Taking the Trouble: Concluding Remarks and Future Directions

In this final chapter, we examine the key themes that emerge from the collection and take the trouble to point out future lines of fruitful inquiry suggested by contributors. Given that a number of contributors identified the social significance of discursive lacunae in the cultural construction of crime, deviance, and control, we highlight, in addition, the broad areas that Making Trouble fails to fully confront, explore, or develop. Our aim in doing so isnotto engage in self-flagellation because we have not been exhaustive, or captured the “whole truth.” Indeed, Making Trouble has continually argued that studies of crime, deviance, and control are historically and culturally contingent social products. As such they articulate socially situated arguments rather than incontestable master narratives. Thus Making Trouble is itself a cultural product, which, like other cultural products, is imbued with its own will-to-truth, its own inclusions and exclusions, and its own claims-making tactics.