Feminist social science is marked by its diversity, its ethos of inclusiveness and its critical power. These qualities are best exemplified in feminisms' acknowledgement, at the epistemological level, that men as well as women are crucial participants in the feminist enterprise. Moreover, epistemological justifications for positioning men within feminism is matched by a commitment to think through the methodological implications of men's involvement as both researchers and researched. In particular, inclusiveness pushes at the boundary of what counts as feminist methodology, and it forces us to rethink the underlying principles of feminist research work. In this article, two key feminist methodological principlesÐrapport and empathy, and democracyÐare interrogated in the light of a series of in-depth interviews with a group of powerful, authoritative and uniformed men (senior police officers). It is suggested that while there may be a temptation to dismiss the interviewing relations which evolved as`non-feminist', they are also indicative of feminist methodological vitality and strength as well as its capacity to accommodate the fractured subjectivities of research participants. The paper concludes by positing a re-conceptualization of interviewing principles which not only appreciate diversity in feminist epistemological and methodological commitments, but also variability and difference in feminist research relationships.
Introduction: criminologies of space Criminology has a very patchy and largely unimpressive record of theoretical work which engages with questions of space/place, environment, and landscape. To be sure, it has had something to say about the ecological dynamics of crime and its control (see Hayward, 2004, pages 87^111), but by and large criminology has tended to obscure the complexity and messiness of such dynamics with a range of abstract and sanitising terms, such as`neighbourhood watch',`crime hot spots',`community safety',`safer cities', and`secure zones'. Such expressions may have a recognisable political currency and an immediate policy and popular appeal, but they fail to capture the experiential, organic, and fluid relations of the spatialities of crime. For Hayward the cumulative effect of this kind of scholarship has been to produce an``homogenous modernist space ... (and a) very rigid formalised geography of crime'' (2004, page 101). Hayward's research marks an important and welcome departure in criminological work concerned with questions of place/space and our everyday experiences of crime and the city. His cultural criminological perspective is indicative of a new genre of criminological work which eschews rationalistic, homogenising, and postcode-specific frameworks for understanding the spatialities of crime and which rejects the administrative penchant for arid and abstract modes of spatial representation, such as crime pattern analysis, community profiles, digital mapping, and CCTV footage. (1)
In recent years, digital vigilantism, often dubbed 'paedophile hunting', has grabbed media headlines in the US, UK and Europe. Though this novel style of policing carries no legal or moral authority, it is nonetheless 'taking hold' within a pluralised policing landscape where its effectiveness at apprehending child sex offenders is capturing public attention. While the emergence of digital vigilantism raises normative questions of where the boundaries of citizen involvement in policing affairs might be drawn, this paper is concerned with firstly, how this kind of citizen-led policing initiative comes into being; secondly, how it emerges as an identifiable policing form; and thirdly, how it acquires leverage and makes its presence felt within a mixed economy of (authorised) policing actors, sites and technologies. The paper sets out a detailed case study of a 'paedophile hunter' in action, read through a provocative documentary film, first broadcast on mainstream UK television in October 2014. This lays the groundwork for thinking through the cultural relations of digital vigilantism, and how this proliferating mode of policing practice is engendered and mobilised through affective connectivities, performative political imaginaries and culturallymediated dialogical praxis. In seeking an entry point for theorising emergent policing forms and their connectedness to other policing bodies, spaces and things, the paper concludes with a thumbnail sketch of assemblage thinking.
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