This assessment of cultural criminology focuses on the analytical and methodological contradictions that undermine some of its more general claims about the connections between crime and culture. The author critiques some examples of work by cultural criminologists; namely, Jeff Ferrell's "Crimes of Style" (1996), which is a detailed account of graffiti writing as a manifestation of "hip hop" subculture in the early 1990s; and Ferrell and Hamm's (1998) edited collection, "Ethnography at the Edge," which focuses on the methodological and personal dilemmas of intimate ethnographies of deviant and criminal groups. This paper criticizes both of the works as failing to explain what is meant by "culture" and how its meaning can produce a more sophisticated criminological research enterprise. In analyzing the sources and conditioning for any behavior, it is necessary to distinguish cultural influences from the psychological, social, economic, political, and geographic factors that influence the specific criminal behavior of a particular individual in a certain context of events and stimuli. In order to justify its uniqueness, cultural criminology must distinguish what is "cultural" from what is "ethnographic" about cultural criminology. Those criminologists who claim to be advancing a new paradigm for criminological research must be careful not to confuse criminological style with criminological theory and analysis. Their narrow focus on certain criminal behaviors and criminal groups also tends to ignore the broad range of factors that have led to the behaviors under analysis being defined as deviant by mainstream society. 27 references