Criminological Ethnography: An Introduction by James Treadwell;

Author:James Treadwell; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Published: 2019-09-19T19:34:51.051403+00:00

There are multiple ways you could examine such a topic with an ethnographic approach or sensibility, but do you think there is a best approach that you would recommend taking?

There is no single way that criminological researchers gain access, and most successful projects are the culmination of trial and error. Those that come to fruition are the successful ones, and we know far less about failed ethnographies. Some researchers, such as Patricia Adler and her husband Peter, are very honest about how they gain insight. In Wheeling and Dealing (1985), a study of community drug dealers and smugglers, Patricia Adler describes falling into the research project as result of an inquisitive mind, useful neighbours and her own (quite honest) use of recreational drugs. Friends and contacts can be useful, but so too can family members. Employment or association with a ‘scheme’ can be useful, so for example Alistair Fraser used just such an approach to help smooth his access for ethnographic fieldwork carried out over four years in Glasgow with young people (Fraser, 2015). Employment can be another useful avenue. Famously, Simon Holdaway (1983) used his employment as a police sergeant as part of his ethnographic work on policing, while Winlow (2001) described how he used his size, build and physicality, and a close friend who was a ‘bouncer’ involved in nightclub door security, in order to examine crime and violence in the night time economy in the north east of England, and Ditton used his employment on a bread van for his classic study on fiddling and pilferage, Part-Time Crime (Ditton, 1977). A similar approach has recently been resurrected by Lloyd to examine workplace harm within low-paid, insecure, flexible and short-term forms of ‘affective labour’ through an ultra-realist lens using data from a long-term ethnographic study of the service economy (Lloyd, 2018). That role was both similar and yet slightly different from Rachela Colosi, who worked as a lap dancer and agency stripper, and notes: ‘It did not occur to me when I first started working in the sex industry that I would one day both research and write about this occupation’ (Colosi, 2010: 2). Similarly, it did not occur to Armstrong to support Sheffield United as a means of following and observing their football hooligan group, the Blades Business Crew, but had he not, he would probably not have been able to generate a study with anything like the appreciative quality or depth of Football Hooligans: Knowing the Score (Armstrong, 1998). Janet Foster talks of the benefits of joining a pub darts squad to ease her into acceptance among her research subjects (Foster, 1990) whereas much of Treadwell’s work talks of the importance of biography, fighting, drinking and friendships cultivated in a large urban setting and with peers in boxing gyms and at football as useful for the criminological ethnographer (Treadwell, 2018). Similarly, Wilson’s previous participation in the Northern Soul scene was brilliantly appreciated both at the time and in hindsight in his methodologically innovative and hugely engaging text which uses knowledge based on decades of immersion in the scene (Wilson, 2007).

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