalism and the Case of Mary Ann Cotton. Shorts Research. Bristol: Policy. ISBN 9781447326458.
  • Hall, Steve; Wilson, David (2014). "New foundations: Pseudo-pacification and special liberty as potential cornerstones for a multi-level theory of homicide and serial murder". European Journal of Criminology. 11 (5): 635–655. doi:10.1177/1477370814536831. ISSN 1477-3708.
  • Lynes, Adam; Kelly, Craig; Uppal, Pravanjot Kapil Singh (2018). "Benjamin's 'flâneur' and serial murder: An ultra-realist literary case study of Levi Bellfield". Crime, Media, Culture. 15 (3): 523–543. doi:10.1177/1741659018815934. ISSN 1741-6590

Crime, harm and mass media

  • Hayward, Keith J; Hall, Steve (2021). "Through Scandinavia, Darkly: A Criminological Critique of Nordic Noir". The British Journal of Criminology. 61 (1): 1–21. doi:10.1093/bjc/azaa044. ISSN 0007-0955.
  • Wilson, David (2011). Looking for Laura: Public Criminology and Hot News. Hook: Waterside Press. ISBN 9781904380702. OCLC 727021849.
  • Yardley, Elizabeth; Kelly, Emma; Robinson-Edwards, Shona (2019). "Forever trapped in the imaginary of late capitalism? The serialized true crime podcast as a wake-up call in times of criminological slumber". Crime, Media, Culture. 15 (3): 503–521. doi:10.1177/1741659018799375. ISSN 1741-6590

Crime, corruption and compliance

  • Kuldova, Tereza; Østbø, Jardar; Raymen, Thomas (2024). Luxury and Corruption: Challenging the Anti-Corruption Consensus. Bristol: Bristol University Press. ISBN 9781529236330.
  • Kuldova, Tereza; Østbø, Jardar; Shore, Cris, eds. (2024). Compliance, Defiance, and 'Dirty' Luxury: New Perspectives on Anti-Corruption in Elite Contexts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783031571398.
  • Lynes, Adam; Treadwell, James; Bavin, Kyla (2024). Crimes of the Powerful and the Contemporary Condition: The Democratic Republic of Capitalism. Bristol: Bristol University Press. ISBN 978-1-5292-2829-8.

Technology, harm and crime

  • Yardley, Elizabeth (2020). "Technology-Facilitated Domestic Abuse in Political Economy: A New Theoretical Framework". Violence Against Women. 27 (10): 1479–1498. doi:10.1177/1077801220947172. ISSN 1077-8012. PMID 32757887.The crime decline
  • Kotzé, Justin (2019). The Myth of the Crime Decline: Exploring Change and Continuity in Crime and Harm. Routledge Studies in Crime and Society. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 9780815353935.Child abuse
  • Ellis, Anthony; Briggs, Daniel; Lloyd, Anthony (2021). "A ticking time bomb of future harm: Lockdown, child abuse and future violence". Abuse: An International Impact Journal. 2 (1): 37–48. doi:10.37576/abuse.2021.017. hdl:11268/11957

History and violence

  • Ellis, Anthony (2019). "A De-Civilizing Reversal or System Normal? Rising Lethal Violence in Post-Recession Austerity United Kingdom". The British Journal of Criminology. 59 (4): 862–878. doi:10.1093/bjc/azz001. ISSN 0007-0955.
  • Horsley, Mark; Kotze, Justin; Hall, Stephen (2015). "The Maintenance of Orderly Disorder: Law, markets and the pseudo-pacification process". Journal on European History of Law. 6 (1). ISSN 2042-6402.

Crime, corruption and sport

  • Jump, Deborah (2020). The Criminology of Boxing, Violence and Desistance. Bristol: Bristol University Press. ISBN 9781529203295.
  • Gallacher, Grace (2022), Silva, Derek; Kennedy, Liam (eds.), "The (De)Civilizing Process: An Ultra-Realist Examination of Sport", Power Played: A critical criminology of sport, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, pp. 100–116, doi:10.59962/9780774867818-004, ISBN 9780774867818

Harm and hate crime

  • James, Zoë (2020). The Harms of Hate for Gypsies and Travellers: A Critical Hate Studies Perspective. Palgrave Hate Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137518286.
  • James, Zoë (2020). "Gypsies' and Travellers' lived experience of harm: A critical hate studies perspective". Theoretical Criminology. 24 (3): 502–520. doi:10.1177/1362480620911914. ISSN 1362-4806.

Other Projects

  • Military Studies: Armstrong, Emma (2025). British Army Veterans' Experiences of the Transition into Civilian Life: An Ultra-Realist Perspective. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 9781032797113.
  • Subjectivity and Investment Fraud: Tudor, Kate (2018). "Toxic Sovereignty:Understanding Fraud as the Expression of Special Liberty within Late Capitalism". Journal of Extreme Anthropology. 2 (2): 7–21. doi:10.5617/jea.6476. ISSN 2535-3241.
  • Crime, Harm and Drugs: Ayres, Tammy; Ancrum, Craig (2023). Understanding Drug Dealing and Illicit Drug Markets: National and International Perspectives. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 9781138541825.
  • Criminology and Borders: Briggs, Daniel (2021). Climate Changed: Refugee Border Stories and the Business of Misery. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 9781003004929.

Critique and responses

Further reading

References

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