From ‘Hate Crimes’ to Social Harm: Critical Moments and Reflexive Practice

Abstract

Reflexive practice is a difficult enterprise to embark upon because it is a methodology and area of criminological and sociological debate that is imbued with ethical, political and pragmatic considerations. Such considera- tions make efforts to identify effective reflexive practices difficult because the power dynamics and dominant epistemologies and ontologies that reflex- ivity seeks to identify critique and ultimately upend have created a social world and academic disciplines that are infinitely complex and nuanced in their relocation and reproduction of social inequalities. This essay does not have at its core, neither the intention to eschew the ethical, political and pragmatic issues within reflexive discussions, nor the desire to present my own reflexive process as unencumbered from the complex web that is created by racism, patriarchy, heterosexism and capitalism. Rather, it seeks to present and understand two moments, in particular, during my disserta- tion research where despite my stated commitment to socially responsible criminological research with an eye towards the power dynamics between the researcher and participant, I continued to make powerful and sub- tle assumptions about the phenomenon I am attempting to empirically understand. This chapter explores not just the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of the assumptions, but considers the process through which the critical moment of recognition occurs. That is, what enables the recognition of a researcher’s a priori epistemologies and ontologies as such.