Criminology has undergone a striking expansion in recent years, giving rise to the development of a number of distinct specialisms and the invention of an entire tradition within the wider social sciences. This text explores the implications of such growth and differentiation, and the challenges these present. It asks how criminology can be revitalised for the twenty-first century through a renewed engagement with social theory and the sociological imagination. At its heart, Eamonn Carrabine proposes that no matter how resolutely steeped in narrow, technical issues, studies of crime and its control are inevitably grounded in larger, more abstract understandings of how social worlds operate. Stretching from the classical thinkers to cutting-edge debates, this innovative text interrogates the links and discontinuities between theories, as well as their relationship to concrete empirical research, across a series of chapters on transgression, control, geography and representation. Crime and Social Theory will inspire students, researchers and scholars interested in advancing current understandings of crime, order and security to develop more convincing and imaginative explanations of complex social processes. processes can be developed.