Liquid Criminology ─ Doing Imaginative Criminological Research

This book explores the ways in which criminological methods can be imaginatively deployed and developed in a world increasingly characterized by the blurred nature of social reality. Whilst recognizing the importance of positivist approaches and research techniques, it advocates a commitment to understanding the ways in which those techniques can be used imaginatively, at times in combination with less conventional methods, discussing the questions concerning risk, ethics and access that arise as a result. Giving voice to cutting edge research practices both in terms of concepts and methods that shift the criminological focus towards the kind of imaginative work that comprised the foundations of the discipline, it calls into question the utility and credentials of mainstream work that fails to serve the discipline itself or the policy questions allied to it. A call not to ‘give up on numbers’ but also not to be defined by statistics and the methods that produce them, Liquid Criminology sheds light on a way of doing research for criminology that is not only creative but also critical. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, criminology and social policy with interests in research methods and design.

Michael Hviid Jacobsen is Professor of Sociology at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is the editor ofThe Poetics of Crime and co-editor of The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman,Encountering the Everyday, The Transformation of Modernity, Utopia: Social Theory and the Futureand Imaginative Methodologies: The Poetic Imagination in the Social Sciences.

Sandra Walklate is Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool, UK and Adjunct Professor in the School of Justice, QUT, Australia. Her recent publications include,Victims: Trauma, Testimony, Justice (with R. McGarry) and The Contradictions of Terrorism (with G. Mythen).