Pros And Cons Of Ethnography

3) To what extent is ethnography a useful research method in criminology?

Ethnography has long been used in criminological research. Between the late 1960s and 1980s numerous ethnographies were produced in criminology on deviance and criminality.

However, ethnographies today can be seen as more of an ethical minefield than an effective way of conducting research, not just by criminologists, but by all social scientists. Although most methodological approaches have advantages and disadvantages they are much favoured over ethnographic research and criminology appears to currently favour a quantitative study approach. This present disregard for ethnography, when looking at the important influence it has had on criminology (Hobbs, 2001), can

When criminologists embark on ethnological research they are not setting out 'to understand how angels behave in paradise' (Klockars, 1979, pp. 265) so it is assumed that crimes will be witnessed. When a crime is witnessed, an ethical issue is presented and a decision must be made by the researcher as to whether they should alert the authorities. Although this issue seems to present an ugly stalemate between the law and the integrity of the researcher, with planning and consideration of the ethics in advance, a line can be drawn (Polsky, 1971) in order to limit the violation of any ethical boundaries when conducting the research. In the British Society of Criminology Code of Ethics (2003) researchers are advised to not break the confidentiality assured to their participants or to share any of their information that would be considered identifiable without given consent. Although this privacy in terms of upholding confidentiality is useful to research done in criminology, ethics can still prove to be a large problem. Whilst immersion into participants everyday lives is what gains access to such valuable data it is also what causes moral and ethical issues to arise due to the lack of distance between researcher and participant, i.e. in a quantitative research setting there is a clear hierarchy between researcher and participant. When considering ethics there also comes to light the issue of convert research focusing on the issue of gaining informed consent. Consent is seen as an important part of research and the potential for an uproar if a researcher does not get it is quite large. A large ethical controversy came the work of Humphreys (1975) in which he covertly investigated the Tearoom Trade and videoed men partaking in it without gaining their informed consent. Although many have deemed this