International Criminology:

Qualitative Research on Polluted Actors

Martha K. Huggins

Reference: Martha K. Huggins. 2011. “International Criminology: Qualitative Research on Polluted Actors.” Routledge Handbook of International Criminology. Cindy J. Smith, Sheldon X. Zhang, and Rosemary Barbaret. London and New York: Routledge

In studying Brazil for over three decades, I have observed several things

about U.S. academic positivist quantitative criminology that differentiate it from my

own qualitative research conducted from a critical criminology1 perspective.

Positivist quantitative research in the United States is U. S.-centric, whereas I

study deviance and crime in Brazil and in other ‘foreign’ States. U.S. positivist

quantitative criminology focuses on legally defined ‘criminality’, while critical

criminology examines conditions often not even defined as ‘criminal’. As such

they are not usually treated as illegal by state agents. Most U.S. positivist

criminological research focuses on crimes of the powerless, using official criminal

justice system data using official criminal justice system data-- what Alexander

Liazos (1972) called a “Nuts, Sluts, and Preverts” approach to social problems.2

Those in the critical criminology tradition focus most on State crimes and

associated actors; further rendering criminal justice system data unreliable.

1

This chapter illustrates field research in ‘criminology’, both as narrowly

defined by quantitative practitioners and using a broader definition that includes

many ‘human rights’ topics. Examples of such research are primarily taken

from women’s research in Women Fielding Danger: Negotiating Ethnographic

Identities in Field Research (Huggins and Glebbek, 2008) and from Violence

Workers: Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities (Huggins et

al., 2002).

Quantitative and Qualitative Research

Pointing to crucial differences between qualitative and quantitative

positivist3 research, Charles Ragin et al. (2004a) explain that, “Qualitative data

are suggestive rather than definitive, illuminating rather than convincing, ‘soft’

rather than ‘hard’” (p. 16), adding that qualitative research focuses on discovery

and theory construction, while keeping a flexible analytic frame. Discovery:

“qualitative researchers often want to find out ‘how’ things happen (or

happened)”; a common goal is “mak[ing] the facts understandable” (Ragan et

al., 2004b: 23). Theory building : Qualitative research is often “framed as …

sources of ideas, evidence, and insights for theory construction, rather than as

systematic techniques for theory testing” (ibid, p. 24). Analytic frame flexibility:

keeps research open to serendipity. Qualitative Criminological Research:

Epistemology, Definition, ‘Data’.

Epistemologically, qualitative research is founded on a reluctance to

accept ‘taken-for-granted’ preconceptions and definitions of the social world,

2

studying it ‘as seen’ by variously positioned and differently empowered

respondents.

Positivist research, in contrast, relies on,

Conventional [read: positivist] ways of framing and answering

research questions….often rest on an acceptance of

conventional understandings that hide what we should be

studying (Becker, 2009: 520).

Applying this to criminology, Loschper (2000: 1) argues that, “‘crime’ is a matter

of judgment,…concerned with the interpretations and definitions of situations and

actions,….[an] analysis… not possible with quantitative methods.”

Pointing to the inductive, iterative nature of qualitative field research,

Geenhalgh and Taylor (1997: 1) remind that its research processes and

outcomes are “dependent on the subjective experience[s] of both the researcher

and the researched”4. Quantitative criminologists can claim that such an

assertion, in its application, leads to ‘researcher contamination’ of qualitative

findings--a positivist epistemological assessment that grows out of its formally

impersonal “scientist” premises.

Such assessments would be inconsequential but for the paradigmatic

dominance of quantitative research in U.S. criminology. Howard Becker (2009)

3

argues that quantitative positivist epistemology has negatively influenced

evaluations of qualitative research, limiting the ability of qualitative researchers to

obtain U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) funding.

Theoretical and ‘scientific’ givens are deliberately placed front and center

in positivist research proposals, developed as fixed research designs that

emphasize hypothetical-deductive theory testing. Qualitative researchers, 5

“usually don’t know enough [at the start of a research project] to formulate good

hypotheses”, says Becker (2009: 550). And while quantitative research formally

separates data collection and analysis, arriving at the meaning of data during the

‘data analysis’ phase of a study, qualitative research uses data gathered at one

point, to guide observations at the next step, with data interpretations on-going

rather than at the end of research (Becker, 2009: 547).

Criminology’s Subject-Matter

Qualitative criminology often questions quantitative criminology’s

adherence to theory testing through scientifically detached research using

statistics generated by criminal justice organizations. As Becker (2009: 549)

points out:

We make best use of theory when we refuse

to base our research designs on what

organizational personnel tell us, or on what

‘everybody knows’,…and instead build

4

theories on unexpected observations made in

the field.

On ‘detached scientific’ data collection, Denzin and Lincoln (2000: 523) argue

that research is most robust when it, “seeks to construct analyses that show

how respondents and the social scientists who study them jointly construct…

realities….” (emphasis added). And Loschper (2000: 1; see also Cicourel, 1968;

Cicourel and Kitsuse, 1963) cautions against reliance on statistics generated by

criminal justice organizations because such data:

determine if an incident is noticed, if it is registered as a case, and if

the case is classified as ‘criminal’ on its way through the criminal

justice institutions. Officially registered offenses do not represent the

‘reality of deviance.’ Instead, they are specific constructions of crime

[based on] classification…by the institutions of the criminal justice

system.

By applying these observations to the study of crime, whether national or

international, a researcher can broaden criminology’s subject-matter to areas

that U.S. positivist criminology would explicitly and implicitly treat as outside its

scope. For example, some neglected ‘human rights’ topics are potentially

compatible with ‘criminology’--genocide, rape in war, and torture.6-- Studying

such subjects, of course, raises questions about the appropriate role for an

interviewer who deposes such atrocities7: ‘objective observer’ who maintains

distance from subjects and subject-matter, or ‘subjective participant’ in the world

5

view of an atrocity perpetrator or victim (see Huggins et al., 2002: Ch. 4;

Clendinnen, 1998; Gunn, 1997).

Perhaps U.S. positivist criminology’s relative neglect of human rights

topics can be explained by its U.S.-centric research focus, as well as by its

assumptions about criminology’s ‘appropriate’ subject matter and ‘data’.

However,even qualitative criminologists have neglected many topics related to

international human rights. This may also stem from U.S. qualitative

criminology’s U.S.-centricity. Or international qualitative criminologists may be

hindered by the very nature of qualitative field research: Since it is hands-on,

person-to-person, and field-site-rooted, some qualitative research can be

dangerous for researcher and researched, as well as ethically complicated. 8 In

addition, perhaps the difficulty of obtaining data inhibits some qualitative research

on human rights subject. As a qualitative criminologist, I often study subjects

without available or reliable secondary sources--for example, why and how police

become torturers. Doing such research in spite of such hurdles, grows out of my

international focus and an epistemological rationale that places a premium on

interviews for understanding underlying institutional, organizational, and

personal processes and for capturing changes over time.

Yet there are subjects that, as qualitative criminologist, I could or would not

study for safety and ethical reasons: in-situ torture, genocide in process, women

being raped in war. Setting aside the ethical reasons for not studying such

atrocities in process, Skidmore (2008: 310) argues that researcher assessments

of danger change across the life cycle:

6

As a childless doctoral student…in Rangoon

[Burma],…research activities that might land me

in jail…or lead to my deportation… were

‘acceptable risks’…. Now a mother of two, I can

no longer enter Burma without defining safety and

danger in terms of my children….[For their sake] I

have the responsibility to conduct research in a

manner that doesn’t endanger me.

The remainder of this chapter focuses on these and other field

research issues raised by conditions and outcomes encountered

and negotiated by field researchers in U.S. national and

International settings. Most of the reported research is not in

‘criminology’ as narrowly defined; most deals with topics related to

the criminology of ‘human rights’ violations. All such research

teaches points to things valuable for research in international

qualitative criminology.

Research Dynamics: ‘Pollution’ and ‘Purity’ in the Field

Focusing on two broad and related categories of under-illustrated qualitative

research--‘polluted topics’ and ‘spoiled identity pollution’-- this discussion is

framed by the anthropological notions of ‘pollution’ and ‘purity’. Pollution, the

opposite of purity, (see Douglas, 2002), is often described as:

7

defiling through its spread from one person or

situation to another;

controlled or eliminated through rituals that keep

‘polluted’ persons or situations from contaminating

‘purity’.

Whether a qualitative field researcher actually believes that some people

and situations have the capacity to ‘pollute’ is not the point, rather ‘pollution’ and

‘purity’ are tools for highlighting certain aspects of a researcher’s interactive

relationships with ‘interlocutors9--the latter those we study as research actors.

The research interaction thus involves two people (researcher and interlocutor)

with possibly different definitions of self and ‘other’, decency and morality, and

justice. In research on deviance and crime such definitions might vary greatly

between researcher and researched. Yet as the following discussion will

illustrate, an important outcome for each field site interaction is to achieve an

‘approximation’ of differences--a temporary (and usually tenuous) balance

between how much the researcher is willing to change in order to interact

positively and productively with the interlocutor, and how far the latter will go to

achieve this. Such a field site ‘approximation,’ which often impacts whether

research will move forward, has been under-illustrated by qualitative

researchers.10

8

Framing qualitative field research practice as a dynamic, involving

reducing ‘pollution’ and increasing ‘purity’ is especially useful for criminologists

because we are routinely involved with subject-matters and people considered

socially ‘polluted’— i.e., ‘immoral’ and/or ‘dangerous’. How many of us have

been asked: ‘How can you study such things?’ ‘Are you safe studying those

people? The tone of these questions suggests an attitude that the people or

situations being researched are so ‘damaged’ as to impart ‘impurities’ and

‘danger’ to the researcher. Perhaps, qualitative criminologists are more likely to

receive these sorts of questions than quantitative researchers because, in

seeking interviewees’ taken-for-granted worlds, we enter into their lives and

world views--sometimes discovering that we cannot, or do not want, to be part

of them through approximation, even if only tangentially and temporarily.

Likewise, interviewees often see interviewers as ‘polluting’, and so resist

giving up their secrets. These issues are compounded for international

qualitative criminologists because we encounter layers of social beliefs and

expectations different from our own, with no easy formula for working with and

within them. An interlocutor’s deviance may be just a small part of the

differences between ‘them’ and ‘us’. As a consequence, qualitative international

researchers are often confronted with how much they can or want to change their

presentation of self in order to neutralize what interviewees see as a researcher’s

‘polluting’ potential. Interviewees in addition must decide how much they can

disclose before losing their preferred sense of who they are. In a ‘successful’

9

interview ‘approximation’ each side becomes a little less ‘pure’ and a little more

‘polluted.’

Schwandner-Sievers (2008: 190), researching in conflict-riven Albania and

Kosovo, found herself with three local possibilities for her ‘acceptable’ field site

persona:

I could be treated as a ‘vulnerable woman,’

‘fictive kin,’ or as an ‘honored foreign guest’

….As a vulnerable [woman]…[I] ‘need[ed]

protection’ under a host household….” [As

a ] ‘fictive kin’ [there were] obligations and

(gendered) limits. [As] an ‘honored foreign

guest’… [I would be] seen as having as a

‘likeness to men’”.

Schwandner-Sievers, learned to balance her identities--those she preferred,

those interlocutors preferred, and those she was negotiating with them.

However, Schwandner-Sievers was questioning who she was becoming. While

she disliked being “shaped by patriarchy, [this] nonetheless [was] greatly

facilitating [her] research (2008: 186).

10

Under-illustrated ‘Topic Pollution’

Researchers cannot effectively study a situation until they select a topic, a

decision often hemmed in by assumptions about ‘topic pollution’.11 Clendinnen

(1998) argues that a “moral-sensitivity exclusion” among some Holocaust

researchers leads them “not to even attempt to understand Nazis, based on the

belief that to do so risks moral contamination”. Studying certain kinds of deviance

and crime from a statistical standpoint can use the ‘distance’ created by

secondary statistics to protect from pollution by those being studied. Scholars of

qualitative epistemology and practice do not have such protections.

Howard Becker (1967) asks, “When do we accuse ourselves and our

fellow sociologists of bias?” Answering his own question, Becker argues that

such an accusation is likely to arise,

when the research gives credence, in any serious way,

to the perspective of the subordinate group in some

hierarchical relationship. In the case of deviance, the

hierarchical relationship is a moral one. The

superordinate parties…represent the forces of

11

approved and official morality; the subordinate parties

are those who, it is alleged, have violated that morality.

Labeling this a “hierarchy of credibility”, Becker (1967) asserts that

research giving insider voice to deviants and criminals can lead to the charge

that a researcher is ‘biased’ for accepting the deviant group’s ‘illegitimate’ point of

view. But, for Becker, “the question is not whether we should take sides, since

we inevitably will, but rather whose side we are on” (p. 239). A socio-cultural

‘hierarchy of credibility’ renders one position more credible than others, with

serious implications for how research is assessed.

But are the different ‘sides’ to a conflict or other situation always clear-cut?

Can ‘sides’ be dynamic and shifting? As a human rights advocacy researcher

documenting Indonesian military abuses against East Timor’s liberation groups,

Fredriksson (2008) saw “people … suffering and dying in a small country under

violent Indonesian occupation” and knew “whose side” she was on (p. 152).

Later, during East Timor’s post-occupation period, the ‘sides’ became blurred:

some former Indonesian loyalists had been forcibly inducted as children into

Indonesian military service. Were these children ‘perpetrators’ or ‘victims’”?

(p. 161; see also Huggins et al., 2002: 23-25). Later, in newly independent East

Timor, Frederikkson discovered yet another ‘side’: those coping with the

“unhealed physical and psychological wounds”, including Frederikkson herself

(p. 169)

12

Robben (1995) argues that there is often “more sympathy for [research

that] unmask[s] the abusers of power than [for] doubt[ing]… the words of their

victims” (p. 84). But, how about a victimizer’s abuse of power being explained in

a manner seemingly favorable to the abuser? Can ‘perpetrators’ be ‘victims’ as

well, as Huggins et al. (2002) discovered in research on torturers? Thus, while

Becker correctly argues that, taking sides is inevitable in research, the ‘sides’ are

neither fixed-- ‘perpetrator’ or ‘victim’—nor incapable of changing as new findings

arise. However, taking sides is not without consequences for the researcher or

for assessments of a researcher’s ‘objectivity’.

Researching “Topic Pollution” Despite ‘Contaminated’ Data

Can the voices of those assumed to have ‘spoiled-identities’ ever be

considered ‘credible’? If, as Becker (1967: 241) argues, “In any system of

ranked groups, …members of the highest group have the right [to be seen as

credible]”, then ‘data’ derived from those with ‘spoiled identities’—in Goffman’s

(1986) words, those embodying ‘stigma’—cannot possibly be ‘credible’. 12 Scully

(1984) and Presser (2008) are among U.S. criminology’s qualitative researchers

whose interviews with U.S. rapists and murderers, respectively, have provided

valuable information about how such actors define, rationalize, and legitimize

their violence. What rapists and murderers communicate as their ‘truth’ speaks

volumes about their world views and its relationship to their explanations of

criminality (see also Huggins et al., 2002: Ch. 11)

13

Can such actors tell the ‘truth’? Within research settings, ‘truth’ and ‘lies’

collide and become puzzles to be understood. As I found with Brazilian torturers

(Huggins and Glebbeek, 2003: 381), each new interview situation involved “real-

but-shifting as well as fictional identities on the part of both interviewer and

interviewee…. An interviewer cannot express all that she really feels and expect

an interviewee to give up what she needs [from him]. Likewise, interviewees

cannot disclose everything that they are and still protect their hidden identities

and secrets.” (Huggins and Glebbek, 2003: 381 ).

Fredriksson (2008: 168) learned in Indonesian-occupied East Timor that

‘truth’ is a two-way street:

During my interviews…,I was certainly lied to, sometimes

suspected of being a liar (or something worse), and

sometimes tricked into accepting a respondent’s political

or personal agenda. Looking back…, I would say that

outright lies and other subtle forms of subterfuge were

relatively rare. In the field, when one knows a country, its

people and their customs, it is possible to develop a fairly

accurate sense about truth-telling and lying.

Sehgal (2008: 339), in research on women of the violent Hindu Nationalist

Movement, discovered that “right-wing informants have a vested interest

in communicating partial, distorted, and misleading accounts”. Blee (1993,

2002) discovered that “accounts by those who have participated in

14

campaigns for racial and religious supremacy…,often are laced with

deceptive information, disingenuous denials of culpability, and dubious

assertions….” (Blee 1993: 597). But this does not mean that “informants

are deliberately lying, indeed, they may really believe their distorted and

partial versions of reality” (Blee 1993:599).

Under-illustrated ‘Spoiled-Identity’ Pollution

Smyth and Mitchell (n.d.) argue that those studying deviant or criminal

groups must balance “feeling vulnerable[,] to being perceived as either in

sympathy with the views of…[‘un-loved’] groups, or as too prejudiced against

them to be capable of understanding them”. Focusing qualitative research on

criminology’s version of Nigel Fielding’s (1982) “un-loved groups”13— rapists,

serial murderers, pedophiles, torturers--introduces how a researcher handles

negative feelings about such actors. Glebbeek (2008: 365) wondered if she

could be objective “with [Guatemalan] police [who] had been responsible for

great atrocities—murders, mutilations, torture, disappearances?” Blee (1998:

388) discovered in her study of KKK women that,

it is one thing to understand the world through the eyes

of an informant with whom you have some (even a

15

little) sympathy, but a very different matter to think

about developing rapport with someone…whose life is

given meaning and purpose by the desire to annihilate

you or others like you (Blee, 1998: 388).

How are field researchers to deal with interlocutor beliefs that evoke

fear and even disgust in themselves? I (Huggins et al., 2002) could

not let my revulsion of torture creep into the interview situation or

interviewees would cut short the interview. I opted to deal with my

reactions to their “poisonous accounts” (see Sanford, 2008) outside the

interview setting, alone in my hotel room. Inside the interview, I

mediated what I was hearing by becoming introspectively analytical

about interviewees’ disclosures (see also Frederikkson, 2008).

Sehgal’s (2008: 343) also “attempted to intellectualize what [she] was

hearing and seeing”:

in part, by focusing on the interview as a ‘technique’

and, in part, by explaining to myself sociologically what I

was seeing and hearing. I had to think fast to ask the

right question, while… processing my troubling feelings

about the interlocutor’s responses and developing a

follow-up question…. When all these techniques failed, I

would become physically ill and/or feel intellectually

16

paralyzed, unable to…analyze my field notes and

interview transcripts.

Presser (2008) decided to back-stage, negotiate around, and reorder some

of her own political standpoints and values. Pointing to the imprisoned male

interviewees’ hegemonic gender and class expectations, Presser (2008: 267)

recognized that, “The men’s self-constructions effectively reproduced binary

distinctions between men and women, victims and offenders, and good and evil”,

which Presser worked against in her own social, academic, and political life. In

Presser’s mind, in “such constructed differences lay the basis for social injustice,

violence and inequality [which]… threaten safety”. Yet Presser (2008: 267) felt

she had to “participate… in their ‘difference-making’” because, in her words, “It

benefited me to the extent that, in the short run, it seemed to ensure my safety…

[for] the men…[to] ‘do…’ goodness with me in the interviews”. But Presser was

uncomfortable with presenting herself “as sympathetic to the men’s claims of

being misunderstood and mistreated; in several cases my [expressed] sympathy

was false” (p. 268).

In fact, women researchers find gender assumptions and expectations

require constant negotiation.14 As Arendell (quoted in Sharp and Kremer, 2006:

318 ) has argued, in “qualitative research [,]…who (emphasis added) the

researcher is, in terms of race, class, and gender,…[is] important to the dynamics

of face-to-face interviews”15. All researchers in Women Fielding Danger (Huggins

and Glebbek, 2008) discovered that, in interactions between researcher and

researched, gender superseded and shaped other ascribed statuses and most

17

achieved ones.

Researching Un-loved Groups

If a ‘hierarchy of credibility’ were applied to research on groups considered

‘polluted’, it could be assumed that a researcher—in most cases having more

power than interlocutors—would be able to translate into control over the

research dynamic. Yet this is not necessarily the case for women researchers.

Knowing that entering secret police worlds would require flexibility and stealth,

Glebbeek leaned toward employing an interview ‘give and take’:

a few jokes and ‘chit chat’ offered a greater

possibility of getting my questions answered….

[The necessity for these] extensive preliminaries…

[was a] reminder of…interviewees’ power over an

interviewer (p. 365).

Glebbeek decided that she should be:

sensitive to what I was ‘supposed’ to know and

when I was ‘supposed’ to know it. This seemed to

buy me the opportunity to ask more sensitive

questions later, when my discretion had time to

be established (p. 365).

Sometimes researchers of ‘unloved’ actors must accept an interviewee’s

prevarications. During an interview with Bruno, a Brazilian torturer, Huggins,

18

knew that [his statement was untrue] but…

did not feel it within my research role to

contradict Bruno. [Yet] by encouraging

Bruno to continue, I [was becoming]

incorporated into…Bruno’s ‘face

maintenance’…. [This] …moved the

interview toward more of Bruno’s secrets

[albeit] through a new collaborative

synthesis [with] Bruno…What Habenstein

(1970) labels ‘research bargaining’.

(Huggins et al., 2003: 381).

In research on some ‘un-loved groups, “‘no neutrals’ are allowed, including

the researcher:

Whether or not you take sides, those actively

involved in the situation are going to define whose

side they think you are on. They will act toward you

on the basis of this definition, regardless of your

professions of neutrality (Sluka, 1995:287).

19

Ethics in Motion

Research ‘ethics’ cannot be confidently laid out in a précis prior to getting

into the field, nor can they be resolved with finality for a university Internal

Review Board (IRB), even though that is exactly what the latter institutions

explicitly require. Ethical challenges—expected and unexpected--emerge and

change each day and with each interview: Ethics are always ‘in motion’.

Researchers must know and exercise responsibility with respect to their own and

interlocutors’ safety by protecting interviewees and their testimonies. How this is

accomplished in the field--that’s the rub!

Research ethics are shaped in the field by a dialectic that includes a field

site’s [often changing] politico-geography, the identity negotiations within it, and

the on-going results of such negotiations; these are structured by the behavioral

opportunities available to researcher and researched. Some ethical challenges

may of course be predicted prior to research, although they may not develop in

the field as expected. Most ethical perils emerge in situ, in ways not even

imagined during field research preparation.

Glebbeek encountered dramatic and unexpected ethical problems with no

easy resolution:

20

During a surprise visit to a police precinct building, a

man rushed up to me and began screaming in my

face…. I suddenly noticed that the man’s hands were

cuffed at his back—an arrestee who had escaped

from the precinct’s makeshift detention area…. A

precinct policeman…grabbed the arrestee and hit him

violently in the face with the butt of his revolver. I was

profoundly shocked and disturbed, but there was little

that I could do about it. I felt that ethically I should

have taken the side of the mistreated prisoner, but…

this would harm my research relationship with

precinct police. I thus ignored the situation and left…,

but resolved to incorporate this incident into my

assessment of Guatemalan Civil Police reform

(Huggins and Glebbeek, 2008: 369-370).

Glebbeek felt as if she had betrayed her own “personal and research

ethics” in order to accomplish research goals.

As time passed, Glebbeek encountered an even more troubling ethical

dilemma: Her opinions about police interviewees were becoming positive,

demonstrating what Huggins calls the perpetrator-as-victim’ dilemma:

I had to ask myself how someone studying a police

institution with a long history of violence and

21

repression could become in any way partial to that

institution? I had not anticipated that objectivity itself

—e.g. seeing interviewees as people first and

listening openly to their accounts—would pull me

into the interviewee’s point of view (p. 370).

While grappling with these ethical issues, some qualitative researchers

discover yet another unexpected one: In the process of studying an un-loved

group, the researcher becomes a ‘victim’. ‘Emotional blow-back’ can follow from

listening to and working within the socio-political spaces of ‘un-loved’ groups. As

Gunn (1997) has argued, in contrast to the permissibility of empathic witnessing in

research with atrocity survivors—where an interviewer can accept taking

simultaneously the roles of observer and victim and be morally transformed by

such embodied involvement in atrocity survivors’ accounts--the researcher

working with morally indefensible ‘un-loved groups’, can be impacted negatively

by what she hears. Sehgal (2008: 343-344), after two weeks undercover at a

Hindu Nationalist Movement’s paramilitary training camp, had “unwittingly

internalized elements of the Hindu nationalist worldview” [that]…required

considerable time and energy to neutralize”. Unable to effectively read her field

notes and assess their meaning,” Sehgal (2008: 345) had learned painfully about

the ‘psychological costs’ of studying un-loved groups (see also, Klatch, 1988: 83;

Lee-Treweek, 2000: 115) Similarly, the emotional ‘blow-back’ experienced by

22

Glebbeek (2008: 370) from researching Guatemalan police violence delayed

assessing her field notes:

Even far away in The Netherlands, writing about

Guatemalan police illegalities, I felt as if I were

betraying police informants’ trust—an irrational way of

thinking that illustrates the conflicts inherent in

adopting ‘progression to friendship’ in research on

violence perpetrators. Continually I had to ask myself

how someone studying a police institution with a long

history of violence and repression could become in

any way partial to that institution? I had not

anticipated that objectivity itself—e.g., seeing

interviewees as people first and listening openly to

their accounts—would pull me into the interviewee’s

point of view….Simply [to] objectify and demonize the

violent police we study—as they have done to their

victims—...would certainly provide a check on

developing feelings of humanity toward them. But,…

demonizing and objectifying those we study would

violate the most basic rules of research and ethical

practice.

23

Skidmore (2008: 305) was likewise impacted by her “affective field site” in

military Burma, where “normal geographic familiarity is overlaid by a topography

of emotionally experienced locations, [and] the familiar routines and assumptions

about personal safety are revealed to be comforting fictions that can no longer

provide a psychological refuge.” Returning from a year’s research, Skidmore

recalls that:

it then took me more than another year…, to stop

covering my mouth with my hand when speaking

about Burma’s military regime. I also needed time to

stop sliding my eyes toward street corners to see who

might be loitering before I entered and left buildings.

Each time I leave the ‘affective field’ I need to

consciously stop using secrecy as a methodology for

living (p. 320).

Skidmore could not “even…think of writing about…field experiences…[because

this] caused fear….” Even ten years “after that initial doctoral fieldwork… I

continue to feel the weight of the regime’s implicit threats of violence towards me”

(p. 321).

24

Conclusion

As qualitative research scholars and professionals our research outcomes

are often measured against what quantitative criminology defines as ‘purity’—

i.e., positivist epistemology and practice. Yet, as this chapter has illustrated,

qualitative research makes unique contributions to the study of deviance and

crime through a process that balances roles, identities, and research practices

within the realities of field-site political geography and human choices and

options. Our findings are ‘us’; ‘we’ are our findings—two ‘facts’ about qualitative

research that cannot be quantified, but should be narrated and meticulously

documented. Yet rarely do qualitative researchers include the richness of their

research ‘negotiations’ in the ‘methods sections’ of their articles or books.

“What?—include in a research monographs ‘methods section’, the fits and starts

of ‘identity approximation’; our feelings of fear and doubt; how we negotiated

ethics in motion? Would that not suggest that our work is ‘unscientific.’?” Yet as

Campbell (2001: 15) argues, “feelings,…beliefs, and values . . . shape . . .

research and are a natural part of inquiry…: Emotions influence our research,

and our research can affect us emotionally”. Qualitative criminologists offer this

insight to researchers to all stripes.

International qualitative criminology, particularly through collaborative

qualitative research in a variety of international settings, will disclose patterns

25

and processes that could modify criminological research findings from U.S. or

another country alone. The outcomes of such collaborations will add force to

purely national qualitative findings, making what may seem ‘exclusive’ or

‘atypical’ to one national setting, become a patterned regularity. In fact, only in

this way can criminology overcome its narrow and parochial concerns.

1. List and explain the differences between qualitative and qualitative research? Be sure

to define all key terms—epistemology, quantitative, positivist, qualitative, for example.

2. Should the subject-matter of criminology be extended to include subjects related to

human rights? Would this impact research on international crime? How and how

not?

3. What does Huggins define as achieving an ‘approximation’ of differences between

interlocutor and researcher? Provide an example of this. How far would you be

willing to ‘approximate’ to achieve a successful interview?

4. Would a quantitative positivist criminologist say that ‘approximations’ between

interviewer and interlocutor demonstrate ‘data contamination’? Why, Why not?

5. What is the meaning of “ethics in motion”? How does this impact upon establishing

allethical challenges before entering the field? How can researchers prepare for

“ethics in motion”?

26

REFERENCES

Arendell, T. 1997. “Reflections on the Researcher-Researched

Relationship: A Woman Interviewing Men”. Qualitative

Sociology. V. 20#3, July: 341-368.

Becker, Howard S. 2009. “How to Find Out How to Do

Qualitative Research” On-line:

http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/550/329. See

also in, International Journal of Communication 3 (2009): 545-

553

---------------------. 1967. “Whose Side are we on?” AASP

Presidential address. On-line:

http://www.leonardbeeghley.com/docs/SYG%206125/Becker,

%20whose%20side%20are%20we%20on.pdf

Blee, Kathleen M. 2002. Inside Organized Racism: Women in the

Hate Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press.

27

__________. 1993. “Evidence, Empathy, and Ethics: Lessons from

Oral Histories of the Klan”, The Journal of American History,

September: 80, 2.

Campbell, Rebecca. 2001. Emotionally Involved: The Impact of

Researching Rape, New York: Routledge

Cicourel, Aaron V. (1968). Social Organization of Juvenile Justice.

New York: Wiley.

Clendinnen, Inga (1998) Reading the Holocaust. New York:

Cambridge University Press.

Cohen, Stan (1993) “Human Rights and Crimes of the State: The

Culture of Denial,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of

Criminology 26 (July): 97–115.

Cotterill, Pamela (1992) “Interviewing Women: Issues of Friendship,

Vulnerability, and Power.” Women’s Studies International Forum

15(5/6): 593–606.

Crelinsten, Ronald D. (1993) “The World of Torture: A Constructed

Reality,” unpublished paper.

Crelinsten, Ronald D. (1993) “The World of Torture: A Constructed

28

Reality,” unpublished paper.

Denzin, Norman K. and Yvonna Lincoln. 2000. Handbook of

Qualitative Criminology, 2nd. Edition. Sage.

Fielding, Nigel. 1982. “Observational research on the National

Front.” In Social Research Ethics, ed. M. Blumer, 80-104. New

York: Holmes and Meier Publishers.

Frank, Arthur W. (1995) The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness,

and Ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Fredriksson, L. 2008. “Human Rights in East Timor: Advocacy and

Ethics in the Field”. Women Fielding Danger: Negotiating

Ethnographic Identities in Field Research. New York: Roman and

Littlefield.

Gelsthorpe, Lorraine (1990) “Feminist Methodologies in

Criminology: A New Approach or Old Wine in New Bottles?,” in L.

Gelsthorpe and A. Morris (eds.) Feminist Perspectives in

Criminology, pp. 89–106. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Gunn, Janet Varner (1997) “Autobiography in the ‘Emergency

Zone’: Reading as Witnessing.” Paper presented at the Modern

Languages Association conference, Toronto, 29 December.

29

Habenstein, Robert (1970) “The Ways of Pathways,” in Robert W.

Habenstein (ed.) Pathways to Data: Field Methods for Studying

Ongoing Social Organizations. Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing.

Douglas, Mary. 2002. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the

Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Routledge.

Greenhalgh T & Rod Taylor: How to read a paper: Papers that

go beyond numbers (qualitative research). British Medical

Journal (BMJ), 1997 Sep; 315: 740 - 743. Accessed 11-8-09

(http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/315/7110/740)

accessed 11-10-09).

Gelsthorpe, Lorraine (1990) “Feminist Methodologies in

Criminology: A New Approach or Old Wine in New Bottles?,” in L.

Gelsthorpe and A. Morris (eds.) Feminist Perspectives in

Criminology, pp. 89–106. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Goffman, E. 1986. Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled

identity. New York: Touchstone

Gunn, Janet Varner (1997) “Autobiography in the ‘Emergency Zone’: Reading as Witnessing,”

paper presented at the Modern Languages Association conference, Toronto, 29 December.

30

Huggins, Martha K. “Modern Institutionalized Torture: Is It ‘Organized Crime’?” Raymond J.

Michalowski and William Chambliss, Eds. In State Crime in the Global Age. Willan Press,

Forthcoming, Spring, 2010.

Huggins, Martha K. and Marie-Louise Glebbeek. 2008. “Studying Violent Male

Institutions: Gender Dynamics in Police Research-- Brazil and Guatemala.”

Women Fielding Danger: Negotiating Ethnographic Identities in Field

Research. New York: Roman and Littlefield.

Huggins, Martha K. and Marie-Louise Glebbeek. 2008. Women

Fielding Danger: Negotiating Ethnographic Identities in Field

Research. New York: Roman and Littlefield.

Huggins, Martha K. and Marie-Louise Glebbeek. 2003. “Women

Studying Violent Male Institutions: Cross-Gendered Dynamics in

Police Research on Secrecy and Danger.” Theoretical

Criminology, 7;3: 363-387.

Huggins, Martha K. , Mika Haritos-Fatouros, Philip Zimbardo.

Violence Workers: Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian

Atrocities. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

31

Kitsuse, J. I., & Cicourel, A. V. (1963). A note on the uses of official

statistics. Social Problems, 11, 131–139.

Klatch, Rebecca E. 1988. “The Methodological Problems of Studying a Politically Resistant

Community”, Studies in Qualitative Methodology Vol. 1: 73-88.

Lee-Treweek, Geraldine. 2000. “The Insight of Emotional Danger: Research Experiences in

a Home for Older People”, In Danger In the Field–Risk and Ethics in Social Research,

Edited by Geraldine Lee-Treweek and Stephanie Linkogle. London: Routledge.

Liazos, Alexander.1972. “The Poverty of the Sociology of Deviance: Nuts, Sluts,

and Preverts” Social Problems, 20, 1, Summer: 103-120.

Loschper, Gabi. 2000. “Crime and Social Control as Fields of Qualitative

Research in the Social Sciences” FQS. Forum: Qualitative Social Research,

Sozialforschung. Institute for Qualitative Research and the Center for Digital

Systems, Freie Universität Berlin.Volume 1 #1, January. On-line:

http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/viewArticle/1119/2483

McKee, Lorna and Margaret O’Brien (1983) “Interviewing Men:

‘Taking Gender Seriously,”’ in Eva Gamarnikow, David Morgan,

June Purvis and Daphene Taylorson (eds) The Public and the

32

Private, pp. 147–61. London: Heinemann.

Mitchell, Richard G., Jr. 1993. “Secrecy and Fieldwork”. Qualitative Research

Methods, Volume 29. Newbury Park: Sage.

Robben, Antonius C.G.M. 1995. “The Politics of Truth and Emotion Among

Victims and Perpetrators of Violence” In Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary

Studies of

Schwandner-Sievers, S. 2008. Securing Safe Spaces: Securing Safe Spaces: Field

diplomacy in Albania and Kosovo. Women Fielding Danger: Negotiating Ethnographic

Identities in Field Research. New York: Roman and Littlefield.

Simmel, George (1950) The Sociology of George Simmel. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Sehgal, 2008. Secrecy and Trust in the Affective Field: Conducting Field Work in

Burma. Women Fielding Danger: Negotiating Ethnographic Identities in Field

Research. New York: Roman and Littlefield.

Presser, L 2008. Power, Safety and Ethics: Cross-Gender Research with

Violent Men. Women Fielding Danger: Negotiating Ethnographic Identities in

Field Research. New York: Roman and Littlefield.

Ragin, Charles, Joane Nagel, and Patricia White. 2004a. “ Workshop on Scientific

Foundations of

Qualitative Research.” Washington: National Science Foundation, 2004), available at

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2004/nsf04219/nsf04219.pdf

33

------------------------------------------------------------. 2004b. Appendix 2: Workshop Agenda

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION Workshop on the Scientific Foundations of

Qualitative Research. Washington: National Science Foundation, 2004),. On-line:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:e2KzMA_un_QJ:www.nsf.gov/pubs/

2004/nsf04219/

nsf04219_5.pdf+ragin+2004+qualitative+researchers+often+want+to+find+out+

%E2%80%98how%E2%80%99+things+happen+

(or+happened)&hl=en&gl=us&sig=AHIEtbQbXRywu5EEiqGcBAs8APEXQlNjXg

Scully, D. 1984. “Convicted Rapists’ Perceptions of Self and Victim: Role Taking and

Emotions”. Gender and Society. V. 2#2: 200-213

Sharp, Gwen and Emily Kramer. 2006. “The Safety Dance: Confronting Harassment,

Intimidation, and Violence in the Field.” Sociological Methodology, V. 36: 1: 317-327.

Skidmore, M. 2008. Secrecy and Trust in the Affective Field: Conducting Field

Work in Burma. Women Fielding Danger: Negotiating Ethnographic Identities in

Field Research. New York: Roman and Littlefield.

Stacey, Judith. 1991. “Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?”, In Women’s Words: The

Feminist Practice of Oral History, Edited by S.B. Gluck and D. Patai. New York:

Routledge: 111-119.

34

Sluka, Jeffery A. 1995. “Reflections on Managing Danger in Fieldwork: Dangerous

Anthropology in Belfast” In Fieldwork under Fire: Contemporary Violence and Survival,

Edited by Carolyn Nordstrum and Antonius C.G.M. Robben. Berkeley: University of

California Press: 276-294.

Smith, L and Clare Mitchell n.d. “Researching Conservative Groups:

rapport and understanding across moral and political boundaries” On-line:

http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?

article=1001&context=lisa_smyth

Viterna, J. 2008. “Negotiating the Muddiness of Grassroots Research: Managing

Identity and Data in Rural El Salvador”. Women Fielding Danger: Negotiating

Ethnographic Identities in Field Research. New York: Roman and Littlefield.

Wilson, P. 2007. “Garbage in/Garbage out” Amazon.com, 9/30.

(http://www.amazon.com/Violence-Workers-Torturers-

ReconstructAtrocities/dp/0520234472/ref=sr_1_1?

ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258306688&sr=8-1-spell. Accessed 11-15-

09

35

36

1 My critical criminological work is based a social class conflict analysis, associated

with Karl Marx’s theory of class and State, and as revised by Latin American

scholars. I have increasingly brought feminist and afro-centrist theories into my work,

while linking these to Marx’s theory of class and the State.

2 Liazos, A. 1972. The Poverty of the sociology of deviance.” Social Problems.

V20(1) 103-120

3 In this article the terms ‘quantitative’ and ‘positivist’ are used interchangeably, even though it

should be recognized that not all quantitative research achieves all of the standards of positivist

science (See also note ‘v’ below)

4 Greenhalgh T & Rod Taylor: How to read a paper: Papers that go beyond numbers

(qualitative research). British Medical Journal (BMJ), 1997 Sep; 315: 740 - 743.

Accessed 11-09 (http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/315/7110/740) accessed 11-

10-09).

5 While recognizing that not all quantitative or qualitative researchers fully observe

each of their paradigm’s ideal standards, there is still evidence that the National

Science Foundation has favored versions of ‘pure’ quantitative over qualitative

research proposals.

6 See Huggins, M. Forthcoming. “Modern Institutionalized Torture: Is It ‘Organized

Crime’?” Raymond J. Michalowski and William Chambliss, Eds. In State Crime in the

Global Age. Willan Press, 2010.

7 One strategy for breaking the secrecy surrounding state-linked violence, a method that I

(Huggins et al., 2002: Ch. 4) label ‘deposing atrocity’, involves an intentional play on words. It

suggests simultaneously the two meanings of depose—in legal terminology, ‘to testify’, and

in political terms, ‘to remove from a position of authority’. Accomplishing the first version of

deposition leads the interviewer to solicit deponents’ explanations, justifications and

accounts of atrocity—getting them to testify about what they have done, how they did it and

why they carried it out. Deposing atrocity also requires overthrowing the authority of secrecy

that silences interviewer and interviewee. For the interviewer, this is facilitated by taking the

role of an ‘onlooker witness,’ a phrase coined to indicate that the researcher is

simultaneously inside and outside the interviewee’s account.

8 Quantitative criminologists could access a good deal of data about subjects now

studied as ‘human rights’, I do so routinely to supplement qualitative studies.

9 Interlocutor is used here interchangeably with ‘the people we are studying’. The term ‘subjects’ is

avoided because the latter violates an important principle of qualitative research; It can suggest that

those we study are subjects of our detached research. The term ‘interlocutor’ sees those we study as

participants in a conversation; as actors rather than acted upon in research.

10 This point has been made by Rebecca Campbell as well in Emotionally Involved: The

Impact of Researching Rape (Campbell, 2001)

11 An extension of this category, is that some theoretical perspectives or approaches are

deemed ‘polluted’, a claim sometimes directed at those taking a critical criminology

approach to deviance or crime.

12 I find ironic that, in the case of state-sponsored torture at Abu Ghraib, that only

the accounts of a few sacrificed lower-ranked torture actors and facilitators have

become public memory through video tapes and trials. The more powerful upper-level

facilitators of Abu Ghraib torture--who ordered, promoted, and sometimes even

directly participated in it--have been able to control the definition of ‘truth’ such that

any information threatening their secrets and leading to their punishment is protected

in the interest of “national security” (see Huggins, 2010 ).

13 This term’s definition is being modified in this chapter to include, besides right-wing

extremist groups, also common criminals.

14 Race, class , and caste differences are also relevant.

15 While Arendell’s (1997) and Sharp and Kramer’s (2006) research involves women

researching men, the research published in Women Fielding Danger (2008)

illustrates that gender also ‘counts’ when women interview women (see Viterna, 2008;

Sehgal, 2008).