The Distortions of Mainstream Criminology in the Global North: Towards a Southern Criminological Worldview

This article examines the distortions in the understanding of the concept of ‘social action’ in mainstream criminology in the Global North. To this end, it uses analytical and dialectical methods to discuss the concept of social action, analyzing the misgivings and implications arising from the use of notions such as ‘social deviance’ and ‘criminality,’ commonly used by criminologists in the Global North. In response to the naïve assimilation and use of these categories by authors in the Global South, this article presents instead the theoretical category of ‘social divergence’ and then discusses the central issue of this article: a worldview approach concerning social actions targeted by penal control systems, in line with the needs of a criminology grounded in the sociocultural contexts of the Global South.