Kathryn Henne

Mapping the margins of intersectionality: Criminological possibilities in a transnational world

This article contributes to recent discussions around intersectionality, a framework that captures how two or more axes of subordination overlap in practice, and its utility for criminology. Even though intersectionality offers an analytic through which to account for discursive dimensions of marginalization, feminist criticisms of intersectionality’s proliferation across disciplines suggests that the concept needs to be revisited. After contextualizing intersectionality’s tenets, we trace how feminists have addressed related issues through a transnational lens and then consider how these adaptations can help inform future criminological inquiry. We conclude with the argument that a critical re-reading of intersectionality not only enables a focused critique of mainstream criminology, but also encourages an innovative feminist praxis within the discipline.

The “Science” of Fair Play in Sport: Gender and the Politics of Testing

This essay reflects on the history of gender verification regulations aimed at female athletes in international sport and the justification for this practice under the rationale that it protects fair play in women’s sport. Beginning with the most recent guidelines for women participants proposed in 2011 following the controversy around the 800-meter world champion runner Caster Semenya, this analysis looks at the politics—gendered, scientific, and international in nature—of policing sex in women’s events through the use of scientific testing. To do so, the article traces the ideological underpinnings of fair play in Olympic sport and the development of international guidelines, providing a historiographic reading of the International Olympic Committee Medical Commission’s early work in this field during the 1960s, subsequent changes to this regulation, and their implications. In advancing this argument, I contend that to date the science aimed at preserving a steadfast binary has only provided evidence to the contrary. Science has yet to prove that female sex is definitive, and its recommendations have in part come to reflect that recognition. The recent revisiting of gender verification protocols nonetheless suggests the technocratic desire for a formation of sex that reflects binary constructions of gender, attesting to the continued power of heteronormative orders in this field and beyond.

Unveiling White logic in criminological research: an intertextual analysis

Critical race scholars have called into question the objective neutrality upon which much positivist social science rests, arguing that it discursively masks how whiteness underpins the normative purview of research design and findings. As the scholarly securing of whiteness takes shape through explicit and discursive mechanisms, this article examines how it is manifest in criminological research through an intertextual analysis of contemporary peer-reviewed scholarship. Examining 558 articles in five recognized journals, this paper documents how blind spots towards race and racial stratification surface in criminological research, arguing that most of the articles analyzed do not simply ignore White privilege; they actively uphold it. Findings suggest that they do so through two means: first by whitewashing race, that is, disregarding how race and racism can differentially affect acts and trends of crime and deviance, and secondly, by narrowly representing race as merely explanatory variable without querying the broader power relations it marks. After discussing how these patterns reveal and uphold whiteness as a normative value, we conclude with a discussion of preliminary steps aimed at exposing and unpacking how White logic informs the field.

Defending Doping: Performances and Trials of an Anti-Doping Program

Despite the growing research on doping in sport, there is little analysis of the sanctioning process. This article contributes to remedying this gap by examining anti-doping rule violation hearings heard before the California State Athletic Commission. Drawing upon qualitative fieldwork informed by socio-legal approaches, it explores how athletes articulate defenses against formal accusations of doping. Their performances reveal broader power relationships. Analysis of the interactions between participants in the hearings illustrates how relational aspects of the hearings are integral to understanding the anti-doping sanctioning process. In sum, this article reveals how attempts to adhere to seemingly objective, procedural protocols and intersectional forms of social difference converge, complicating the pursuit of the Commission’s mandate to protect the health of athletes under its jurisdiction.

Indicator culture in sport for development and peace: a transnational analysis of governance networks

Abstract This article analyses sport for development and peace (SDP) governance, focusing specifically on the role of indicator culture. It examines how different actors inform SDP governance, drawing upon data collected as part of a larger, multi-sited ethnographic research project. It utilises actor–network theory as its analytical guide, which enables deeper consideration of how bureaucratic mechanisms, measurement and evaluation practices, political and funding mandates, and postcolonial ideologies converge in the development of SDP initiatives in the Pacific. Findings point to tensions within the broader embrace of indicator culture and how SDP is uniquely positioned to illuminate the dilemmas that result.

Multi-sited fieldwork in regulatory studies

Studying regulation, as the other chapters in this book attest, can be a complicated process. The previous chapter provides guidelines regarding the theoretical and methodological concerns that we as researchers should consider critically before conducting research on regulation. It emphasises the importance of studying objective concerns, such as regulatory enforcement and whether or not actors comply, alongside subjective ones, such as the meanings attributed to regulation as influenced by participants’ world views. This chapter acknowledges those important considerations, but focuses on the particular concern of accounting for the transnational dimensions of regulation. While both objective and subjective concerns inform regulation, so, too, do the globalised undercurrents shaping broader social change.

Shifting risk to the frontline: case studies in different contract working environments

An extensive body of safety literature and research discusses the integral role of rules and procedures in managing workplace hazards, ensuring worker safety, and safeguarding the environment. Nevertheless, organizational accidents and workplace injuries continue to occur, and individual employees often bear the brunt of responsibility. This paper examines how risk becomes shifted to individuals at the bottom of supply chains, focusing on two different groups of contract workers. Specifically, it draws on case studies conducted in Australia – one on civil contractors working around hazardous infrastructure and one on athletes who are subject to anti-doping requirements. A comparison of the two cases and their distinctive elements illuminates the ways in which structural pressures, organizational dynamics, and context-specific conditions influence the risks shouldered by individuals. Our analysis shows that, in both cases, adverse outcomes are widely seen as the responsibility of contract workers, prompting other actors to judge them as blameworthy. In doing so, risk in various forms (e.g. safety, financial, reputational) becomes shifted onto workers who are constrained by contracts and away from away from higher level actors and organizations that are generally in more powerful positions than frontline workers. This finding suggests that the burden of accountability and potentially liability is borne primarily by frontline workers. Because of this focus, it is easy to lose sight of organizational and structural conditions that contribute to the risks revealed at the individual level. Through an analysis of 57 interviews across both sectors, complemented by participant observations and a media review, this paper underscores the importance of critically considering not only individual worker actions, but also how regulation can support the diversion of risk, responsibility, and liability onto frontline workers.

Amateurism, scientific control, and crime: historical fluctuations in anti-doping discourses in sport

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the institutional mechanisms for combating doping in high-level sport, including the trend toward using legalistic frameworks, and how they contribute to notions of deviance. Design/methodology/approach A historical approach informed by recent criminological adaptations of genealogy was utilized, using primary and secondary sources. Findings Three time periods involving distinct frameworks for combating doping were identified, each with their own advantages and limitations: pre-1967, post-1967 up until the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency in 1999, and post-1999. Originality/value This study contextualizes the recent legalistic turn toward combating doping in sport, bringing greater understanding to the limitations of present anti-doping practices.