This essay represents an attempt to reflect critically on Young's theoretical agenda and social-political prescriptions. By doing so, we suggest,useful insights can be garnered into both the ongoing difficulties faced by a leftist criminology, and the equally dilemmatic character of the wider and influential developments in social theory upon which it might seek to draw. At the same time, we can consider the problematic nature of narratives of modernity that overhomogenise and universalise experiences of modern societies and their development.Modernity can be understood as a highly differentiated set of processes in which inclusion for some is dependent upon exclusion for others.
This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in The British Journal of Criminology. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Majid Yar and Sue Penna Between Positivism and Post-modernity?: Critical Reflections on Jock Young's The Exclusive Society Br J Criminol 2004 44: 533-549 is available online at: http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/44/4/533
