C Holligan
Biographic Data
| ID | 35230 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Holligan |
| GIVEN NAMES | C |
| FAMILY NAME | Holligan |
| SIGNATURE | HOLLIGAN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the West of Scotland |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7995-797X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 53 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Scotland's Drug Criminality: Organized Crime Group (S) and Illegal Governance
Organized crime has been on the rise during the past decade. During that time, Scotland was home to more youth gangs than London, with Glasgow alone providing a base for around 170 youth gangs. However, more recent trends highlight a shift toward more organized criminal activity (OCA). The majority of Organized Criminal Gangs (OCGs) are involved in the illegal drugs trade, as well as fraudulent businesses and other such activities in an effort to…
Orwellian codes of behaviour exploring ideological power in education research policy
Conceptions of education research as independent and serving the interests of truth have come to represent freedoms that emerge from the application of intellectual inquiry. Critiques of education research and its relevance to the enhancement of education, coupled with neoliberal market-led pragmatism, have contributed to the erosion of an enlightenment heritage. In this nexus, empowerment is replaced by control. There is an absence of analysis o…
Alien Conspiracy Theory? Exploring Ethnicity and Drug Supply in Scotland
Scholars have identified associations between ethnicity and crime. The extent to which such correlations generalize to other national domiciles, and the nuances of neighborhood criminality is unclear. Drawing upon 67 interviews with practitioners and (ex)offenders involved in drug supply, and supplemented by data sets, the article tests the validity of the generalisation, by exploring a) whether ethnicity is perceived as advantageous in the movem…
A Durkheimian Theorization of Scottish Suicide Rates, 2011–2017
This article examines recent aggregate statistical data generated by Scottish Government medical bodies concerning suicide rates and the social contexts of those who die by suicide. It compares rates and trends with international studies. Inherent in the data sets explored are indications suggesting that suicide is patterned by variables such as gender, employment, class and marital status. Neoliberalism increases social disparities that influenc…
Keeping It in the Family: Intersectionality and ‘Class A’ Drug Dealing by Females in the West of Scotland
Post-industrial urban landscapes connected with neo-liberalism may provide novel opportunities for the emancipation of working-class women who were traditionally, like women of other social classes, largely subjugated to men socially and economically in the period of collective male-led unionization and manufacturing. Based on qualitative data, our interpretative study locates itself in an international field of criminality and illuminates the cr…
The Masculine Sociology of Prison Escapes and Inmate Recapture: Exploring the Discursive Representation of Prison Escapes in Scotland c. 1941 - 1978
This paper theorises historical prison escapes by male prisoners from Scottish prisons, arguing that they represent a form of hegemonic masculinity. That dominant masculinity parallels recapture narratives constructed by the official masculinity associated with military service and its transfer to the prison ethos. Manly soldiering cultivated in prison officers with previous military service suited them to security duties. Violence, cunning, dete…
Market Testing and Market Policing: Illuminating the Fluid micro-Sociology of the Illegal Drug Supply Enterprise in Liquid Modernity
Understanding Scotland’s illegal drug market continues to challenge social scientists. Most evidently neglected are processes related to social supply, from supplier perspectives. When analyzing illegal drug markets, demand-based approaches, customarily sourcing drug users, grossly overlook supplier perspectives. Thus, a qualitative research inquiry interviewing former drug dealers facilitated exploration of a supply-based approach that detailed …
Reflections concerning ethnographic ethical decisions and neo-liberal monitoring
Hypothetical, speculative ethical concerns are no match for real situations. As such, this paper argues that there is an unsurpassable gap between planned, prescriptive ethics and real-time, relational, ethnographic decision making. The enforcement of procedural ethics may actually prevent the development of ethnographic work. Also, we critically assess procedural ethics as being not really about ethics, but rather about the risk management embed…
A verisimilitude of pessimism: Scottish prisoner mug-shots, 1883–1927
This paper examines the stigmatisation of identity. Historic prisoner mug shots taken in two Scottish prisons during the late Victorian period constitute a part of archival base of this study from which generalisations to the contemporary world are conjectured. Cultural criminologists propose crime is normatively framed. Mug shots belong with a larger symbolism within a discourse of crime and culture. This article examines the scientific and cult…
Exploring a taboo of cultural reproduction
Cultural reproduction is rarely, if ever, theorised through clandestine practices of sexual offending by teachers in the gendered hierarchies of state schools. Drawing upon Freedom of Information requests and other official qualitative data provided by a U.K. teaching council, this article endeavours to explain the form of a gendered cultural reproduction by reference to the diversity of ways in which identities are constructed and ‘contracted’ f…
The Semiotics of the Evolving Gang Masculinity and Glasgow
Glasgow has a persistent and historical gang culture. Dimensions of 'the gang' are widely recognized in terms of behavior, formation, membership, and territoriality. The gap in our knowledge lies in the nature of a gang's evolutionary flexibility. Given that life-course criminology foregrounds continuity and change in offending, it is surprising that this evolution has gone unrecognized in Scotland. Many contemporary studies of youth gangs connec…
Life in a Forgotten Scottish Gulag: Punishment and Social Regulation in HM Peterhead Convict Prison
This paper contributes to filling a lacuna in our knowledge of penal history in Scotland by examining the voices of convicts through records of prisoners experiencing Penal Servitude during the period 1897-1942. The sources utilized are the archived files of thirty-two male convict prisoners in Scotland's Convict Prison at Peterhead. These files give insights about life in this remote prison as conveyed through records of punishment, prisoners' r…
Criminal Desistance Narratives of Young People in the West of Scotland: Understanding Spirituality and Criminogenic Constraints
In our qualitative study of urban youth living in the West of Scotland, we argue that religion and spirituality give personal sustenance and hope from which a process of desistance can emerge. Religious worship offers a 'site' for undermining reoffending through the availability and adoption of socially supportive bonds. Desistance can occur through the development of different bonds and the recognition of transcendental authority. The results en…
Global capitalism’s Trojan Horse: Consumer power and the National Student Survey in England
Neo-liberal capitalism is a representation of values that are detrimental to intellectual inquiry. Market deregulation and consumer choice are relentless in their erosion of academic autonomy and traditions of independent scholarship. Education as a ‘positional good’ may be weakened more in the post-1992 higher education sector, where consumer-oriented quality assurance is used strategically to bolster prestige and so improve relative competitive…
Weapon-Carrying Among Young Men in Glasgow: Street Scripts and Signals in Uncertain Social Spaces
Our work contributes through a cultural criminological perspective to a contextualised knowledge of street violence and its constructed meanings; uncertainty, familiarity and strangeness in spaces of urban disadvantage as perceived by Scottish white youths are examined. Youth criminal and anti-social behaviour associated with knife-carrying is widely reported and structures political and media discourses which classify street culture. In our arti…
Looked-after’ young people's voices an actor-network theory analysis
This article offers an empirical case study of ways in which ‘looked-after’ young people \nresponded in focus groups about taking part in a survey task. These research participants are \ndeemed by the state as in need of protection. We demonstrate that despite their vulnerable \nstatus, they are immensely resilient and capable of contributing to debates about research \nparticipation. Through the application of actor-network theory, we outline co…
The Cake and Custard is Good!” A Qualitative Study of Teenage Childrens' Experience of being in Prison
This qualitative study aims to uncover how young people, sentenced for violent offences, experience prison, something about which we know very little. It reports life history data from qualitative interviews with young male inmates aged 16–18 years convicted of violent assault. The findings indicate that the intrusive and inescapable challenges of incarceration are filtered through the boys' interpretations of previous critical incidents in their…
Critical incidents as formative influences on the work of educational researchers: Understanding an insider perspective through narrative enquiry
Drawing on insights from phenomenological sociology and various strands of socio-cultural theory, this paper reports the findings of a qualitative investigation into critical incidents as formative influences in the research orientation and research cultivation of 22 academics working in research-intensive university education departments. The study first outlines the context in which educational research has taken place, focusing on evidence of …
Disenfranchised Violent Young Offenders in Scotland: Using Actor-Network Theory to Explore an Aetiology of Knife Crime
In recent years violent knife crime has attracted attention in the UK from government and media. This qualitative article utilises Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to theorise and describe the aetiology of urban knife crime. ANT embraces the potentially causal properties of physical places and culture to explain social phenomena. The article attempts to understand violent crime by applying ANT to empirical data in the form of life stories provided by i…
What does it mean to be a man? Psychosocial undercurrents in the voices of incarcerated (violent) Scottish teenage offenders
This article explores connections between social strain, constructions and practices of masculinity and the prevalence of violence among a white working-class male demographic. The study’s evidence-base is qualitative research conducted in Scotland. It utilized life history interviews with a clinically significant sample of 40 incarcerated young male offenders convicted of violent crimes. Family, school and peer group ‘pressures’ coloured these y…
Breaking the code of the street: Extending Elijah Anderson's encryption of violent street governance to retaliation in Scotland
The 'code of the street' is a theoretical framework concerning violent interaction. Its enactment on the street can be seen as illustrating a hegemonic masculinity. The typical setting where the code is pervasive is in disadvantaged urban communities. Those in thrall to the code's localised retaliatory edicts are usually young working-class males. Understandably, given the code's origins in the US ghetto, it is a US criminological research tradit…
Becoming a researcher: Forms of capital associated with “research capacity” trajectories of young British social anthropologists
The paper privileges the voices of British social anthropologists examining their perceptions of how their research expertise was acquired. Reference is made to the case of education research in Britain, which, by comparison with social anthropology, reveals limited capacity as measured through performance audits of scientific research quality. The paper endeavours to facilitate knowledge transfer by uncovering and theoretically classifying the o…
Sectarianism: Myth or social reality? Inter-sectarian partnerships in Scotland, evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study
n This article explores the contested issue of whether sectarianism divides Catholics and Protestants in Scotland. The conclusions are based on an analysis of 111,627 couples from the 2001 Census. Young adults are much more likely than older people to have been raised with no religion This is largely due to a decline in the Protestant group, with Catholics remaining stable. The socio-economic disadvantage of older Catholics compared to Potestants…
Research cultures in English and Scottish university education departments: An exploratory study of academic staff perceptions
The paper reports the findings of a small‐scale qualitative investigation into academic staff perceptions of research cultures across 10 English and Scottish university education departments. The study sheds light on four interrelated issues: the nature of research cultures, perceived facilitators, perceived constraints and the emotional landscape of working within a research environment. The findings indicate that perceptions vary according to s…
Building One-Dimensional Places: Death by the Power of Audit
The audit culture has become a hegemonic force because of changes in the relationships between polity and economy in wider society. Power is more than ever ‘action at a distance’, a schema which is part of the art of government, as Machiavelli, in The Prince , stated in his maxims. This analytic article seeks to excavate how the interconnections implied by Machiavelli are manifested today. One effect of the incorporation of them into government p…
What does it mean to be a man? Psychosocial undercurrents in the voices of incarcerated (violent) Scottish teenage offenders
This article explores connections between social strain, constructions and practices of masculinity and the prevalence of violence among a white working-class male demographic. The study’s evidence-base is qualitative research conducted in Scotland. It utilized life history interviews with a clinically significant sample of 40 incarcerated young male offenders convicted of violent crimes. Family, school and peer group ‘pressures’ coloured these y…
Sectarianism: Myth or social reality? Inter-sectarian partnerships in Scotland, evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study
n This article explores the contested issue of whether sectarianism divides Catholics and Protestants in Scotland. The conclusions are based on an analysis of 111,627 couples from the 2001 Census. Young adults are much more likely than older people to have been raised with no religion This is largely due to a decline in the Protestant group, with Catholics remaining stable. The socio-economic disadvantage of older Catholics compared to Potestants…
Breaking the code of the street: Extending Elijah Anderson's encryption of violent street governance to retaliation in Scotland
The 'code of the street' is a theoretical framework concerning violent interaction. Its enactment on the street can be seen as illustrating a hegemonic masculinity. The typical setting where the code is pervasive is in disadvantaged urban communities. Those in thrall to the code's localised retaliatory edicts are usually young working-class males. Understandably, given the code's origins in the US ghetto, it is a US criminological research tradit…
Research cultures in English and Scottish university education departments: An exploratory study of academic staff perceptions
The paper reports the findings of a small‐scale qualitative investigation into academic staff perceptions of research cultures across 10 English and Scottish university education departments. The study sheds light on four interrelated issues: the nature of research cultures, perceived facilitators, perceived constraints and the emotional landscape of working within a research environment. The findings indicate that perceptions vary according to s…
Gangs, Sectarianism and Social Capital: A Qualitative Study of Young People in Scotland
In recent years, there has been continuing debate about the extent and significance of sectarianism in Scotland and the wider links with territorial gang culture. This article focuses on a small qualitative study conducted in some of the most deprived urban communities in Glasgow. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with 10 youth workers and 40 young persons (aged 16-18 years), with follow-up interviews conducted…
Global capitalism’s Trojan Horse: Consumer power and the National Student Survey in England
Neo-liberal capitalism is a representation of values that are detrimental to intellectual inquiry. Market deregulation and consumer choice are relentless in their erosion of academic autonomy and traditions of independent scholarship. Education as a ‘positional good’ may be weakened more in the post-1992 higher education sector, where consumer-oriented quality assurance is used strategically to bolster prestige and so improve relative competitive…
Alien Conspiracy Theory? Exploring Ethnicity and Drug Supply in Scotland
Scholars have identified associations between ethnicity and crime. The extent to which such correlations generalize to other national domiciles, and the nuances of neighborhood criminality is unclear. Drawing upon 67 interviews with practitioners and (ex)offenders involved in drug supply, and supplemented by data sets, the article tests the validity of the generalisation, by exploring a) whether ethnicity is perceived as advantageous in the movem…
The Masculine Sociology of Prison Escapes and Inmate Recapture: Exploring the Discursive Representation of Prison Escapes in Scotland c. 1941 - 1978
This paper theorises historical prison escapes by male prisoners from Scottish prisons, arguing that they represent a form of hegemonic masculinity. That dominant masculinity parallels recapture narratives constructed by the official masculinity associated with military service and its transfer to the prison ethos. Manly soldiering cultivated in prison officers with previous military service suited them to security duties. Violence, cunning, dete…
Market Testing and Market Policing: Illuminating the Fluid micro-Sociology of the Illegal Drug Supply Enterprise in Liquid Modernity
Understanding Scotland’s illegal drug market continues to challenge social scientists. Most evidently neglected are processes related to social supply, from supplier perspectives. When analyzing illegal drug markets, demand-based approaches, customarily sourcing drug users, grossly overlook supplier perspectives. Thus, a qualitative research inquiry interviewing former drug dealers facilitated exploration of a supply-based approach that detailed …
The Semiotics of the Evolving Gang Masculinity and Glasgow
Glasgow has a persistent and historical gang culture. Dimensions of 'the gang' are widely recognized in terms of behavior, formation, membership, and territoriality. The gap in our knowledge lies in the nature of a gang's evolutionary flexibility. Given that life-course criminology foregrounds continuity and change in offending, it is surprising that this evolution has gone unrecognized in Scotland. Many contemporary studies of youth gangs connec…
Criminal Desistance Narratives of Young People in the West of Scotland: Understanding Spirituality and Criminogenic Constraints
In our qualitative study of urban youth living in the West of Scotland, we argue that religion and spirituality give personal sustenance and hope from which a process of desistance can emerge. Religious worship offers a 'site' for undermining reoffending through the availability and adoption of socially supportive bonds. Desistance can occur through the development of different bonds and the recognition of transcendental authority. The results en…
Looked-after’ young people's voices an actor-network theory analysis
This article offers an empirical case study of ways in which ‘looked-after’ young people \nresponded in focus groups about taking part in a survey task. These research participants are \ndeemed by the state as in need of protection. We demonstrate that despite their vulnerable \nstatus, they are immensely resilient and capable of contributing to debates about research \nparticipation. Through the application of actor-network theory, we outline co…
Scotland's Drug Criminality: Organized Crime Group (S) and Illegal Governance
Organized crime has been on the rise during the past decade. During that time, Scotland was home to more youth gangs than London, with Glasgow alone providing a base for around 170 youth gangs. However, more recent trends highlight a shift toward more organized criminal activity (OCA). The majority of Organized Criminal Gangs (OCGs) are involved in the illegal drugs trade, as well as fraudulent businesses and other such activities in an effort to…
A Durkheimian Theorization of Scottish Suicide Rates, 2011–2017
This article examines recent aggregate statistical data generated by Scottish Government medical bodies concerning suicide rates and the social contexts of those who die by suicide. It compares rates and trends with international studies. Inherent in the data sets explored are indications suggesting that suicide is patterned by variables such as gender, employment, class and marital status. Neoliberalism increases social disparities that influenc…
Keeping It in the Family: Intersectionality and ‘Class A’ Drug Dealing by Females in the West of Scotland
Post-industrial urban landscapes connected with neo-liberalism may provide novel opportunities for the emancipation of working-class women who were traditionally, like women of other social classes, largely subjugated to men socially and economically in the period of collective male-led unionization and manufacturing. Based on qualitative data, our interpretative study locates itself in an international field of criminality and illuminates the cr…
Weapon-Carrying Among Young Men in Glasgow: Street Scripts and Signals in Uncertain Social Spaces
Our work contributes through a cultural criminological perspective to a contextualised knowledge of street violence and its constructed meanings; uncertainty, familiarity and strangeness in spaces of urban disadvantage as perceived by Scottish white youths are examined. Youth criminal and anti-social behaviour associated with knife-carrying is widely reported and structures political and media discourses which classify street culture. In our arti…
Critical incidents as formative influences on the work of educational researchers: Understanding an insider perspective through narrative enquiry
Drawing on insights from phenomenological sociology and various strands of socio-cultural theory, this paper reports the findings of a qualitative investigation into critical incidents as formative influences in the research orientation and research cultivation of 22 academics working in research-intensive university education departments. The study first outlines the context in which educational research has taken place, focusing on evidence of …
Disenfranchised Violent Young Offenders in Scotland: Using Actor-Network Theory to Explore an Aetiology of Knife Crime
In recent years violent knife crime has attracted attention in the UK from government and media. This qualitative article utilises Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to theorise and describe the aetiology of urban knife crime. ANT embraces the potentially causal properties of physical places and culture to explain social phenomena. The article attempts to understand violent crime by applying ANT to empirical data in the form of life stories provided by i…
Becoming a researcher: Forms of capital associated with “research capacity” trajectories of young British social anthropologists
The paper privileges the voices of British social anthropologists examining their perceptions of how their research expertise was acquired. Reference is made to the case of education research in Britain, which, by comparison with social anthropology, reveals limited capacity as measured through performance audits of scientific research quality. The paper endeavours to facilitate knowledge transfer by uncovering and theoretically classifying the o…
Building One-Dimensional Places: Death by the Power of Audit
The audit culture has become a hegemonic force because of changes in the relationships between polity and economy in wider society. Power is more than ever ‘action at a distance’, a schema which is part of the art of government, as Machiavelli, in The Prince , stated in his maxims. This analytic article seeks to excavate how the interconnections implied by Machiavelli are manifested today. One effect of the incorporation of them into government p…
Theory in Initial Teacher Education: Students’ perspectives on its utility — a case study
The article reports a critical examination of the results of a Scottish Office Education and Industry Department sponsored research project, 1994‐96, ‘Students’ Perspectives on the Utility of Educational Studies’. Additional funding from the Open University supported the production of this article. It examines the ways in which students construe the value of educational studies. Data were gathered principally by semi‐structured interviews involvi…
Pupils' Perceptions of ‘Effective Disciplinarians’
This paper reports the perceptions of 543 pupils about the strategies used by their teachers which get the class to work well. The pupils were in four secondary schools and aged between 12 and 16. Twenty‐one categories of effective strategies were derived from pupil comments. However, no single category dominated the data. Examining what we have called ‘pupils’ constructs of effective strategies’ revealed that a wide range of strategies were perc…
Theory in Initial Teacher Education: Students’ perspectives on its utility — a case study
The article reports a critical examination of the results of a Scottish Office Education and Industry Department sponsored research project, 1994‐96, ‘Students’ Perspectives on the Utility of Educational Studies’. Additional funding from the Open University supported the production of this article. It examines the ways in which students construe the value of educational studies. Data were gathered principally by semi‐structured interviews involvi…
View from the Cyberfloor: Modes of Social Inclusion in Scotland
The purpose of this article is to report the findings of a descriptively oriented empirical research study which explores how individuals utilise the internet at public sites in three different urban locations in Edinburgh. Central government policy has placed considerable weight upon internet access as a tool for facilitating social inclusion (O'Connor et al 1999; Wyatt, et al 2000). According to Tony Blair (Scottish Office 2002) social exclusio…
Contextualing cyberspace: A photographic study of landscapes of Internet access
Building One-Dimensional Places: Death by the Power of Audit
The audit culture has become a hegemonic force because of changes in the relationships between polity and economy in wider society. Power is more than ever ‘action at a distance’, a schema which is part of the art of government, as Machiavelli, in The Prince , stated in his maxims. This analytic article seeks to excavate how the interconnections implied by Machiavelli are manifested today. One effect of the incorporation of them into government p…
Gangs, Sectarianism and Social Capital: A Qualitative Study of Young People in Scotland
In recent years, there has been continuing debate about the extent and significance of sectarianism in Scotland and the wider links with territorial gang culture. This article focuses on a small qualitative study conducted in some of the most deprived urban communities in Glasgow. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with 10 youth workers and 40 young persons (aged 16-18 years), with follow-up interviews conducted…
Research cultures in English and Scottish university education departments: An exploratory study of academic staff perceptions
The paper reports the findings of a small‐scale qualitative investigation into academic staff perceptions of research cultures across 10 English and Scottish university education departments. The study sheds light on four interrelated issues: the nature of research cultures, perceived facilitators, perceived constraints and the emotional landscape of working within a research environment. The findings indicate that perceptions vary according to s…
Sectarianism: Myth or social reality? Inter-sectarian partnerships in Scotland, evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study
n This article explores the contested issue of whether sectarianism divides Catholics and Protestants in Scotland. The conclusions are based on an analysis of 111,627 couples from the 2001 Census. Young adults are much more likely than older people to have been raised with no religion This is largely due to a decline in the Protestant group, with Catholics remaining stable. The socio-economic disadvantage of older Catholics compared to Potestants…
What does it mean to be a man? Psychosocial undercurrents in the voices of incarcerated (violent) Scottish teenage offenders
This article explores connections between social strain, constructions and practices of masculinity and the prevalence of violence among a white working-class male demographic. The study’s evidence-base is qualitative research conducted in Scotland. It utilized life history interviews with a clinically significant sample of 40 incarcerated young male offenders convicted of violent crimes. Family, school and peer group ‘pressures’ coloured these y…
Breaking the code of the street: Extending Elijah Anderson's encryption of violent street governance to retaliation in Scotland
The 'code of the street' is a theoretical framework concerning violent interaction. Its enactment on the street can be seen as illustrating a hegemonic masculinity. The typical setting where the code is pervasive is in disadvantaged urban communities. Those in thrall to the code's localised retaliatory edicts are usually young working-class males. Understandably, given the code's origins in the US ghetto, it is a US criminological research tradit…
Becoming a researcher: Forms of capital associated with “research capacity” trajectories of young British social anthropologists
The paper privileges the voices of British social anthropologists examining their perceptions of how their research expertise was acquired. Reference is made to the case of education research in Britain, which, by comparison with social anthropology, reveals limited capacity as measured through performance audits of scientific research quality. The paper endeavours to facilitate knowledge transfer by uncovering and theoretically classifying the o…
The Cake and Custard is Good!” A Qualitative Study of Teenage Childrens' Experience of being in Prison
This qualitative study aims to uncover how young people, sentenced for violent offences, experience prison, something about which we know very little. It reports life history data from qualitative interviews with young male inmates aged 16–18 years convicted of violent assault. The findings indicate that the intrusive and inescapable challenges of incarceration are filtered through the boys' interpretations of previous critical incidents in their…
Critical incidents as formative influences on the work of educational researchers: Understanding an insider perspective through narrative enquiry
Drawing on insights from phenomenological sociology and various strands of socio-cultural theory, this paper reports the findings of a qualitative investigation into critical incidents as formative influences in the research orientation and research cultivation of 22 academics working in research-intensive university education departments. The study first outlines the context in which educational research has taken place, focusing on evidence of …
Disenfranchised Violent Young Offenders in Scotland: Using Actor-Network Theory to Explore an Aetiology of Knife Crime
In recent years violent knife crime has attracted attention in the UK from government and media. This qualitative article utilises Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to theorise and describe the aetiology of urban knife crime. ANT embraces the potentially causal properties of physical places and culture to explain social phenomena. The article attempts to understand violent crime by applying ANT to empirical data in the form of life stories provided by i…
Looked-after’ young people's voices an actor-network theory analysis
This article offers an empirical case study of ways in which ‘looked-after’ young people \nresponded in focus groups about taking part in a survey task. These research participants are \ndeemed by the state as in need of protection. We demonstrate that despite their vulnerable \nstatus, they are immensely resilient and capable of contributing to debates about research \nparticipation. Through the application of actor-network theory, we outline co…
Global capitalism’s Trojan Horse: Consumer power and the National Student Survey in England
Neo-liberal capitalism is a representation of values that are detrimental to intellectual inquiry. Market deregulation and consumer choice are relentless in their erosion of academic autonomy and traditions of independent scholarship. Education as a ‘positional good’ may be weakened more in the post-1992 higher education sector, where consumer-oriented quality assurance is used strategically to bolster prestige and so improve relative competitive…
Weapon-Carrying Among Young Men in Glasgow: Street Scripts and Signals in Uncertain Social Spaces
Our work contributes through a cultural criminological perspective to a contextualised knowledge of street violence and its constructed meanings; uncertainty, familiarity and strangeness in spaces of urban disadvantage as perceived by Scottish white youths are examined. Youth criminal and anti-social behaviour associated with knife-carrying is widely reported and structures political and media discourses which classify street culture. In our arti…
Reflections concerning ethnographic ethical decisions and neo-liberal monitoring
Hypothetical, speculative ethical concerns are no match for real situations. As such, this paper argues that there is an unsurpassable gap between planned, prescriptive ethics and real-time, relational, ethnographic decision making. The enforcement of procedural ethics may actually prevent the development of ethnographic work. Also, we critically assess procedural ethics as being not really about ethics, but rather about the risk management embed…
A verisimilitude of pessimism: Scottish prisoner mug-shots, 1883–1927
This paper examines the stigmatisation of identity. Historic prisoner mug shots taken in two Scottish prisons during the late Victorian period constitute a part of archival base of this study from which generalisations to the contemporary world are conjectured. Cultural criminologists propose crime is normatively framed. Mug shots belong with a larger symbolism within a discourse of crime and culture. This article examines the scientific and cult…
Exploring a taboo of cultural reproduction
Cultural reproduction is rarely, if ever, theorised through clandestine practices of sexual offending by teachers in the gendered hierarchies of state schools. Drawing upon Freedom of Information requests and other official qualitative data provided by a U.K. teaching council, this article endeavours to explain the form of a gendered cultural reproduction by reference to the diversity of ways in which identities are constructed and ‘contracted’ f…
The Semiotics of the Evolving Gang Masculinity and Glasgow
Glasgow has a persistent and historical gang culture. Dimensions of 'the gang' are widely recognized in terms of behavior, formation, membership, and territoriality. The gap in our knowledge lies in the nature of a gang's evolutionary flexibility. Given that life-course criminology foregrounds continuity and change in offending, it is surprising that this evolution has gone unrecognized in Scotland. Many contemporary studies of youth gangs connec…
Life in a Forgotten Scottish Gulag: Punishment and Social Regulation in HM Peterhead Convict Prison
This paper contributes to filling a lacuna in our knowledge of penal history in Scotland by examining the voices of convicts through records of prisoners experiencing Penal Servitude during the period 1897-1942. The sources utilized are the archived files of thirty-two male convict prisoners in Scotland's Convict Prison at Peterhead. These files give insights about life in this remote prison as conveyed through records of punishment, prisoners' r…
Criminal Desistance Narratives of Young People in the West of Scotland: Understanding Spirituality and Criminogenic Constraints
In our qualitative study of urban youth living in the West of Scotland, we argue that religion and spirituality give personal sustenance and hope from which a process of desistance can emerge. Religious worship offers a 'site' for undermining reoffending through the availability and adoption of socially supportive bonds. Desistance can occur through the development of different bonds and the recognition of transcendental authority. The results en…
A Durkheimian Theorization of Scottish Suicide Rates, 2011–2017
This article examines recent aggregate statistical data generated by Scottish Government medical bodies concerning suicide rates and the social contexts of those who die by suicide. It compares rates and trends with international studies. Inherent in the data sets explored are indications suggesting that suicide is patterned by variables such as gender, employment, class and marital status. Neoliberalism increases social disparities that influenc…
Keeping It in the Family: Intersectionality and ‘Class A’ Drug Dealing by Females in the West of Scotland
Post-industrial urban landscapes connected with neo-liberalism may provide novel opportunities for the emancipation of working-class women who were traditionally, like women of other social classes, largely subjugated to men socially and economically in the period of collective male-led unionization and manufacturing. Based on qualitative data, our interpretative study locates itself in an international field of criminality and illuminates the cr…
Sociology (28 works) · Political science (23 works) · Law (17 works) · Criminology (16 works) · Law (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Social science (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (8 works)