Abstract
The feminist criminological research process has focused on minimizing power imbalances between the researcher and the researched. Generally, this has meant adjusting an imbalance that assumes the researcher holds an absolute monopoly on power. According to feminist methodologies seeking to redress this, steps must then be taken to elevate the research subject in the relationship between researcher and researched. Gender alone, however, does not provide a sufficiently sophisticated lens through which to analyze power dynamics in ethnographic research. Both structural and situational factors will play a role in the researcher’s reception. In this article, I aim to move beyond the debate of whether a researcher causes harm. Instead, it is a manner of degrees. Drawing on my experiences from an ethnographic study of police, I argue that if the field of criminology better facilitates reflexive methods and allows the researcher to reflect on how her own background may bias her conclusions, we may minimize this harm to some degree.
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