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Southern Criminology is a theoretical perspective that shifts the focus from the state criminal justice process to global inequalities, transnational crime, and postcolonial politics. While recognising the importance of this shift in perspective for a globalising world, this paper asks two difficult questions. Firstly, how easy is it to generalise about whole regions of the world in advancing a political viewpoint? Secondly, is it possible for those in the West to imagine an alternative global criminology, if non-Western societies really do have different cultural values and epistemologies? For example, how should we respond to traditional practices among Indigenous Australians or a Confucian understanding of crime? These questions may make a Southern Criminology sound impossible in the same way as other varieties of critical theory. But this paper is intended to strengthen this emerging movement by acknowledging, and working through, potential difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the housing affordability crisis in Australia deepens, policy-makers have expended considerable resources in establishing new regulatory practices to enhance the role of the community housing sector. Ostensibly, the rationale for a new tier of regulation is to assure potential institutional investors (e.g. pension funds, investment trusts and banks) that community housing organisations are accountable and safe places to invest. Our paper adopts an alternative reading of diversity and housing regulation, drawing upon the governmentality thesis advanced by Michel Foucault in an empirical study about the early stages of regulation of affordable housing providers. Amongst our claims are: first, that policies to diversify and regulate the housing sector constitute a radical political project to commercialise welfare provision and second, these policies are likely to generate additional bureaucratic burdens and close off possibilities for progressive reform. The paper also considers the value of the governmentality approach for critical investigations in the field of housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is not a pressing social problem in the same way as, for example, poverty, child abuse, or climate change, red tape causes frustrations for many working in public and private sector organisations, perhaps even more than for the ordinary citizen dealing with large government agencies. This paper will explore some dimensions of this contentious issue. It will consider the positive view of regulation advanced by regulation theorists, and some qualitative researchers associated with this tradition. Drawing on a qualitative research study concerning the regulation of affordable housing in Australia, it examines the nature of administrative burdens. It is suggested that three factors lead to the perception of red tape: whether regulation is seen as making a difference to services beyond accountability; whether the measures used are meaningful; and the resources available for compliance. Qualitative researchers can help those in government seeking to reduce administrative burdens by supplying realistic accounts that address the views and experiences of those subject to regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A driving force behind the establishment of a qualitative data archive in the United Kingdom has been the oral historian, Paul Thompson. He has complained that there is a `strange silence' among qualitative sociologists on re-analysis, and that many have been reluctant to deposit data. The first part of the paper suggests that the common ethical and practical objections can be overcome in establishing an archive in Australia. However, there is a more serious underlying ideological objection: that archiving promotes and institutionalises a narrow empiricist version of qualitative research. The rest of the paper makes this case by examining teaching materials on a British website, by reviewing Thompson's arguments, and by considering some examples of re-analysis by sociologists. It is argued that qualitative researchers should respond critically, but that it is possible to address and overcome these problems when developing an Australian archive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative research has to market itself aggressively, both because academic publishers face more pressures to sell books, and because of the competitive funding climate where one often has to demonstrate methodological innovation as a condition for obtaining a grant. This article considers how social theorists have understood the issue of 'newness' and the pursuit of innovation as a cultural problem. It explores the issue in qualitative research through examining how we accomplish and recognize 'newness' in the texts we read and produce as academics, which include publisher's catalogues and grant applications, and through considering technological advances such as internet ethnography and video analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is intended to stimulate reflection and debate about the relationship between pure and applied research in criminology. The central argument is that evaluation research, which has almost become a dominant paradigm in researching criminal justice, has lower methodological standards than peer-reviewed social science. It considers this case in relation to quantitative and qualitative methods, and examines examples of a 'flagship' and 'small-scale' evaluation. The article concludes by discussing the implications for evaluators (who are encouraged to employ a wider range of methods), funding agencies and criminology as an academic discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the state of law and society studies in Britain by revisiting the arguments raised by C.M. Campbell and Paul Wiles in the late 1970s. It argues that the divide they identified between theoretically-oriented “sociology of law” and a-theoretical or empiricist “socio-legal studies” has widened, discusses some of the cultural and institutional reasons, and makes some practical recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts an ethnomethodological approach towards the study of radicalism in legal professional practice, focusing on the ways in which radicalism was produced, displayed and exhibited in the talk and actions of a small firm of solicitors situated in one of the inner city areas of a large city in northern England. Three aspects of radicalism are examined: radicalism as a public phenomenon; radicalism as a contestable phenomenon; and radicalism as a moral framework. It is suggested that this analytic approach has implications for the way we might study other forms of contemporary radicalism, and for the way in which radicals in the academy theorise and understand the world of the radical lawyer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]