Sensemaking and Attunement: The Process and Potential of Sensory Criminology

• In Event: Qualitative Research in Punishment and Reentry

Abstract

“Somethings gonna go. Don’t know what it is, it’ll probably be somebody’s gonna come out and batter somebody else…But you can sense it’s gonna happen…” (Officer Rose).

This paper draws primarily on prisons research – specifically the recently published “Sound, Order and Survival in Prison” – to demonstrate the value of attending to sensory aspects of experience in qualitative research. This is based on an aural ethnography of a local men’s prison but focuses on broader questions about what the sensory can add to social scientific inquiry.

I begin by laying out the methodological basis for de-centreing vision as the primary means of making sense of social worlds. I will then discuss how I developed a method for specifically exploring the social significance of sound in a local men’s prison and attuning to “the everyday tune that’s normal for here” (Derek, Senior Officer). I then discuss what the implications of this are for reassessing positionality, the research process and understanding of the prison community I spent time working with. I conclude by briefly discussing how attending to sound, and the sensory more broadly, adds to our understanding of navigating violence for those who live and work in prison spaces.

Author

• Kate Zoe Herrity, University of Cambridge