A New Green Criminological Path: An Explorative Attitude
Over the last 25 years, âgreen criminologyâ has become familiar on an international level as a perspective oriented towards the opening of criminological paradigms to issues of environmental harms and crimes. Green criminology allows for the meeting of a wide range of theoretical orientations aimed at connecting a series of issues of crucial importance for todayâs world: environmental crimes, harms and various forms of (in)justice related to the environment, plants and non-human animal species, and the planet as a whole. 1 More specifically, green criminology represents a âconceptual umbrellaâ under which researchers and scholars examine and rethink from various perspectives the causes and consequences of different environmental harms, such as pollution, the deterioration of natural resources, the loss of biodiversity and climate change (see South et al. 2013: 28â29). While emerging within the framework of critical criminology, green criminology is marked by a constitutive openness that allows it to extend beyond the boundaries of a specific criminological tradition to become a theoretical laboratory for thinking about environmental issues in the richest and broadest meaning of the word (see Sollund 2012: 4; South et al. 2013). In this sense, green criminology seems to promote new âways of lookingâ at the humanâenvironment relationshipâa peculiar âgreen gazeâ that can expand the criminological understanding and imagination of environmental crimes beyond the existing criminological frames (White 2003; see also Brisman 2015b). To borrow from the Spanish philosopher JosĂ© Ortega y Gasset (2011 [1939]: 116â120), we might say that green criminologists have âthe good fortune to see for the first time landscapes never seen beforeâ and sail âthrough seas never sailed through beforeâ. Therefore, it has been necessary, first of all, to find a language that is able to define what has been discovered.
In this peculiar green-tinted landscape, we can ask, âDoes a criminological investigation of environmental crimes require specific methods? How can we collect empirical data related to the processes causing serious environmental harms that still, paradoxically, often seem to escape our perceptions and our consciences so effectively that they achieve invisibility?â
Faced with the complex nature of the environment (see, e.g., Latour 1993 [1991], 2004 [1999]; Natali 2013b, 2015a), it seems essential to adopt what could be called a âcubist approachâ (Auyero and Swistun 2009), 2 capable of rotating around the chosen phenomenon according to different angles or perspectives. In identifying the thematic and methodological nuclei at the heart of this challenge, one will meet and connect with different disciplinary areas and methodological approaches that have in common a peculiar sensitivity towards the object of study: green criminology, cultural criminology, visual criminology, anthropology, cultural geography, ethnography, radical interactionism and visual sociology. The borders between these disciplines and approaches then mingle in an interdisciplinary project that places the narratives at the heart of the research. Considering the manifold nature of the phenomenon observed, the method employed will inevitably be varied and flexible (Szasz 1994: 162).
As Diane Heckenberg and Rob White (2013; see also White and Heckenberg 2014) maintain, the study of environmental crime requires new modes of observation of the world and new methods capable of synchronizing the spatial (both local and global) and temporal dimensions of the ongoing changes occurring in and to our environment (see also Brisman and South 2014: 121). Following this trail, I will share some reflections designed to open the way for new visual explorations of environmental harms and crimes. In particular, I describe a visual approach useful for carrying out qualitative research in green criminology and suggest some ways in which environmental crime and harm might be further analysed and understood using photographic images (see Ferrell and Van de Voorde 2010: 37â38; Holm 2008: 338; Van de Voorde 2012: 215). 3 The proposed observational method has the advantage of bringing together the multiple and complex nature of the experiences of those who live in polluted areas, describing in detail and from their point of view what they know, think and feel about the reality in which they find themselves living. Making this kind of close observation means being able to cast doubts upon simplistic conceptions about the way victims relate to the âuncomfortable truthâ of pollution and environmental harm.
While retaining as the centre of analysis the single case study, 4 the research approach offered may also represent a theoretical starting point for those who intend to develop qualitative visual research in the field of green criminology. Furthermore, this proposal does not seek to take a normative standââhow it should be doneââbut advocates an âexplorative, descriptive (âwhat is there to be foundâ) and interpretative (âwhat could it possibly tell us about aspects of cultureâ) approachâ (Pauwels 2015: 73â74).
Green Cultural Criminology and Visual Approaches: A Way In
My proposal for a visual green criminology approach finds its natural habitat in the area where green criminology and cultural criminology meet (Brisman 2015a, in press; Brisman and South 2012, 2013b, 2014, 2015a; Brisman et al. 2014; Ferrell 2013: 349), while at the same time, trying to forge new ground.
It is well known that, since its inception, cultural criminology has called for the development of a form of criminological verstehen capable of exploring the universes of sense and the emotional processes related to crime and to its control (Ferrell 1998, 2001; Ferrell et al. 2015). Cultural criminologists Jeff Ferrell, Keith Hayward and Jock Young (2015: 215) stress the importance of an ethnographic sensibility that is open to the meaningful worlds of others and that âseeks to understand the symbolic processes through which these worlds are made.â This sensibility affirms the importance of emotional resonance, embraces the nuances of texture of human culture and humbles the arrogant âobjectivityâ of orthodox methodology before the fluid ambiguities of human agencies. As my attention is focused on the narratives people construct about the complex experiences of environmental contamination, remaining alert to such nuancesâones that include ambiguities, contradictions and disagreementsâis a fundamental challenge of my analysis. 5
More importantly, cultural criminology is able to offer new observational and analytical frames, capable of exploring the visual dimension not only as an essential criminological object in a late modern society, but also and above all as a tool for criminological study (Ferrell 2013). These theoretical and methodological sensibilities may be profitably put into dialogue with what...