Introduction: The Promises and Challenges of Crime Ethnographies

2021 ◽  
pp. xii-17
Author(s):  
Kevin D. Haggerty ◽  
Sandra M. Bucerius ◽  
Luca Berardi
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Deviant Behaviors ◽  
Policy Initiatives ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Positivist Science ◽  
The Many ◽  
Local Variability

This chapter outlines some of the scholarly and political appeals of crime ethnographies and identifies a series of factors that will pose challenges to this methodological approach over the longer term. It briefly charts the early evolution of crime ethnographies, noting how they have expanded to encompass the study of a larger range of criminal or deviant behaviors, while also focusing on the operation of criminal justice institutions. A more diverse group of scholars than was historically the case now conduct such research, individuals who typically embrace a more reflexive orientation to knowledge production than is characteristic of positivist science. Crime ethnographies provide invaluable grounded insights into the lives of participants and processes that are often otherwise hidden or hard to reach. Politically, ethnographies tend to humanize individuals and groups that are easily vilified, while reminding politicians and officials of the need to be conscious of local variability when adopting policy initiatives that originated in different contexts. Notwithstanding the many benefits of this approach, a series of developments now present challenges to crime ethnographies as they are currently practiced, including the changing technological profile of crime, as well as university-based developments, such as changes to the systems for overseeing and rewarding academic work and research ethics protocols that do not accord with the philosophical assumptions of ethnographers or the practical realties of ethnographic fieldwork.

scholarly journals Naked in the Face of Contamination

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia Fiske
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Normal Forms ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Risk Assessments ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Chemical Exposures ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Ecuadorian Amazon ◽  
The Face ◽  
Material Process

While chemicals are often described and acted upon in technoscientific forums as isolated, discrete entities, vernacular experience points to possibilities of experiencing, speaking about, and imagining chemical exposures that have otherwise been rendered politically obsolete. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in the Ecuadorian Amazon, this article invokes accounts of daily life in order to argue that vernacular experience is necessary for understanding what it means to live in a place of environmental hazard, and for building a more inclusive politics of knowledge production in models and assessments of toxicity. Descriptions such as “naked in the face of contamination,” “swimming in oil,” “smoke thick like marmalade,” or exclamations of pain re-lived “tsaac!” refuse hegemonic assumptions about how chemicals alter and enable life. To take these descriptions of life seriously is to recognize the ways that chemical concentrations often far exceed the ‘normal’ forms and quantities modeled in risk assessments of standard oil operations. The chemically saturated present demands a reconfiguration of toxicity – as a socio-material process, epistemic concept, and embodied experience – in order to work towards political and environmental, as well as epistemological, justice.

“Let us, therefore, stimulate one another”: John Fothergill’s Letters and the Notion of Value and Professionalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Hartwig ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
American Hospital ◽  
Teaching Tools ◽  
Transatlantic Trade ◽  
Medical Library ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
Pennsylvania Hospital ◽  
The Many

Around the middle of the eighteenth century, the London Quaker John Fothergill, M.D., established himself as an essential node in a transatlantic epistolary network. Via letter writing, Fothergill closed book deals, forwarded anatomical drawings, and exchanged botanical seeds and investment schemes that eventually culminated in the financial politics of the first North American hospital, the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. He also provided books for the Hospital’s first Medical Library and made suggestions for people to be employed and teaching tools to be used in the first anatomical lectures in Philadelphia. Fothergill’s network sheds much needed light on transatlantic trade and the circulation and commercialization of medical print media in North America’s first regulated medical institutions. The many letters that he wrote provide insights into practices of knowledge production in these institutions. In this article, Fothergill’s epistolary web is represented as a semi-institutionalized network showing colonial medical practice to have been linked to semi-institutionalized spaces that were themselves connected to custodians of knowledge but also functioned as social networks. I argue that such networks were user-based and community-driven, and that they relied on a semi-authoritarian dispersion of knowledge.

Mixed Methods, Ethnography, and Criminology/Criminal Justice Research

2021 ◽  
pp. 134-154
Author(s):  
Nigel G. Fielding
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Future Contribution ◽  
Justice Research ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Criminal Justice Research ◽  
Crime And Criminal Justice

This chapter provides an overview of the historical dimensions of ethnographies using mixed-methods approaches, supported by examples from selected landmark works within this tradition. It presents the epistemological assumptions about knowledge production, positionality, and the types of questions typically asked by a criminologist using mixed methods and makes clear how they differ from ethnographies using other approaches and traditions. The chapter considers what ethnographies using a mixed-methods approach can produce that other approaches may not be able to. It then details how ethnographies using mixed methods can contribute to policy development, framing this against the perspectives and needs of policymakers. The chapter concludes by assessing the potential future contribution of ethnographically grounded mixed-methods research to crime and criminal justice issues.

Seeking Criminal Justice Clarity amid Historic Chaos

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Douglas A. Berman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Federal Sentencing ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Justice Systems ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Impact

The remarkable events of 2020 have disrupted and altered all sorts of plans, and this issue of FSR covers some of the many varied criminal justice and sentencing echoes of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and urgent new calls for racial justice. The intense and dynamic topics that have come to define 2020 in the United States necessarily impact, and may even consume our thinking, about modern criminal justice systems generally and federal sentencing realities in particular. Included in this FSR issue are reports and data and commentary that predate spring shutdowns and summer protests and related developments; but these materials now carry distinctive meaning and even a new urgency in light of 2020 challenges. It is impossible to fully assess in short order the impact of massive societal changes on the federal sentencing system, but we are hopeful this FSR issue can provided added perspective to a rapidly changing world that still often seems hard to fully grasp.

Mobilized by Injustice

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Hannah L. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Racial Group ◽  
Central Mechanism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Criminal Justice Contact

Chapter 1 introduces many research questions, around which the rest of the volume organized. Under what conditions are individuals mobilized by criminal justice experiences and under what conditions do these experiences lead to demobilization? What is the central mechanism connecting criminal justice contact to political mobilization outcomes? Do mobilization and withdrawal vary by racial group? Lastly, does political mobilization and withdrawal vary by type of activity? Chapter 1 further situates the inquiry in a longer history of resistance around issues related to criminal justice, outlines the methodological approach of the research, and gives an overview of the remainder of the manuscript.

The ICTY is Dead! Long Live the ICTY!

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-82
Author(s):  
Carsten Stahn
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Institutional Culture ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

The chapter sets the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) legacies into a broader context of international criminal justice. It presents different approaches towards the many legacies of the ICTY. The chapter engages with the several phases that the Tribunal has passed, discussing their positive and negative points. It then examines the normative legacy of the ICTY, arguing that, although some gaps exist, the overall record of the ICTY is marked with several normative innovations. The chapter then visits the procedural legacy of the ICTY, in the sense of how the Tribunal made justice heard and seen. Lastly, the chapter discusses the institutional culture of the ICTY and its legacy to other international criminal tribunals. With this analysis, the chapter claims that the ICTY legacies are living beings, which will continue to be transformed throughout the history of international criminal justice.

scholarly journals Gendering the care/control nexus of the humanitarian border: Women’s bodies and gendered control of mobility in a EUropean borderland

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 905-922
Author(s):  
Nina Sahraoui
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Medical Procedures ◽  
Feminist Geography ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Migration Management ◽  
Bodily Experiences

Building upon and contributing to a feminist geography of borders, the chosen methodological approach examines women’s bodily experiences at a Southern EUropean border, the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Drawing on three months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article scrutinises the care interactions unfolding in a Centre for Immigrants between medical humanitarians and women residing there in their position as both migrants and patients. The analysis foregrounds the gendered forms of domination that the care function of the humanitarian border entails. I argue that medical humanitarians are vested with the power to decide over women’s mobility in the name of care on the basis of an entanglement of administrative and medical procedures in this border context. While women are subject to greater humanitarian intervention due to the association of their embodied states with vulnerability, the biopolitical migration management of the border grants medical humanitarians a decision-making authority. The article uncovers how medical humanitarianism, enmeshed in the border regime, yields gendered constraints from practices of immobilisation to imposed practices of mothering. It traces the rationale for these practices to racialised and gendered processes of othering that usher in perceptions of undeservingness and sustain a humanitarian claim for biopolitical responsibility over these women’s mobility.

Ceci n’est pas un Capital Markets Union: Re-establishing EU-led financialization

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 248-267
Author(s):  
Nina Haerter
Keyword(s):  
Financial Markets ◽  
Capital Markets ◽  
Market Integration ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Policy Initiatives ◽  
Financial Products ◽  
Capital Markets Union ◽  
The Many ◽  
Integration Project ◽  
The Eu

In the 11 years since the outbreak of the financial crisis, the EU has introduced many policy initiatives directed at the financial sector, the most recent one being the Capital Markets Union. The official aim is to integrate Europe’s financial markets, fulfilling decades-old wishes for a Single Market for capital. Some scholars have already voiced concerns about different elements of Capital Markets Union since its inception in 2015, but the extent to which this critique was generalizable remained unclear. Through an analysis of policy documents and interview data inspired by the ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’-approach, this paper reveals two common threads among the many Capital Markets Union proposals, which are not explicitly acknowledged: a reduction of prudential rules and various forms of incentivizing financial products with public funds. It is therefore argued that Capital Markets Union is not a market integration project (as its name and official narrative suggest), as much as it is the re-establishment of EU-led financialization, following a long tradition of asymmetrical integration in the Union.

scholarly journals Eco-innovation and knowledge management: issues and organizational challenges to small and medium enterprises

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (02) ◽  
pp. 129-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Cherifi ◽  
Patrick M'Bassègue ◽  
Mickaël Gardoni ◽  
Rémy Houssin ◽  
Jean Renaud
Keyword(s):  
Small And Medium Enterprises ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Organizational Challenges ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Innovative Solutions ◽  
The Many ◽  
Medium Enterprises ◽  
Innovation Competition ◽  
Management Issues

AbstractThe proposed methodology is based on a (global and multi-criteria) simplified environmental but thorough assessment. In this stage we do not directly give the solution to designers. It will therefore translate the results of evaluation design axes, but in general, the lines proposed are inconsistent or contradictory. Therefore, what we find is a compromise given to the solution. The challenge we are facing in an industrial reality is that one should not go for a compromise solution. TRIZ (Teorija Reshenija Izobretateliskih Zadatch) or the theory of solving inventive problems, in the field, will be reformulated and go through the contradiction matrix and then intervene with the principles of interpretation resolutions to give possible solutions. To assist small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in their product development, the objective of this paper is to propose a methodological approach named Ecatriz, that will allow us to achieve our eco-innovative goal. The applicability of this method is justified by the many contradictions in the choices in a study of the life cycle. As a starting point, a qualitative multi-criteria matrix will allow the prioritization of all impacts on the environment. A customized implementation of the inventive TRIZ (Teorija Reshenija Izobretateliskih Zadatch, Russian acronym for theory of solving inventive problems) principles will help us choose eco-innovative solutions. To that end, we have created a new approach named Ecatriz (ecological approach TRIZ), based on a new contradiction matrix. It was tested in various contexts, such as the “24 h of Innovation” competition and eco-innovative patents.

scholarly journals “I Will Show You My Faith by My Works”: Addressing the Nexus between Philosophical Theodicy and Human Suffering and Loss in Contexts of ‘Natural’ Disaster

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 213
Author(s):  
Roger Philip Abbott
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Natural Disaster ◽  
Natural Hazards ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Catastrophic Earthquake ◽  
The Caribbean

As a practical theologian and researcher in the field of ‘natural’ disasters, as well as being a disaster responder chaplain, I am often confronted by, and have to confront, the nexus between theology/philosophy and “real life” in extremely traumatic contexts. The extreme suffering that is often the consequence of catastrophic natural disasters warrants solutions that can help vulnerable populations recover and adapt to live safely with natural hazards. For many practice-based responders, speculative theological/philosophical reflections around situations that are often human-caused seem predominantly vacuous exercises, potentially diverting attention away from the empiricism of causal human agency. In this article, I explore a middle ground involving a nuanced methodological approach to theodicy that is practical but no less intellectually demanding, that is theological more than philosophical, practical more than theoretical; a middle ground that also takes seriously the human culpability as causal for the human, and some would say the divine, suffering from disasters. I will include in this exploration my ethnographic fieldwork following the catastrophic earthquake to hit the Caribbean nation of Haiti in 2010.

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