Aboriginal criminology and the postmodern condition: From anomie to anomaly

The very high rates of Aboriginal over-representation in the criminal justi ce systems of the white 'settler' societies are conventionally explained in terms of pervasive effects of cultural dispossession and social and econom ic disadvantage and dislocation. These approaches have been recently elabor ated to account for the wide regional variations in patterns of offending i n countries such as Canada and Australia. However, these approaches are mor e attuned to the pathologies of the transition into modernity rather than t he current environment of postmodernity which is marked by unstable identit y, indeterminate social and cultural processes and a global rather than a n ational positioning of the Aboriginal subject. A model based on anomaly rat her than anomie as the generative dynamic of the Aboriginal condition is de veloped, based on the insights of theorists within the Durkheimian traditio n.