Karen Lumsden

‘You are what you research’: researcher partisanship and the sociology of the ‘underdog’

This article contributes to debates regarding the issue of researcher partisanship and bias within social research and situates it within the current trend towards reflexivity. The discussion draws upon the researcher’s experiences of conducting fieldwork with the ‘boy racer’ culture and societal groups affected by their behaviour. In this instance, the researcher unintentionally sided with the ‘underdogs’ – the ‘boy racers’. Hence, it is argued that value neutrality is an impossible goal, particularly in research of a political nature. Social researchers will inevitably ‘take sides’ whether or not they are willing to admit so. The discussion also touches upon the prevalence of media culture in ethnographic research and the dilemmas faced when making our research public at key moments.

Gendered Performances in a Male-Dominated Subculture: 'Girl Racers', Car Modification and the Quest for Masculinity

This paper discusses female participation in the male-dominated ‘boy racer’ culture. Little is known about girls who join male-dominated subcultures while studies of car cultures have tended to describe girls as peripheral participants and emphasise the link between the car and masculinity. Hence this paper provides an analysis of ‘girl racers’; those drivers who are active participants in the ‘racer’ culture through their positioning in the ‘drivers seat’. Gender is understood as ‘performative’ and Connells notions of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and ‘emphasized femininity’ frame the analysis. For the ‘girl racers’, ‘doing gender’ involved negotiating a complex set of norms while reconciling the competing discourses of the masculine ‘racer’ scene and femininity. In order to be viewed as authentic participants, females were required to act like ‘one of the boys’ through their style of dress, driving, language and attitudes. They internalised the gender norms of the culture rather than resisting them explicitly, for fear of being excluded from the group. However, the feminine ways in which they modified their cars allowed them to retain an element of femininity within the world of ‘boy racers’. Thus, ‘girl racers’ resourcefully negotiated their way through the culture by employing a combination of complex strategies involving compliance, resistance and cooperation with the masculine values of the group. Findings are presented from participant observation, semi-structured and ethnographic interviews with members of the ‘racer’ culture in Aberdeen, Scotland, and semi-structured interviews with members of ‘outside’ groups.

'Do We Look Like Boy Racers?' the Role of the Folk Devil in Contemporary Moral Panics

This article addresses the failure of studies concerning moral panics to take into account the reaction of those individuals who are the subject of social anxiety. It responds to the suggestion by McRobbie and Thornton (1995) that studies of moral panic need to account for the role played by the ‘folk devils’ themselves, for a moral panic is a collective process (Young, 2007). The paper presents findings from ethnographic fieldwork with the ‘boy racer’ culture in Aberdeen, qualitative interviews with members of outside groups, and content analysis of media articles. The societal reaction to the ‘boy racer’ subculture in Aberdeen is evidence of a contemporary moral panic. The medias representation of the subculture contributed to the stigmatization of young drivers and the labelling of the subcultures activities as deviant and antisocial. The drivers were aware of their negative portrayal in the media; however their attempts to change the myth of the ‘boy racer’ were unsuccessful. Although subcultural media can provide an outlet of self-expression for youths, these forms of media can also become caught-up in the moral panic. Ironically the youths’ own niche and micro media reified the (ir)rationality for the moral panic.

The McDonaldisation of police–academic partnerships: organisational and cultural barriers encountered in moving from research on police to research with police

ABSTRACT Partnerships between police and academics have proliferated in recent years, reflecting the increased recognition of the benefits to be had on both sides from collaborating on research, knowledge transfer and other activities. The literature on police–academic partnerships refer to inherent obstacles in bringing the ‘two worlds’ of research and practice together, and reflects an increased recognition on both sides of the benefits to be had from the co-production of research – reflecting a shift from conducting research on police, to conducting research with police. This takes place in the wider context of moves towards evidence-based policing, and the professionalisation of policing in the UK. In this paper we reflect on our experiences of building a police–academic partnership, focusing on: (1) the internal organisational and cultural drivers and barriers; (2) the opportunities offered via ‘in-house’ research by analysts and police officers and (3) evaluation. We highlight the increasing risk presented to both sides by the ‘McDonaldisation’ [Heslop, R., 2011. The British police service: professionalization or ‘McDonaldization’? International journal of police science & management, 13 (4), 312–321, Ritzer, G., 2004. The Mcdonaldization of society. London: Sage] of police–academic partnerships, and the need to thus play close attention to how the identification and prioritisation of research, its conduct, and aspects of evaluation, are managed and supported in practice, with open and transparent dialogue between police and academic partners. The paper draws on qualitative interviews conducted with police officers and police staff, and our observations and reflections while conducting a strategically driven university-police collaborative project with police forces in England.

Policing Research and the Rise of the 'Evidence-Base': Police Officer and Staff Understandings of Research, its Implementation and 'What Works'

Despite the pitfalls identified in previous critiques of the evidence-based practice movement in education, health, medicine and social care, recent years have witnessed its spread to the realm of policing. This article considers the rise of evidence-based policy and practice as a dominant discourse in policing in the UK, and the implications this has for social scientists conducting research in this area, and for police officers and staff. Social scientists conducting research with police must consider organisational factors impacting upon police work, as well as the wider political agendas which constrain it – in this case, the ways in which the adoption of evidence-based policing and the related ‘gold standard’ used to evaluate research act as a ‘technology of power’ to shape the nature of policing/research. The discussion draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with police officers and staff from police forces in England.

(Re)civilizing the Young Driver: Technization and Emotive Automobility

ABSTRACT Historically, youths have presented challenges to the authorities via their appropriation of the automobile and related inversion of mainstream motoring values. Recently, this has been demonstrated in the contestation concerning boy racers in the UK and their engagement in deviant driving and car modification. Drawing on Elias’ civilizing process and work on technization, this paper demonstrates how various measures targeted the emotive heart of this car-based community, thus attempting to (re)civilize young drivers. Data is presented from ethnographic research with boy racers and societal groups in the city of Aberdeen, Scotland.

Media framing of trolling and online abuse: silencing strategies, symbolic violence, and victim blaming

Abstract This article draws on British newspaper reports in order to demonstrate that trolling, and the media’s subsequent framing of trolling, involves “silencing strategies.” It is important to examine how trolling is discussed within the media to understand how it might frame public opinion, debate, and action, and implicitly victim blame. The article presents findings on the forms of (online) abuse and behaviours related to trolling in media reports, including rape threats, death threats, and body shaming. It also explores the media portrayal of victims of trolling, and the advice given concerning how to respond to trolls. To comply with the message to women, which is propagated in media and popular discourses: “do not feed the troll” means that “symbolic violence” is exercised with the complicity of the victim(s) of trolling, which has broader implications.

‘It’s a profession, it isn’t a job’: Police officers’ views on the professionalisation of policing in England

This article focuses on police officers’ views on the professionalisation of policing in England against a backdrop of government reforms to policing via establishment of the College of Policing, evidence-based policing, and a period of austerity. Police officers view professionalisation as linked to top-down government reforms, education and recruitment, building of an evidence-base, and ethics of policing (Peelian principles). These elements are further entangled with new public management principles, highlighting the ways in which professionalism can be used as a technology of control to discipline workers. There are tensions between the government’s top-down drive for police organisations to professionalise and officers’ bottom-up views on policing as an established profession. Data are presented from qualitative interviews with 15 police officers and staff in England.

The Shifting Legitimacy of Knowledge Across Academic and Police/Practitioner Settings: Highlighting the Risks and Limits of Reflexivity

The value of reflexivity is now largely accepted by qualitative researchers (Alvesson and Skoldberg 2011; Lumsden and Winter 2014), and has helped to address the sanitized nature of research accounts typically featured in methods textbooks. Although criminology has a less prominent legacy of producing ‘reflexive accounts’ than in sociology or anthropology for instance, recent publications such as this edited volume, the chapters in Lumsden and Winter’s (2014) Reflexivity in Criminological Research, and the writings of others such as Jupp et al. (2000), Jewkes (2012) and Liebling (1999), demonstrate the growing recognition amongst criminologists of the value of reflexivity, in addition to feminist criminologies (Gelsthorpe 1990). Reflexive accounts can also be found in classic sociological studies of crime and deviance, which highlight the dangers faced in the field, and questions of research ethics (Whyte 1943; Polsky 1967; Adler 1993[1985]; Hobbs 1988). Reflexivity is valuable in that it draws attention to the researcher as part of the world being studied, while reminding us that those individuals involved in our research are ‘subjects’, not ‘objects’ (Lumsden and Winter 2014). By being reflexive we acknowledge that social researchers cannot be separated from their autobiographies and will ‘bring their own values to the research and their interpretation of the data’ (Devine and Heath 1999: 27).

Survival of the Fastest: Ethical Dilemmas in Research with 'Boy Racers'

This article grapples with the ethical dilemmas of youth research, and more specifically ‘edgework’, via an experiential account of fieldwork with ‘boy racers’ in Aberdeen, Scotland. ‘Edgework’ is ethically problematic for those who wish to conduct fieldwork with youths. By engaging in ‘edgework’, researchers can find themselves unwittingly drawn into the deviant activities of youths, as deviance slowly becomes the norm through prolonged immersion in their social world. ‘Edgework’ also blurs the line between insider and outsider status, threatening the researcher’s ability to step back from the field and critically reflect on their experiences. Furthermore, the experiential aspect of the ‘edgework’ method is called to the fore since the researcher’s experiences of risky behaviours (in terms of discomfort) differed from those of the researched (in terms of pleasure).