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Research ‘Inside’ Viewed from ‘Outside’: Reflections on Prison Ethnography

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The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Ethnography

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology ((PSIPP))

Abstract

My focus in this chapter is on the methodological implications of the inside/outside distinction for ethnographic research,1 as illustrated by the critical case of prison ethnography (Jacobs, 1974; Liebling, 1999; Rhodes, 2001). Appropriately enough, in colloquial English, ‘being inside’ is a euphemism for ‘being in prison’, and this acknowledges, amongst other things, the sharp boundary around this type of setting, marking it off from ‘the outside world’ — a feature that is of considerable importance from the point of view of carrying out research and from other perspectives as well. As Rhodes (2004: 8) remarks: ‘prisons create by their very nature sets of opposing and aligned positions.’

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Authors
  1. Martyn Hammersley
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Open University, UK

    Deborah H. Drake (Senior Lecturer in Criminology) & Rod Earle (Lecturer in Youth Justice) (Senior Lecturer in Criminology) &  (Lecturer in Youth Justice)

  2. Sheffield Hallam University, UK

    Jennifer Sloan (Senior Lecturer in Criminology) (Senior Lecturer in Criminology)

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© 2015 Martyn Hammersley

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Hammersley, M. (2015). Research ‘Inside’ Viewed from ‘Outside’: Reflections on Prison Ethnography. In: Drake, D.H., Earle, R., Sloan, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Ethnography. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137403889_2

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