Fieldwork Experiences In Criminology And Security Studies

This book compiles the fieldwork experiences of 55 researchers, addressing the challenges, ethical considerations, and methodologies employed to study 30 diverse populations and phenomena within Criminology and Security Studies. This volume contributes to filling a gap in academic literature by highlighting the often unspoken realities and intricacies of fieldwork. The book is systematically structured into five thematic sections: The Powerful, The Invisible, The Vulnerable, The Violent, and The Cyber. These categories encompass various aspects and dimensions of fieldwork, including managing emotional distress, negotiating access through gatekeepers, ensuring the protection of informants, and exercising discretion in navigating sensitive issues. As a scholarly resource, this book is invaluable for academics, practitioners, and students involved in criminology, security studies, anthropology, sociology, and political science. By offering in-depth reflections and insights, this volume enhances the reader’s understanding of the nuances of fieldwork, and informs the development of robust and ethical research practices. Chapters 2, 9 and 11 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book analyses the challenges of secrecy in security research, and develops a set of methods to navigate, encircle and work with secrecy. How can researchers navigate secrecy in their fieldwork, when they encounter confidential material, closed-off quarters or bureaucratic rebuffs? This is a particular challenge for researchers in the security field, which is by nature secretive and difficult to access. This book creatively assesses and analyses the ways in which secrecies operate in security research. The collection sets out new understandings of secrecy, and shows how secrecy itself can be made productive to research analysis. It offers students, PhD researchers and senior scholars a rich toolkit of methods and best-practice examples for ethically appropriate ways of navigating secrecy. It pays attention to the balance between confidentiality, and academic freedom and integrity. The chapters draw on the rich qualitative fieldwork experiences of the contributors, who did research at a diversity of sites, for example at a former atomic weapons research facility, inside deportation units, in conflict zones, in everyday security landscapes, in virtual spaces and at borders, bureaucracies and banks. The book will be of interest to students of research methods, critical security studies and International Relations in general. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

In the field of victimology, the landscape of victimization is constantly evolving, presenting new challenges and demands. The traditional approaches to understanding and addressing victimization are often inadequate in capturing the complex and nuanced experiences of victims. Furthermore, the justice system and victim support services struggle to keep pace with the changing forms of victimization, leading to gaps in protection and support for victims. There is a critical need for a contemporary approach that comprehensively examines victimization and provides practical insights and solutions for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Investigating and Combating Gender-Related Victimization offers a pioneering solution to the challenges posed by modern victimization. By focusing exclusively on qualitative studies, this handbook provides a deep and nuanced understanding of victim experiences, interactions with the justice system, and the impact of victimization. The qualitative approach allows for a more holistic examination of victimization, capturing the emotions, narratives, and coping mechanisms of victims often overlooked in quantitative studies.

'Noaks and Wincup's book is useful primarily to criminology students for its clarity, use of illustrative case studies, exercises and end-of-chapter suggested further reading' - The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Criminological Research offers a comprehensive guide to both the theory and practice of qualitative criminological research. Through a detailed yet concise explanation, the reader is shown how a variety of methods and approaches work and how their outcomes may be interpreted. Practically focused throughout, the book also offers constructive advice for students analysing and writing their research projects. Key features of the book include: - An innovative framework - combining different methodologies and approaches - A variety of `real-life' examples and case studies - enriches the book for the reader - A set of practical exercises and further reading sections in each chapter - pedagogical and student-focussed throughout - A broad coverage - includes discussions of ethnography, interviewing, documentary evidence and data-analysis - A detailed and practical discussion of the politics of research, such as issues of access, ethics and confidentiality The book has a flowing narrative and student-friendly structure which makes it accessible to students. Written by experts in the field, it will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers, helping them to undertake effective research in both criminology and courses in qualitative research in related disciplines.

This comprehensive collection contributes to, advances and consolidates discussions of the range of research methods in criminology through the presentation of diverse international case studies in which contributors reflect upon their experiences with powerless and powerful individuals or groups.

′This is an excellent collection of papers which celebrates the best of traditional approaches to fieldwork, whilst also looking to its future. The Handbook will quickly become essential reading for the novice and experienced fieldworker across many of the social sciences′ - Chris Pole, University of Leicester Fieldwork is widely practiced but little written about, yet accounts of the exotic, mundane, complex and often dangerous are central to not only sociology and anthropology but also geography, social psychology and criminology. In all these - increasingly overlapping - fields, experience underlies any comprehensive understanding of social life. The SAGE Handbook of Fieldwork presents the first major overview of this method in all its variety, introducing the reader to the strengths, weaknesses, and ′real world′ applications of fieldwork techniques. Its 22 carefully chosen chapters are each based on a substantive field of empirical enquiry, written by an acknowledged expert in the field. The range is impressive: from the traditional to the virtual, concerning subjects as diverse as emotion, sexuality, sport, embodiment, identity, self-narrative, fieldwork in organizations, science and technology. Specifically intended for use in undergraduate and postgraduate courses in qualitative research design and methodology in sociology, anthropology, criminology, urban studies, social geography, public health and education, the handbook will also prove beneficial to academic researchers in these and other disciplines.

From research preparations to post-research debriefing, this book covers every stage of the social research process, outlining how to undertake fieldwork as safely as possible.

GERN (Groupement Européen de Recherches sur les Normativités) is a large consortium of scientific researchers in the domain of deviance and social control, more precisely studying delinquency, penal institutions, public policies of security and the importance of penal questions in society. The consortium is multidisciplinary. Today GERN is a scientific network present in ten European countries and abroad, uniting researchers of different disciplines. Each year the GERN organizes a doctoral summer school, giving PhD students from the consortium the opportunity to present and discuss their ongoing projects and research results as well as meet young and senior researchers. This is the third volume stemming from the annual doctoral conferences organized by the GERN. Last edition of the Summer School was held in September 2014 in Porto (Portugal). The selected theme for this Summer School was ‘Criminology, Security and Justice: methodological and epistemological issues’, searching for a fruitful debate about the methodological and epistemological aspects relevant for the development of PhD thesis. Scientific research is, in its essence, critical thinking. What is critical thinking? It is a kind of thinking that differs from magic reasoning, common sense, and speculation. Scientific evidence contrasts with belief, immediate and apparent knowledge, illusion and opinion. This is valid for every knowledge domain that claims to be scientific. It is thus true for the science of crime, criminology. With the inauguration of this Research Paper Series, GERN intends to monitor and disseminate cutting-edge studies into European security issues, reflecting the result of doctoral research in the framework of the GERN. The series provides an excellent platform from which to survey key emergent topics in the field. With this series the editors and authors are contributing to a better understanding of contemporary questions, presenting recent research results and scientific reflection, by devising new approaches and by re-evaluating the heritage of social sciences in this domain. It implies a new openness with regard to other disciplines and to the normative questions arising from the commission of crime and the formal reaction to it by actors in the criminal justice system and beyond.

Despite ethnography's long and distinguished history in the social sciences, its use in criminology is still relatively rare. Over the years, however, ethnographers in the United States and abroad have amassed an impressive body of work on core criminological topics and groups, including gang members, sex workers, drug dealers, and drug users. Ethnographies on criminal justice institutions have also flourished, with studies on police, courts, and prisons providing deep insights into how these organizations operate and shape the lives of people who encounter them. The Oxford Handbook of Ethnographies of Crime and Criminal Justice provides critical and current reviews of key research topics, issues, and debates that crime ethnographers have been grappling with for over a century. This volume brings together an outstanding group of ethnographers to discuss various research traditions, the ethical and pragmatic challenges associated with conducting crime-related fieldwork, relevant policy recommendations for practitioners in the field, and areas of future research for crime ethnographers. In addition to exhaustive overview essays, the handbook also presents case studies that serve as exemplars for how ethnographic inquiry can contribute to our understanding of crime and criminal justice-related topics.