Liquid Criminology

This book explores the ways in which criminological methods can be imaginatively deployed and developed in a world increasingly characterized by the blurred nature of social reality. Whilst recognizing the importance of positivist approaches and research techniques, it advocates a commitment to understanding the ways in which those techniques can be used imaginatively, at times in combination with less conventional methods, discussing the questions concerning risk, ethics and access that arise as a result. Giving voice to cutting edge research practices both in terms of concepts and methods that shift the criminological focus towards the kind of imaginative work that comprised the foundations of the discipline, it calls into question the utility and credentials of mainstream work that fails to serve the discipline itself or the policy questions allied to it. A call not to 'give up on numbers' but also not to be defined by statistics and the methods that produce them, Liquid Criminology sheds light on a way of doing research for criminology that is not only creative but also critical. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, criminology and social policy with interests in research methods and design.

This book explores the ways in which criminological methods can be imaginatively deployed and developed in a world increasingly characterized by the blurred nature of social reality. Whilst recognizing the importance of positivist approaches and research techniques, it advocates a commitment to understanding the ways in which those techniques can be used imaginatively, at times in combination with less conventional methods, discussing the questions concerning risk, ethics and access that arise as a result. Giving voice to cutting edge research practices both in terms of concepts and methods that shift the criminological focus towards the kind of imaginative work that comprised the foundations of the discipline, it calls into question the utility and credentials of mainstream work that fails to serve the discipline itself or the policy questions allied to it. A call not to 'give up on numbers' but also not to be defined by statistics and the methods that produce them, Liquid Criminology sheds light on a way of doing research for criminology that is not only creative but also critical. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, criminology and social policy with interests in research methods and design.

This volume introduces innovative and inspired qualitative methods through topics on crime commission, victimisation and crime control. It highlights how qualitative methods offer significant insights that frame our understanding of the narratives, events, theoretical perspectives, and realities of the social world. This book includes chapters discussing cutting-edge methods, which demonstrate how qualitative research can expand beyond traditional approaches. It offers diversity in research, including gender, race, and geographic sensitivities. The volume addresses a multitude of approaches for using qualitative methodologies, including innovative uses of technology mediums—such as social media, participatory videos, Zoom interviewing, and photographic visual methods—as means of collecting and co-producing relevant data on meaning. Ultimately, this book illustrates how qualitative criminology allows for deeper and more nuanced understandings of local and regional specificities in a globalized world, and how social interactions are influenced by individual interpretations, social interactions, and collective decision making. This volume is an essential read for graduate students and researchers in criminology and other social science disciplines interested in qualitative empirical research and informed policy making.

This distinctive and engaging book proposes an imaginative criminology, focusing on how spaces of transgression are lived, portrayed and imagined. These include spaces of control or confinement, including prison and borders, and spaces of resistance. Examples range from camps where asylum seekers and migrants are confined, to the exploration of deviant identities and the imagined spaces of surveillance and control in young adult fiction. Drawing on oral history, fictive portrayals, walking methodologies, and ethnographic and arts-based research, the book pays attention to issues of gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, mobility and nationality as they intersect with lived and imagined space.

"This volume investigates the significant role qualitative research plays in expanding and refining our understandings of crime and justice. It features seventeen original essays that discuss the relationship between methodology and theory. The result is a theoretically engaged volume that explores the approaches of qualitative scholars in the collection and treatment of data in criminological scholarship.Among the key issues addressed in the volume are methodological rigor in qualitative research; movement between method, theory building, theoretical refinement and expansion; diversity of qualitative methodologies, from classic field research to contemporary innovations; and considerations of the future of qualitative criminological research.Qualitative research use has expanded rapidly in the last twenty years. This latest volume of Advances in Criminological Theory presents a cogent appraisal of qualitative criminology and the ways in which rigorous qualitative research contributes to theorizing about crime and justice."

Sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS),this volume in Emerald Studies in Media and Communications features social science research on criminality, policing, and mass media in the digital age.

In this pioneering work, Bill McClanahan provides a concise overview of visual criminology. With examples of the most prominent methods at work in visual criminology, this book explores the visual perspective in relation to prisons, police, the environment, and drugs, while noting the complex ethical implications embedded in visual research.

"Bringing together prominent early contributions from this emergent perspective, the volume traces the origins, theory and methodology of a nascent ghost criminology. From the powers of exorcism and erasure marshaled by state agents, street-level struggles over memorialization and memory, to the lingering violence of crime scenes and the ghostly traces of outlaw artists, Ghost Criminology is a book attuned to that which is well-theorized in other disciplines-the spectral, hauntological, apparitional. Each of the writers assembled here shares, as Mark Fisher (2017) put it, a fascination for the outside, "that which lies beyond standard perception, cognition and experience." As such, this collection uses cutting-edge social and cultural theory to tangle with some of criminology's most stubborn revenants-the politics of criminalization, the commodification of crime and violence, the haunting power of the image, as well as the unheard and disregarded cries of the dead"--