Courtroom Ethnography

Courtroom Ethnography
Author: Lisa Flower
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2023-12-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031379853

This book provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of courtroom ethnography. This collection gathers international researchers from a multitude of disciplines to explore three central themes: doing courtroom ethnography, ethnographic studies of the courtroom, and contemporary and critical aspects of courtroom ethnography. It highlights the nuances, negotiations, and issues that ethnographic researchers face in the courtroom. It covers topics like how to study legal actors and lay participants, legal and social processes, norms and rulings, digitalisation and vulnerability, gender and inequalities, and more across a range of legal cases. It presents the current state of the art of the field of courthouse ethnography with a discussion of methodological challenges, modes of access and best practice examples. With practical tips/questions at the end of each chapter, it speaks to students and above in subjects including sociology, criminology, law, geography, sociology of law, conflict studies, socio-legal studies and beyond.

The Oxford Handbook of Ethnographies of Crime and Criminal Justice

The Oxford Handbook of Ethnographies of Crime and Criminal Justice
Author: Sandra M. Bucerius
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 657
Release: 2022
Genre: Law
ISBN: 019090450X

Despite ethnography's long and distinguished history in the social sciences, its use in criminology is still relatively rare. Over the years, however, ethnographers in the United States and abroad have amassed an impressive body of work on core criminological topics and groups, including gang members, sex workers, drug dealers, and drug users. Ethnographies on criminal justice institutions have also flourished, with studies on police, courts, and prisons providing deep insights into how these organizations operate and shape the lives of people who encounter them. The Oxford Handbook of Ethnographies of Crime and Criminal Justice provides critical and current reviews of key research topics, issues, and debates that crime ethnographers have been grappling with for over a century. This volume brings together an outstanding group of ethnographers to discuss various research traditions, the ethical and pragmatic challenges associated with conducting crime-related fieldwork, relevant policy recommendations for practitioners in the field, and areas of future research for crime ethnographers. In addition to exhaustive overview essays, the handbook also presents case studies that serve as exemplars for how ethnographic inquiry can contribute to our understanding of crime and criminal justice-related topics.

The Sentimental Court

The Sentimental Court
Author: Jonas Bens
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2022-05-19
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1009080806

Modern law seems to be designed to keep emotions at bay. The Sentimental Court argues the exact opposite: that the law is not designed to cast out affective dynamics, but to create them. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork - both during the trial of former Lord's Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen at the International Criminal Court's headquarters in The Netherlands and in rural northern Uganda at the scenes of violence - this book is an in-depth investigation of the affective life of legalized transitional justice interventions in Africa. Jonas Bens argues that the law purposefully creates, mobilizes, shapes, and transforms atmospheres and sentiments, and further discusses how we should think about the future of law and justice in our colonial present by focusing on the politics of atmosphere and sentiment in which they are entangled.

Linguistic Evidence

Linguistic Evidence
Author: William M. O'Barr
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2014-05-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1483297713

With the permission of a North Carolina court, more than 150 hours of courtroom speech were recorded for this study. These tapes provided a rich archive for a variety of different types of inquiry, including the ethnography of courtroom speech and social psychological experiments focused on effects of different modes of presenting information in courts of law. Four sets of linguistic variables and related experimental studies have constituted a major portion of the research: (1) "powerful" versus "powerless" speech; (2) hypercorrect versus formal speech; (3) narrative versus fragmented testimony, and (4) simultaneous speech by witnesses and lawyers. All four sets of studies focus on the central question of importance of form over content of testimony.

The Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology

The Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology
Author: Marie-Claire Foblets
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 993
Release: 2022
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0198840535

The Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology is a ground-breaking collection of essays that provides an original and internationally framed conception of the historical, theoretical, and ethnographic interconnections of law and anthropology. Each of the chapters in the Handbook provides a survey of the current state of scholarly debate and an argument about the future direction of research in this dynamic and interdisciplinary field. The structure of the Handbook is animated by an overarching collective narrative about how law and anthropology have and should relate to each other as intersecting domains of inquiry that address such fundamental questions as dispute resolution, normative ordering, social organization, and legal, political, and social identity. The need for such a comprehensive project has become even more pressing as lawyers and anthropologists work together in an ever-increasing number of areas, including immigration and asylum processes, international justice forums, cultural heritage certification and monitoring, and the writing of new national constitutions, among many others. The Handbook takes critical stock of these various points of intersection in order to identify and conceptualize the most promising areas of innovation and sociolegal relevance, as well as to acknowledge the points of tension, open questions, and areas for future development.

Fall-out from Fukushima

Fall-out from Fukushima
Author: Giulia de Togni
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2021-11-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000480283

This book shows how the Fukushima plaintiffs have challenged narratives of safety and risk containment produced by TEPCO and the Japanese government through offering new empirical data on risk perceptions and life choices of some nuclear evacuees. Considering the Fukushima evacuees’ disappearance from public discourse in Japan, the book engages with theoretical writings on risk, neoliberal governmentality and citizen science. Chapters draw on a wide range of anthropologically-related methodologies including socio-linguistics, participant observation, and qualitative interviews. Themes of self-governance, resistance, gender, kinship, class and social change surface throughout, setting the Fukushima experience in a broad historical, social, and comparative context. This is the first ethnographic account of the Fukushima litigation and the first extensive qualitative study documenting the worldviews and living conditions of nuclear evacuees who moved outside Fukushima Prefecture, with a particular focus on underrepresented groups (single mothers, elderly and disabled evacuees). The history of industrial disasters and the role of citizens in shaping environmental policy in Japan is also evaluated. Fall-out from Fukushima sets out to be a manifesto for understanding and supporting post-nuclear disaster societies, and will appeal to students and scholars of social, legal, and linguistic anthropology, science and technology studies, as well as Japanese studies.

Contemporary Ethnographies

Contemporary Ethnographies
Author: Francisco Ferrándiz
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2020-04-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1000068633

Contemporary Ethnographies is a call to use ethnography in imaginative ways, adjusting to rapidly evolving social circumstances. It is based on a reflexive and theoretically grounded exploration of the author’s two main research projects – the study of the spiritist possession cult of María Lionza in Venezuela, and the analysis of the contemporary exhumation of Civil War (1936–1939) mass graves in contemporary Spain. Ferrándiz critically reviews the labyrinthine and continuous transforming nature of ethnographic engagement. He defends both the need for methodological rigour and the astounding flexibility of ethnography to adjust in creative ways to shifting realities in a dynamic world – a world in which research scenarios multiply, social actors are on the move (physically or digitally), acts of violence proliferate, new technologies are transforming the experience and perception of human life, and the demand, production, circulation and consumption of knowledge is greatly diversified, overshadowing former well established and more hierarchical patterns of diffusion. The book is conceived of as a historically grounded open debate, providing as many certainties as moments of unpredictability and unresolved dilemmas. It is valuable reading for students and scholars interested in ethnographic methods and anthropological theory.

The Bilingual Courtroom

The Bilingual Courtroom
Author: Susan Berk-Seligson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2017-05-23
Genre: Law
ISBN: 022632947X

“An essential text” that examines how interpreters can influence a courtroom, updated and expanded to cover contemporary issues in our diversifying society (Criminal Justice). Susan Berk-Seligson’s groundbreaking book presents a systematic study of court interpreters that raises some alarming and vitally important concerns. Contrary to the assumption that interpreters do not affect the dynamics of court proceedings, Berk-Seligson shows that interpreters could potentially make the difference between a defendant being found guilty or not guilty. The Bilingual Courtroom draws on more than one hundred hours of audio recordings of Spanish/English court proceedings in federal, state, and municipal courts, along with a number of psycholinguistic experiments involving mock juror reactions to interpreted testimony. This second edition includes an updated review of relevant research and provides new insights into interpreting in quasi-judicial, informal, and specialized judicial settings, such as small claims court, jails, and prisons. It also explores remote interpreting (for example, by telephone), interpreter training and certification, international trials and tribunals, and other cross-cultural issues. With a new preface by Berk-Seligson, this second edition not only highlights the impact of the previous versions of The Bilingual Courtroom, but also draws attention to the continued need for critical study of interpreting in our ever diversifying society.

Courtroom Power Distance Dynamics

Courtroom Power Distance Dynamics
Author: Michał Dudek
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2021-03-28
Genre: Law
ISBN: 303066984X

The book presents a comprehensive reconceptualization of Geert Hofstede’s well-known concept of power distance, applying the theory to the specific case of judge–witness courtroom interactions in Polish regional courts. In the light of the detailed critique of Hofstede’s original approach to power distance, the book first carefully develops a three-level concept of power distance, including personal preferences concerning the realization of power relations (subjective level); rules, practices and spatio-architectural arrangements underlying power relations (organizational level); and individual demeanors that can, in practice, increase or decrease the asymmetry between parties to a power relation (interactional level). This reconceptualization provides a universal conceptual apparatus that is applicable to various social settings, but the authors have used it in extensive qualitative and quantitative research focused on courtroom interactions. After laying the theoretical foundations, the book details the elements of judge–witness courtroom interactions (both verbal and non-verbal) that contribute to establishing power distance between judge and witness. These were identified over 6 months of observational research conducted in 2018 in the Kraków regional courts. Lastly, the book addresses the issue of the relationship between the subjective level of power distance and opinions that laypeople can have concerning a judge’s demeanor in the courtroom environment. To do so, it describes specific quantitative research that involved the creation of original film clips depicting witness questioning by the judge in a courtroom in three power distance situations. Offering a coherent framework for examining various interpersonal relations in legal contexts and illustrating how the framework can be applied on the courtroom interactions example, the book will appeal to a wide range of legal practitioners and academics. It also allows scientists outside the legal field to gain a new and broad understanding of power distance that they can easily apply in their respective fields. Furthermore, it provides non-academics with insights into courtroom interactional dynamics, as exemplified by the discussion of Polish judicial practice.