Borrowing other people’s ‘facts’: Ethnography and making sense of penal logics, practices, and regimes

• In Event: Ethnographies of the Carceral State I

Abstract

How can ethnographic research help us explore, analyze and deconstruct (i.e., think anew) penal governance? What are some of the contributions ethnographic inquiries have made? Could make? How can ethnography help us situate and deepen particular projects, while also diversifying the study of crime, punishment and law? This paper represents a methodological and analytical reflection on ethnography vis-à-vis penal governance. Ethnography entails a set of practices for gathering data, although they are more diverse than sometimes acknowledged. But this presentation focuses more on ethnography as a modality for engaging with complex and dispersed phenomena (such as punishment), for understanding social phenomena from the perspectives of its actors/participants, for opening up new or under-explored lines of inquiry, for developing theory and critical thought, and for intervening in the social world in potentially different ways.

Author

• Robert Werth, Rice University