ACCOUNTING FOR HATE CRIME: DOING DIFFERENCE

SUMMING UP . . . As the foregoing critique has implied, criminology has yet to come to terms with the phenomenon we have come to know as hate crime. Existing theory tends to neglect either or both the structural underpinnings of hate crime, and the situated process that it entails. As my earlier definition of hate crime suggests, to understand hate crime, one must put it in its socio-cultural context. In particular, hate crime-often referred to as “ethnoviolence”— must be understood as one among an array of mechanisms by which deeply ingrained sets of power relationships are maintained. It is, in short, constituted of and by difference. In fact, as this chapter and the remainder of the book will argue, hate crime is a vitally important mechanism for “doing difference.”