Kriminologisches Journal

In praise of ethnography

Towards a rich understanding of crime and deviance

Zusammenfassung

In this article I show how ethnography can be used to get a rich understanding of crime and deviance. I will highlight the advantages of ethnography for criminology by referring to the work of others and by using detailed examples of the ´back-stage´ experience of my own fieldwork among the soccer-hooligans of Ajax, Amsterdam. This means that my research experience is not rewritten to fit the ideal front-stage of the supposedly "objective" researcher, but instead that this article explicitly describes the embodied, emotional and personal experiences of doing ethnography. Here I will show that the advantages of ethnography for criminology are inherently related to several qualities of this methodological approach: 1. continued physical access, 2. unanticipated situations, 3. thick contextual information, 4. natural triangulation and 5. the embodied research-experience.

Keywords: Ethnography, hooligans, continued physical access, unanticipated situations, thick contextual information, natural triangulation, the embodied research-experience.



In diesem Artikel zeige ich wie die Ethnographie uns dabei hilft, Verbrechen und deviantes Verhalten besser zu verstehen. Anhand detaillierter Beispiele aus meiner Feldforschung über die "back-stage experience" von Hooligans des holländischen Fußballvereins Ajax Amsterdam werde ich aufzeigen, wie Ethnographie einen Beitrag zur kriminologischen Forschung leisten kann. Der Artikel beschreibt die körperlich eingebundene, emotionale und persönliche Erfahrung in der Anwendung von Ethnographie.

Schlüsselwörter: Ethnografie, Hooligans, aufrechtgehaltener physischer Zugang, unerwartete Situationen, dichte kontextuale Informationen, natürliche Triangulation, "embodied research" Erfahrung