Making sense in cross-cultural research in criminal justice: some reflections on theory and method

Abstract

This chapter is a reflection on the benefits and challenges of doing 'cross cultural' research in criminal justice in which researchers are more or less cultural outsiders to that which they observe. This can bring fresh insight by asking questions not asked by native researchers (or not asked in the same way). But such research poses particular challenges in 'making sense' of what is being observed. There is a need to interpret the rules and practices of the 'cultural other' not just in the light of established ways of seeing and feeling but also their particular material and institutional contexts. The chapter then examines some of the potential dangers of concepts of culture in overemphasising unity and coherence and obscuring change, hybridity and contradiction. The chapter ends by proposing some conceptual and methodological tricks for rendering cultural analysis less monolithic.