The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Ethnography

The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Ethnography provides an expansive and authoritative overview of the challenges presented by qualitative, and particularly ethnographic, inquiry. Global in perspective, the chapters reflect upon the means by which ethnographers aim to gain understanding, make sense of what they learn and the way they represent their finished work. The Handbook offers urgent insights relevant to current trends in the growth of imprisonment world-wide. In an era of mass incarceration, human-centric ethnography provides an important counter to quantitative analysis and the 'official' audit culture on which prisons are frequently judged. The Handbook is divided into four parts. Part I (About Prison Ethnography) assesses methodological, theoretical and pragmatic issues related to the use of ethnographic and qualitative inquiry in understanding complex social and political problems. Part II (Through Prison Ethnography) considers the significance of ethnographic insights for disciplines and for wide social or political concerns. Part III (Of Prison Ethnography) analyses the different aspects of the roles of ethnographers, and how they negotiate their research settings. Part IV (For Prison Ethnography) comprises contributions that convincingly argue for the great value of prison ethnography beyond the prison itself. Bringing together contributions by some of the world's leading scholars in criminology, this volume ultimately maps out new directions for future research. It will be an indispensable resource for all practitioners, students, academics and researchers who utilise social research methods.