Fear, fumbling and frustration
| Date | 01 February 2003 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1466802503003001458 |
| Published date | 01 February 2003 |
| Author | Andrew Goldsmith |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Fear, fumbling and frustration:
Reflections on doing criminological
fieldwork in Colombia
ANDREW GOLDSMITH
Flinders University, Australia
Abstract
The dangers of doing fieldwork have received little consideration
within the criminological literature. This article examines the
author’s experiences over the last five years studying policing and
security in Colombia. It reflects upon a number of issues relating to
the personal safety of the researcher and to the ongoing viability of
doing field-based research in such an environment. The project
‘survival’ skills of adaptability and methodological pluralism are
contextualized and argued. The importance of local supports and
acknowledging personal limits is also stressed. The need for
criminology to look to anthropology and other field-oriented
disciplines is suggested if criminology’s quest for relevance in a
globalizing world is to be successful.
Key Words
fieldwork • methodology • policing • risk • security
[I]f one refuses to be a sociologist of the jailhouse or court system, takes
Malinowski to heart, and goes out into the field, there is risk involved . . . It
is the sort of risk that writers of criminology texts, for all their eagerness to
put down fieldwork, surprisingly don’t mention: most of the danger for the
fieldworker comes not from the cannibals and headhunters but from the
colonial officials.
(Polsky, 1967: 141)
Criminal Justice
© 2003 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi.
1466–8025(200302) 3:1;
Vol. 3(1): 103–125; 030458
103
Introduction
This article examines my experiences conducting fieldwork on policing and
security in Colombia over the past five years or so. It looks at the practical
difficulties of doing criminological research in such an environment, and is
critical of what criminology as a discipline has to offer criminologists
interested in working in these environments. Dealing with risk is a funda-
mental consideration in the article. It has not received extensive considera-
tion by criminologists (see Ferrell and Hamm, 1998), yet is central to the
internationalization of criminological research.
While any fieldwork has its associated risks, both personal and pro-
fessional, implicit in Polsky’s remarks is the importance of continuing to do
fieldwork in order to access fields of action and experience that otherwise
receive scant or no academic analysis. The security situation in Colombia
certainly has received very little attention from criminologists. As the field
poses important questions about the incidence of crime and the operation
of criminal justice institutions, this neglect is especially regrettable.
Methodological difficulties cannot be discounted in explaining this fact and
therefore warrant closer consideration. Fields vary enormously in the
degree and kind of risks posed for scholars in the field. While criminologists
have written about danger in the field (Ferrell and Hamm, 1998), this has
been almost always in First World environments. We need to look at other
locations of criminological significance, where the state is less able or
inclined to rush to the rescue of endangered researchers, or indeed where it
is a source of threat to the researcher. For criminologists interested in
conducting or even just reflecting upon Third World fieldwork, I will
suggest, we need to look to disciplines such as anthropology rather than to
criminology for practical guidance to the field.
Polsky’s comment also serves to remind us as criminologists that the
‘guards’ are often as, if not more, interesting than the ‘guarded’. In any
society, we need to find ways of studying these relatively powerful coercive
institutions.1In extreme environments, such as the Colombian case, partic-
ular historical as well as contextual features can accentuate the difficulties
of studying policing and security. The prevalence of violence, the social
contestation of order, and a ‘weak state’ render the study of justice
institutions and practices in these environments fraught. Two commonly
encountered features of developing world settings that ensure theoretical
interest but also practical difficulties in the field are lack of police legiti-
macy and the limited effectiveness of police on the ground. These factors
can induce sensitivity among police subjects to being studied, and arouse
suspicion among other groups towards researchers interested in policing
and security issues.2Policing Bogota, in other words, is different from
policing Brixton, the Bronx or indeed Belfast. Consequently there are
limited lessons to be drawn from the few western police ethnographies
available (Brewer, 1993).
My research is not yet completed, so that I continue to wrestle with
Criminal Justice 3(1)
104
To continue reading
Request your trial