The ethnographic approach in criminology

Ethnographic research in criminology shares basic principles and techniques with sociology and anthropology. However, there is a growing tension between tradi- tional sociological values and emerging criminological research. The research settings and cultural groups investigated by sociologists are diverse and often quite benign, whereas criminologists are more often compelled to address issues and prac- tices that can profoundly diminish the quality of life for victims, perpetrators and their communities. Having said this, because criminology is still in its developmental stages as a distinct social scientific discipline, most well-known ethnographies of criminal activity and the control system have been conducted by sociologists (Bourgois, 1995; Hobbs, 1988). Whereas the traditional rule in sociology and anthropology is to show an appreciation and understanding of human motivations and practices, criminology consistently operates on and beyond the boundary of legality and at the forefront of potential moral condemnation. In some settings, for instance where violence is causing palpable harm to others, it is very difficult for the criminological researcher to respect confidentiality or suspend moral judgement and personal intervention. Criminological ethnographers have encountered significant hostility from sociologists and some other criminologists, who accuse them of sen- sationalizing, thrill-seeking or giving violent thugs and fascists too much publicity. On the other hand, they have been accused of pathologizing and labelling the poor by revealing too much of their harmful criminal activity. Other sociologists, follow- ing Gouldner’s (1971) accusation that ethnographers are merely the ‘zookeepers of deviance’, argue in a rather dismissive tone that ethnographic research tells us little about substantive structural issues such as political economy, power, poverty and the forces of exclusion.

Most sociologists and criminologists followed Sutherland’s (1939) cultural prag-

matism and switched from theorizing criminality as pathological to appreciating it as practice appearing in the different forms of ethical and social organization that emerged in difficult circumstances. There was a further switch to a more structural

approach in the 1970s as the concept of the offender as social predator was replaced by the victimized actor, and in some cases crime and deviance were conceptualized as a form of ‘resistance’ to capitalist authority, norms and values (see Taylor et al., 1973). Yet, even if criminology rejects the biological metaphor of pathology, which misleadingly implies that crime is some sort of ‘disease’ in a social body that is oth- erwise healthy, time after time researchers encounter palpably harmful crimes that are difficult to appreciate, even though some of the reasons why individuals feel motivated to commit these crimes can, to some extent, be understood. Sociology’s unwavering command to appreciate has created a one-dimensional, sanitised theo- retical approach and restricted research into the darker side of human life, which leaves it hostage to condemnatory right-wing theories and political solutions (Hall and Winlow, 2007). However, in the early 1980s the feminist and left-realist approaches used mixed methods to reveal the extent of harmful intra-class crime after it had been systematically understated for over four decades (Matthews, 2014). This placed a more realistic approach back on the agenda. Simon Winlow’s classic ethnographic study of nightclub door staff and violent criminals in an English town (2001) was one of the first to move beyond both the condemnatory and naï ve appre- ciative approaches to present an advanced, reflexive account of reality.

If theory is to be grounded, inductive and reflexive-realist rather than imposed on

researchers by dominant disciplinary figures and their preferred politics, and if we are to resist the latest atheoretical quantitative move to ‘Big Data’, ethnography is still a valuable method. Ethnographic research remains useful for revealing the fine details of the socioeconomic reality and the webs of human meanings, motivations, experiences and practices on which future theory should be built (see Hall and Winlow, 2015).