- School of Social Science
University of Tasmania (Hobart campus)
Private Bag 22
Hobart
Tasmania 7001
Australia - +61 3 6226 2337
Angela Dwyer
University of Tasmania, School of Social Sciences, Faculty Member
- Dr. Angela Dwyer is an Associate Professor in Policing Studies and Emergency Management, School of Social Sciences, a... moreDr. Angela Dwyer is an Associate Professor in Policing Studies and Emergency Management, School of Social Sciences, at the University of Tasmania. From 2007 to 2015, she worked as a Senior Lecturer in the School of Justice, Faculty of Law, at the Queensland University of Technology. Her current research interests are focused on how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender young people experience policing, and the broader impact of sexuality and gender diversity on criminal justice processes. She is lead editor of Queering Criminology with Matthew Ball and Thomas Crofts, published with Palgrave MacMillan. She has gained competitive research funding (including a Criminology Research Grant) to conduct research projects on: LGBTI young people experience policing; how LGBTI people interact with LGBTI police liaison officers; evaluating youth crime prevention programs; the historical experiences of LGBTI police officers; and the policing experiences of young people with intellectual disabilities. Angela has been a recipient of five Vice Chancellor’s Performance Fund awards, three for excellence in teaching in 2007 and 2008, and two for excellence in research in 2010 and 2012.edit
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Dwyer, Angela E. <http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Dwyer,_Angela.html> (2010) Saving schools from abomination and abnormal sex : a discourse analysis of online public commentary about... more
Dwyer, Angela E. <http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Dwyer,_Angela.html> (2010) Saving schools from abomination and abnormal sex : a discourse analysis of online public commentary about 'queering' school spaces. In Scherer, Burkhard (Ed.) Queering Paradigms. Peter Lang ...
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Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) police liaison programs were established around Australia from the late 1980s onwards to ameliorate discriminatory relationships between LGBTIQ people and police. With specialized... more
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) police liaison programs were established around Australia from the late 1980s onwards to ameliorate discriminatory relationships between LGBTIQ people and police. With specialized training to better understand LGBTIQ issues, police liaison officers can provide support to LGBTIQ people as victims, offenders, or witnesses. Interestingly, very few LGBTIQ people seek support from these officers, even though many know they exist. This paper reports the results of a survey of a sample of LGBTIQ community members across two Australian states (Queensland and New South Wales) that explored why LGBTIQ people seek support from LGBTI police liaison officers. An online questionnaire asked LGBTIQ people about their perceptions of, and experiences with, police generally, and LGBTI police liaison officers specifically. Similar to past research, our analysis primarily found high levels of awareness of liaison officers, but very few participants accessed them. Further, and concerningly, the participants were generally reluctant to seek them out for support. Key implications of our findings for policy and practice development in police and LGBTIQ community services are discussed.
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Research Interests: Sociology, Criminology, Law, Transgender, Policing, and 4 moreQueer, Best practice, Lesbian, and Lgbtq
This article examines the different ways that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) police liaison officers in three states of Australia conceptualized and problematized the public visibility of LGBTI police liaison... more
This article examines the different ways that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) police liaison officers in three states of Australia conceptualized and problematized the public visibility of LGBTI police liaison services. In a climate where LGBTI police liaison services are a prominent model for building relationships between police and LGBTI people, this article considers, through interview data with LGBTI police liaison officers, these officers’ perceptions of the role that the visibility of these programs played in their success. Specifically, it explores the tensions and difficulties for officers and LGBTI communities resulting from the general invisibility of liaison officers themselves (and, by extension, these programs), as well as the problems that increased visibility of these programs might bring to officers, to LGBTI communities, and to policing work itself. Although enhancing the visibility of liaison services may be an important goal, this research suggests that careful consideration is required regarding how this visibility is produced and maintained, particularly given the concerns that officers reported about the potential risks posed by adopting new forms of visibility, including the risk of hypervisibility. This article questions the conventional view that increased visibility is unproblematic and is the key to the success of such programs.
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Persistent high levels of recidivism among young offenders (Luke and Lind 2002; Weatherburn et al. 2012) and the over‐representation of Indigenous young people (Cunneen and White 2011; Snowball 2008; Tauri 2012) have long been features of... more
Persistent high levels of recidivism among young offenders (Luke and Lind 2002; Weatherburn et al. 2012) and the over‐representation of Indigenous young people (Cunneen and White 2011; Snowball 2008; Tauri 2012) have long been features of youth justice in Australia. Other problems – such as the increased rates of young people committing sex offences (Dwyer 2011; O’Brien 2010), increasing numbers of young people criminalised for new offences such as ‘sexting’ (Lee and McGovern 2013), and increasing numbers of young female offenders being drawn into youth justice systems (Carrington 2006; Carrington and Pereira 2009) – have emerged more recently. In this paper, we draw on the concept of ‘imaginary penalities’ (Carlen 2010) to argue these chronic problems are partly informed by ‘imaginary’ understandings of how and why young people (re)offend; reflect ‘imaginary’ understandings of what works to address young people’s (re)offending; and reflect ‘imaginary’ ideals about the primary purposes of the youth justice system. We acknowledge up front that answers to these questions require a great deal of new empirical research. This paper is only a beginning that sets out exactly what such an ambitious project might look like.
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Speaking Out documents the outcomes of the largest ever study to examine homophobic and transphobic abuse and reporting in Queensland, Australia. It reports the results of a quantitative survey on victimisation of lesbian, gay, bisexual,... more
Speaking Out documents the outcomes of the largest ever study to examine homophobic and transphobic abuse and reporting in Queensland, Australia. It reports the results of a quantitative survey on victimisation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) people and how this victimisation is reported to police. Follow-up qualitative interviews and focus groups were also conducted with LGBTIQ people to examine the impact of this abuse and the reporting to police. This research is timely as we can sometimes assume LGBTIQ victimisation is a historical problem and may be settled by the idea that relations with police are in good shape. This book clearly demonstrates that we have some way to go before we can be assured these issues have been resolved...
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ABSTRACT If you are anything like me, this is a time of year when attending conferences is a foremost concern in one’s mind. This is particularly the case for postgraduate students who will forge vitally important networking links with... more
ABSTRACT If you are anything like me, this is a time of year when attending conferences is a foremost concern in one’s mind. This is particularly the case for postgraduate students who will forge vitally important networking links with other academics as well as practitioners from government and industry. There are many decisions to make in relation to these events: what conferences to attend; when should you attend; should they be international or national conferences; how to get around funding issues; and how you can get the most out of the event. In our third instalment of postgraduate issues discussions, I will examine some thoughts and tips on how to make these decisions strategically and smartly, and how to make the most of these important events based on my own experiences.
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The growth of ‘Queer Criminology’ in recent years has seen greater attention being paid to the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people by criminal justice agents and institutions. While this work has... more
The growth of ‘Queer Criminology’ in recent years has seen greater attention being paid to the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people by criminal justice agents and institutions. While this work has developed across both the global North (the UK and the USA) and South (Australia), its epistemological, conceptual, and political foundations remain firmly situated in the global North. The more recent emergence of Southern criminology, then, offers important tools with which to reflect on the extent to which Queer criminology mirrors the epistemological and political concerns of the global North, and the implications of this for those in the global South. This chapter begins the task of drawing together these two fields. It first uses critiques drawn from the global South to examine the ways that Queer criminology reflects ‘Northern’ LGBT and Queer frameworks. It then explores the implications of transposing initiatives that may provide positive outcomes for LGBTQ people in the global North, such as community policing, into the global South without fully accounting for key differences in these contexts.
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Relationships between LGBT people and police have been turbulent for some time now, and have been variously characterized as supportive (McGhee, 2004) and antagonistic (Radford, Betts, & Ostermeyer, 2006). These relationships were,... more
Relationships between LGBT people and police have been turbulent for some time now, and have been variously characterized as supportive (McGhee, 2004) and antagonistic (Radford, Betts, & Ostermeyer, 2006). These relationships were, and continue to be, influenced by a range of political, legal, cultural, and social factors. This chapter will examine historical and social science accounts of LGBT-police histories to chart the historical peaks and troughs in these relationships. The discussion demonstrates how, in Western contexts, we oscillate between historical moments of police criminalizing homosexual perversity and contemporary landscapes of partnership between police and LGBT people. However, the chapter challenges the notion that it is possible to trace this as a lineal progression from a painful past to a more productive present. Rather, it focuses on specific moments, marked by pain or pleasure or both, and how these moments emerge and re-emerge in ways that shaped LGBT-police landscapes in potted, uneven ways. The chapter concludes noting how, although certain ideas and police practices may shift towards more progressive notions of partnership policing, we cannot just take away the history that emerged out of mistrust and pain.
Research Interests: History, Sociology, Politics, Pleasure, Policing, and 3 morePartnership, Perversion, and Springer Ebooks
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Anti-discrimination laws around the world have explicitly protected LGBTQ+ people from discrimination with various levels of exceptions for religion. Some conservative religious organisations in Australia are advocating to be allowed to... more
Anti-discrimination laws around the world have explicitly protected LGBTQ+ people from discrimination with various levels of exceptions for religion. Some conservative religious organisations in Australia are advocating to be allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people in certain organisations they manage. The political debate in Australia has focused on religiously affiliated organisations that provide services in education, social welfare, health care, and aged care. We argue that religious exceptions allowing discrimination should be narrow because they cause considerable harm, reinforce, disadvantage and because LGBTQ+ people are deserving of respect and rights. We draw on a national representative survey to demonstrate that the views of some conservative religious lobby groups do not represent the views of the majority of religious people in Australia or the views of the majority of Christian people.
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In contemporary Western societies, the years between childhood and young adulthood are commonly understood to be (trans)formative in the reflexive project of sexual self-making (Russell et al. 2012). As sexual subjects in the making,... more
In contemporary Western societies, the years between childhood and young adulthood are commonly understood to be (trans)formative in the reflexive project of sexual self-making (Russell et al. 2012). As sexual subjects in the making, youthful bodies, desires and sexual activities are often perceived as both volatile and vulnerable, thus subjected to instruction and discipline, protection and surveillance. Accordingly, young people’s sexual proximities are closely monitored by social institutions and ‘(hetero)normalising regimes’ (Warner 1999) for any signs that may compromise the end goal of development—a ‘normal’ reproductive heterosexual monogamous adult
Research Interests: Sociology, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Ethics, Youth Studies, and 15 moreResearch Ethics, Subcultures, Formative Assessment, Sexuality, Reflexivity, Autoethnography, LGBT Issues, LGBT Youth, Activist Ethnography, Ethnographic Methods, Insider research, Human Sexuality, Queer, Compromise, and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Studies
In contemporary Western societies, the years between childhood and young adulthood are commonly understood to be (trans)formative in the reflexive project of sexual self-making (Russell et al. 2012). As sexual subjects in the making,... more
In contemporary Western societies, the years between childhood and young adulthood are commonly understood to be (trans)formative in the reflexive project of sexual self-making (Russell et al. 2012). As sexual subjects in the making, youthful bodies, desires and sexual activities are often perceived as both volatile and vulnerable, thus subjected to instruction and discipline, protection and surveillance. Accordingly, young people’s sexual proximities are closely monitored by social institutions and ‘(hetero)normalising regimes’ (Warner 1999) for any signs that may compromise the end goal of development—a ‘normal’ reproductive heterosexual monogamous adult.
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Research Interests: Sociology, Criminology, Gender Studies, Sexuality, Body, and 4 moreTransgender, Heteronormativity, Queer, and Lesbian
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... Page 3. 2 Corresponding author: Angela Dwyer, School of Justice, Faculty of Law, Queensland ... measure behaviours of LGBT young people in public spaces. It is expected they will adhere to unspoken homonormative ideals (Bell and... more
... Page 3. 2 Corresponding author: Angela Dwyer, School of Justice, Faculty of Law, Queensland ... measure behaviours of LGBT young people in public spaces. It is expected they will adhere to unspoken homonormative ideals (Bell and Binnie 2004) about not flaunting their ...
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Dwyer, Angela E. <http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Dwyer,_Angela. html> (2011) Review of 'Laying Down the Criminal Law : A Handbook for Youth Workers'. Youth Studies Australia. (In... more
Dwyer, Angela E. <http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Dwyer,_Angela. html> (2011) Review of 'Laying Down the Criminal Law : A Handbook for Youth Workers'. Youth Studies Australia. (In Press).
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Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) police liaison programs were established in Australia from the late 1980s onwards to ameliorate the historically problematic relationship between LGBTI people and police. Police... more
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) police liaison programs were established in Australia from the late 1980s onwards to ameliorate the historically problematic relationship between LGBTI people and police. Police liaison officers are trained in LGBTI issues and typically available to support LGBTI victims, offenders and even witnesses. Interestingly, although there is considerable awareness of these services among LGBTI people, very few LGBTI people seek support from these officers (Berman & Robinson 2010). This paper outlines the results of an analysis of interview data exploring why LGBTI people do not seek support from LGBTI police liaison officers in three Australian states (Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia). Interviews were conducted with LGBTI people who, upon completing an online survey about their contact with LGBTI police liaison officers, expressed an interest in being interviewed, and with LGBTI police liaison officers who expressed an interest in being interviewed in response to an email from their state LGBTI police liaison program coordinator. The many complex and intersecting factors that prevent LGBTI people from seeking support from LGBTI police liaison officers are briefly discussed below.
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This chapter reports on a narrative project recording the experiences of LGBT former and current police officers in the Queensland Police Service (QPS), Australia. It begins by examining the historical and research contexts of LGBT police... more
This chapter reports on a narrative project recording the experiences of LGBT former and current police officers in the Queensland Police Service (QPS), Australia. It begins by examining the historical and research contexts of LGBT police officers, followed by a discussion of the methodology employed for the project. The chapter then examines and analyzes key themes emerging from the data about coming out, macho police culture, and the double life syndrome often experienced by LGBT police officers. Finally, it suggests that further research might uncover a more widespread application of these findings
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Research Interests: Psychology, Literature, Body, Feminism, Research, and 10 moreObservation, Gaze, Female, Fashion model, Girl, Innocence, Object, Danger, Looking, and Observational Study
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Dwyer, Angela E. <http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Dwyer,_Angela.html> & Hayes, Hennessey <http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Hayes,_Hennessey.html> (2011) Getting lost in... more
Dwyer, Angela E. <http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Dwyer,_Angela.html> & Hayes, Hennessey <http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Hayes,_Hennessey.html> (2011) Getting lost in the field : the unpredictable nature of fieldwork with young people. In Bartels, Lorana & Richards ...
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This ground-breaking book explores the practical applications of queer theory for criminal justice practitioners. It covers theoretical concepts within queer criminology and the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals as victims, offenders and... more
This ground-breaking book explores the practical applications of queer theory for criminal justice practitioners. It covers theoretical concepts within queer criminology and the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals as victims, offenders and professionals, and proposes ways in which a real difference can be made to training, policy and practice.
Research Interests: Criminology and Queer
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Homophobic hatred: these words summarise online commentary made by people in support of a school that banned gay students from taking their same sex partners to a school formal. With the growing popularity of online news sites, it seems... more
Homophobic hatred: these words summarise online commentary made by people in support of a school that banned gay students from taking their same sex partners to a school formal. With the growing popularity of online news sites, it seems appropriate to critically examine how these sites are becoming a new arena in which people can express personal opinions about controversial topics. While commentators equally expressed two dominant viewpoints about the school ban (homophobic hatred and human rights), this paper focuses on homophobic hatred as a discursive position and how the comments work to confirm the legitimacy of the schools' decision. Drawing on the work of Foucault and others, the paper examines how the comments constitute certain types of subjectivity drawing on dominant ideas about what it means to be homophobic. The analysis demonstrates the complex and competing skein of strategies that constitute queering school social spaces as a social problem.
Histories of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) police officers are silent histories in an international context. As their sexual practices have been criminalized during various periods in recent history, they typically lived... more
Histories of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) police officers are silent histories in an international context. As their sexual practices have been criminalized during various periods in recent history, they typically lived under the cover of silence. While the work of Australian historians (Moore 2001) demonstrates how LGBT people have been wronged by criminal justice processes, contemporary discussion suggests there has been little acknowledgement of discrimination or persecution. As such, even though history evidences “a nationally agreed policy by police forces that homosexuality was a problem to be targeted” (Willett 2008), the experiences of LGBT officers have not been mapped in Australia.
This paper reports on a narrative project recording the experiences of LGBT former and current police officers in the Queensland Police Service (QPS), Australia. We begin by examining the historical and research contexts of LGBT police officers, followed by a discussion of the methodology employed for the project. We then examine key themes emerging from the data about coming out, macho police culture, and the double life syndrome often experienced by LGBT police officers.
This paper reports on a narrative project recording the experiences of LGBT former and current police officers in the Queensland Police Service (QPS), Australia. We begin by examining the historical and research contexts of LGBT police officers, followed by a discussion of the methodology employed for the project. We then examine key themes emerging from the data about coming out, macho police culture, and the double life syndrome often experienced by LGBT police officers.
In this chapter, we draw on our collective experience conducting qualitative field research with young people to highlight the unpredictable nature of fieldwork. A key point we make is that while many qualitative methodology textbooks... more
In this chapter, we draw on our collective experience conducting qualitative field research with young people to highlight the unpredictable nature of fieldwork. A key point we make is that while many qualitative methodology textbooks tend to portray field research as seamless and straightforward with rules applying to all field situations, the reality of field research with young people is often is far removed from these ideal portrayals and can leave researchers ‘lost’ in the field.
The problematic nature of fieldwork with young people is made even more difficult by the prevailing assumption they are a social problem to be regulated (France, 2004). This assumption stands in direct contradiction to, and in constant tension with, the idea that young people are already ‘at risk’ of being exploited by researcher adults. The simultaneously ‘vulnerable’ and ‘problematic’ young person therefore requires methodologies that flex and shift according to specific research contexts. Two examples of these contexts will be discussed in this paper. To incorporate the age brackets of young participants in both projects discussed in this chapter, we define ‘young people’ as people aged 10 to 21 years.
The problematic nature of fieldwork with young people is made even more difficult by the prevailing assumption they are a social problem to be regulated (France, 2004). This assumption stands in direct contradiction to, and in constant tension with, the idea that young people are already ‘at risk’ of being exploited by researcher adults. The simultaneously ‘vulnerable’ and ‘problematic’ young person therefore requires methodologies that flex and shift according to specific research contexts. Two examples of these contexts will be discussed in this paper. To incorporate the age brackets of young participants in both projects discussed in this chapter, we define ‘young people’ as people aged 10 to 21 years.
Relationships between LGBT people and police have been turbulent for some time now, and have been variously characterized as supportive (McGhee, 2004) and antagonistic (Radford, Betts, & Ostermeyer, 2006). These relationships were, and... more
Relationships between LGBT people and police have been turbulent for some time now, and have been variously characterized as supportive (McGhee, 2004) and antagonistic (Radford, Betts, & Ostermeyer, 2006). These relationships were, and continue to be, influenced by a range of political, legal, cultural, and social factors. This chapter will examine historical and
This paper offers an analysis of one account of one family. Using a narrative as its basis, it offers an opportunity to see into the lives, and home, of one family parented by a lesbian couple. This couple has been together for six years... more
This paper offers an analysis of one account of one family. Using a narrative as its basis, it offers an opportunity to see into the lives, and home, of one family parented by a lesbian couple. This couple has been together for six years and has four children. The family has a mix of ‘foster to adopt’ and birth children between the ages of one and six. One of the women is an academic. The other is a stay at home mother. The family is located in one of Australia’s capital cities and lives in a suburban area, close to schools, parks and shopping centres. The analysis elaborates how this lesbian family challenges heteronormative modes of performing family in ways that outdo discourses of family on their own terms, with a particular focus on how the speaker in the data positions themselves and is positioned in terms of queering discourses of motherhood.
In this chapter, we ask the question: does the persistence of the past and its memory always work against progressive LGBTIQ policing? We suggest this policing history demonstrates discursive history in action. We hope to show how the... more
In this chapter, we ask the question: does the persistence of the past and its memory always work against progressive LGBTIQ policing? We suggest this policing history demonstrates discursive history in action. We hope to show how the remnant traces of past policing can re-emerge to profoundly shape relations in the present. While this may not appear at first to be an important consideration, we suggest that it may significantly shape the government of LGBTIQ policing in particular. If history is discursive, and continues to shape and reshape how we think about policing in the present, this suggests also why governmental regulation of this policing (in the form of police liaison programs for instance) fails to overcome or wholly ameliorate adverse recollections of the former policing of LGBTIQ people. Here, we first overview some understandings of police-LGBTIQ relationships as presented in research and literature. We then draw from the conceptualisations of history of Foucault and other post-structuralist writers to show how it may be impossible to fully erase the effects of traditional policing. The chapter then considers a case study (the policing of Mardi Gras, Sydney, 2013) and information from a series of qualitative research interviews to demonstrate how traces of past policing may re-emerge in the present in a cycle of discursive reiteration through the thoughts and statements of LGBTIQ people. We conclude noting these discursive traces still circulate and undermine the governmental work of policing organisations in the present.
Vulnerabilities are embodied by young people in ways that make them subject to policing in public spaces. While existing literature tends to suggest that young people come to the attention of police because there is a 'problem' with a... more
Vulnerabilities are embodied by young people in ways that make them subject to policing in public spaces. While existing literature tends to suggest that young people come to the attention of police because there is a 'problem' with a young person that needs to be 'fixed' (for example, homelessness), or a 'problem' with a police officer that needs to be 'fixed' (for example, homophobic attitudes), this chapter contends that these relationships are by no means stable because vulnerabilities are always already embodied and shifting in time and space. Using examples from three qualitative research projects around young people, policing, and crime prevention, the chapter argues we need a new way of thinking about youthful vulnerabilities as embodied in ways that make them impossible to pin down, and therefore effectively 'remedy'. The chapter highlights how youthful vulnerabilities might be conceptualised as discursively produced by, and contingent upon, the localised contexts/spaces in which policing and crime prevention happen with young people and the public places that they inhabit.
The growth of 'Queer Criminology' in recent years has seen greater attention being paid to the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people by criminal justice agents and institutions. While this work has... more
The growth of 'Queer Criminology' in recent years has seen greater attention being paid to the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people by criminal justice agents and institutions. While this work has developed across both the Global North (the UK and the USA) and South (Australia), its epistemological, conceptual, and political foundations remain firmly situated in the Global North. The more recent emergence of Southern Criminology, then, offers important tools with which to reflect on the extent to which Queer Criminology mirrors the epistemological and political concerns of the Global North, and the implications of this for those in the Global South. This chapter begins the task of drawing together these two fields. It first uses critiques drawn from the Global South to examine the ways that Queer Criminology reflects 'Northern' LGBT and Queer frameworks. It then explores the implications of transposing initiatives that may provide positive outcomes for LGBTQ people in the Global North, such as community policing, into the Global South without fully accounting for key differences in these contexts.
The concept of justice—whether social or criminal—is predicated on the inviolability and universality of human rights, and the UN has operationalized social justice as the human right to ‘…the fair and compassionate distribution of the... more
The concept of justice—whether social or criminal—is predicated on the inviolability and universality of human rights, and the UN has operationalized social justice as the human right to ‘…the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth...’. However, just as with any other of the rights afforded to all humans, the right to social justice first requires recognition. For people of diverse sexualities, recognition has been eschewed for much of the UN’s history, and recognizing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) people in human rights discourses remains controversial. Even today, non-normative sexuality is criminalized in some jurisdictions, with those who act on their attractions tortured and subject to extreme violence, including violence from criminal justice actors. To talk of ‘compassionate distribution’ of wealth within this context appears to further silence and misrecognize injustices experienced by sexual minorities in the global South, and in the intersectional margins of the first world. In this chapter, we first outline what we mean by social justice, and then consider how the landscapes of social (in)justice change when we apply a southern gaze. Through the lenses of southern theory and queer criminology, we discuss the complex and at times contradictory intersections between social and criminal justice for LGBQ people by focusing on redistribution and recognition. We then discuss how queer-blind social justice within criminal justice has negatively affected the lives of LGBQ people. We conclude by reflecting on dominant ethics and strategies for pursuing social justice.
Reflecting on our own researcher/researched entanglements, in this chapter, we consider some of the ways sexually diverse researchers are situated by administrative authorities when doing research with sexually diverse young people. We... more
Reflecting on our own researcher/researched entanglements, in this chapter, we consider some of the ways sexually diverse researchers are situated by administrative authorities when doing research with sexually diverse young people. We examine how the heteronormativity of ethical bureaucracy and the homonormativity operative in the field structure understandings of ‘proper’ field relations, inform the regulation of research as ethical in academic institutions and position queer youth sexualities as a risk to be sensitively managed by a researcher. Combining our disciplinary perspectives (criminology and cultural sociology) and reflecting on our own experiences as queer femme adult women researching queer youth, we then punctuate this discussion by offering situated accounts of doing field work with queer youth. Focusing specifically on instances of identity policing, we discuss the ways in which our queer ‘insider’ credentials have been scrutinised by ethical review processes, which require declaration of one’s personal relationship to the field, and by LGBTIQ youth workers who mediated our access to the field. This paper will conclude with a discussion of how we might imagine a queer approach to field relationships. We argue the importance of an approach that necessarily disrupts the norms of doing youth research and gestures towards a range of ethical literacies if more productive research outcomes are to be made possible in future.
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Combining our distinct disciplinary perspectives, our biographical narratives and our lived and intersubjective concepts of queerness, in this chapter, we critically reflect on our experiences as sexually diverse and (sub)culturally... more
Combining our distinct disciplinary perspectives, our biographical narratives and our lived and intersubjective concepts of queerness, in this chapter, we critically reflect on our experiences as sexually diverse and (sub)culturally distinct female scholars conducting qualitative empirical research with sexual minority youth. Situating reflexivity as Adams and Holman Jones’ (2011, 108) have done: “as both an orientation to research and a writing practice that brings together the method of autoethnography and the paradigm of queer theory … [and their] commitments to uncertain, fluid, and becoming subjectivities”, we deploy this technique in the context of youth research as a means of claiming our story as research, gesturing toward more synergistic ways to think about intimacy and ethical situatedness in the field. Elaborating moments of discomfort and ease, we question the various normativities—institutional, social and (sub)cultural—one must negotiate in order to be seen as ‘proper’ researchers when working with queer young people and the ways that our ‘improperness’ brought us together and enabled our intellectual conversation.