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‘Crossing the line’: Criminological expertise, policy advice and the ‘quarrelling society’
Full text linkIn October 2009, Professor David Nutt, eminent neuropsychopharmacologist and world leading expert on drugs, was dismissed as Chair of the UK government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for comments he made at the Centre of Crime and Justice Studies Eve Saville lecture. This article considers the role of evidence in political decision making through the case of David Nutt. It is argued that the status of expert knowledge is in crisis both for the natural and the social sciences. We examine the role of the criminological advisor within emerging discourses of public criminology and suggest that high-stakes political issues can open up unprecedented opportunities for critical voices to engage in unbridled critique and to mobilise movements of dissent
Walking amongst the Graves of the Living: Reflections about Doing Prison Research from an Abolitionist Perspective
No full textIn my time as a researcher, I have walked amongst ‘the graves of the living’ (Minshull, 1618/1821) in 16 different prisons, predominantly in the North East or North West of England. My ethnographic research has primarily focused upon prison staff and the roles they perform in profoundly immoral spaces (Scott, 1996b, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013a, 2014b, 2015). Whilst prison research aims to uncover lived realities and institutional policies and practices in a hidden world, not all accounts of prison life highlight the same issues and problems. There remain significant differences in terms of how the prison place is described and analysed. Whilst there are a number of reasons why this is the case, perhaps of greatest import is the fact that all [academic] writing is subjective, and prison narratives are influenced by the values and principles of a given author. The ‘moral compass’ of the prison ethnographer is crucial in the construction of penal theory and knowledge and their priorities; aims and objectives have enormous bearing upon their interpretation of the prison world. As this chapter title indicates, the following reflections on prisons, prisoners and prison workers are written from an abolitionist perspective
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Deviant knowledge
Full text linkThe ability to openly challenge and express criticism of governing authorities is a cornerstone of progressive democratic societies. To ‘speak truth to power’ generates accountability and transparency where elected and appointed officials, and their governing rationalities and ideologies, are questioned and held to account. However, critical voices of dissent are increasingly marginalized, suppressed and threatened. Recent international headlines, such as, ‘World press freedoms have deteriorated …warning of a new era of propaganda’ (Reporters Without Borders, 2016); ‘Art is under Threat: Oppression against Freedom of Expression is Dangerously High’ (Freemuse, 2016); ‘The demise of academic freedom. When politically correct “speech police” are given the upper hand’ (Walpin, 2015), all attest to the ways that democratic freedoms in speech and artistic expression are under attack and subjected to systematic censorship and erosion. Such attacks on thought and expression have been witnessed in various historical regimes underpinned by a politics of intolerance and fear. More recently, the post 9-11 period has observed how commentators critical of the ‘war on terror’ have been silenced, neutralized and ‘dismissed as traitorous acts of sedition’ (Walters, 2003:132-134).\ud
For some commentators the demise of civil liberties is associated with heightened terrorist threats and the perceived need to regulate and monitor ‘offensive speech’. For Schoenwald (2001) the ‘authoritarian ascendency’ or the ‘rise of modern American conservatism’ has had a pervasive influence on media, global economics, political party politics, and the production of knowledge. Therefore, to offend with words or creative expression is seen as a catalyst that may incite radical fundamentalism and disrupt the social order. This position is examined comprehensively in Mike Hume’s influential book Trigger Warning. Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?, where he argues that: \ud
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<i>‘Everybody in Western public life claims to support free speech in principle. Yet in practice free speech is on the endangered list. Freedom of expression today is like one of those exotic animals that everybody says they love, but that still appear to be heading inexorably towards extinction. Everywhere from the internet to the universities, from football to the theatrical stage, from out on the streets to inside our own minds, we are allowing the hard-won right to freedom of expression to be reined in and undermined’ (Hume, 2015:12).</i>\ud
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If academics, journalists, artists and other critical commentators are prevented from openly challenging and critiquing governing authorities, then how are the ruling elites held accountable for their decisions, policies and actions? Along these lines, - how are notions of democracy, human rights, social justice and humanitarianism advanced and progressed for the global good? If, as Hume (2015) argues, free speech is becoming constructed as a form of ‘extremism’ - as a danger to social and political stability – then those who exercise democratic rights to critical free speech also become demarcated as ‘extremists’ or ‘deviants’ and the words and values they disseminate are indeed forms of ‘deviant knowledge’
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
"Get in, get out, go back?" : transitioning from prison ethnography to prison policy research in Russia
Full text linkPrisons are unpredictable worlds that exist in time and in space. They are institutions people ‘go to’ acting as both a product and a generator of society’s lost trust in acts of malevolence, crime and re-offending (Wacquant, 2002). Prisons have endured for centuries and consequently, the arrangement of people, activities and buildings are deeply implicated in a power-knowledge couplet (see Foucault, 1980) where phenomena, events and structures of history are registered and dispersed. Indeed the prison is one of very few institutions where pain, suffering and power are depressed into the entire infrastructure and social fabric. In my ethnographic work a combination of sheer curiosity that Russia remains an uncharted penal territory for Western scholars, coupled with a long-standing personal interest in the region that extended to mastering the language, made the site one of rich and potent allure. What I have learned about all prisons - from doing prison research in Russia - is that ‘the place’ (jurisdiction) and the ‘the site’ (the prison) are the repositories of a unique cultural relationship: the relationship between the prison and the state is a clear mirror reflection of the relationship between the person and the state. Thus, the prison reveals the state, which is why prisons are such unique sites of sociological inquiry. In my chapter I will do two things. First, I will reflect on almost twenty years of doing ethnography in Russian prisons. What I hope to achieve is a better understanding of the totality of the physical, emotional and intellectual challenges of researching a hidden penal system such as Russia’s; one which looms large and vast across the European sphere and which weighs heavily in the histories of incarceration in high punishment societies. My own prison research journey is one in which the historical and cultural registers of incarceration can be understood as ruptured, contingent and in a state of cultural to-ing and fro-ing
Prison ethnography at the threshold of race, reflexivity and difference
No full textThis chapter considers the racialised dynamics of ethnographic research in two men's prisons in South East England. From the early scene-setting descriptions and evocations of life in a young offenders' institution and a Category C prison, to the more sustained period of immersion in everyday life inside, the unfolding research process revealed insights into the vertical (prison officer-prisoner) and horizontal (prisoner-prisoner) race and social relations in the prison field. The 'characters' of Abbott, Switch, Warwick, Jonathan and others, emerged in rounded form only through an ethnographic approach that combined processes of observation, interaction and interview. Accessed reflexively through the lens of our own diverse biographical identities, we illustrate, using several examples, the realities and multiple dimensions of contemporary racisms and how these coincide with vibrant postcolonial convivialities
Finding Secrets and Secret Findings: Confronting the Limits of the Ethnographer's Gaze
Full text linkIn this chapter, I consider the moments during ethnographic practice when realities or meanings are ‘glimpsed at’, but are not fully revealed to the researcher. To do so, I draw on ethnographic research experiences during two projects conducted in English men’s maximum-security prisons (see Drake, 2012; 2014). I consider some of the moments during these projects when organisational secrets seemed to emerge but which could not be fully verified. In the closed, secretive and often paranoid environment of the prison, some aspects of the field can remain obscured to the outsider researcher, no matter how much time he or she spends with informants or observing in the field. The chapter considers the potential relationship between the conditionality of prison officer collegial culture and the emergence of ‘dark’ practices. It is argued that the deep, enduring tensions between care and custody, brutality and punishment that can accompany the prison officer role can also create structures and spaces in which hidden practices can be both exercised and kept hidden. A particular focus of the chapter is to consider the challenges for the ethnographer when only a sliver view of clandestine practices is obtained
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