“They are not like you and I”

The pieces in this section are focused on methods and the consequences of adopting particular methodologies for how we understand our objects of analysis. Central to the criminological project is amplifying and scrutinising the process by which we categorise and classify in criminal justice practice. All too often, we can lapse into these same habits, presenting these categories as taken-for-granted, set in the social consciousness, rather than fluid and contingent. Mahuya Bandyopadhyay, Aishwarya Chandran, and Sanjukta Manna explore this issue most explicitly in their consideration of a state-run home for boys in urban India, which functioned as a correctional facility and “felt like jail” despite its benign presentation on paper. The sensory, they argue, holds the capacity to challenge and re-evaluate carceral categories. Briony Anderson, Will Arpke-Wales, Flynn Pervan, Jackson Wood, and Mark A. Wood consider the implications of conjoining categories of analysis to sensorially account for the shifting focus of harm in our rapidly evolving techno-social world. Sarah Kingston joined us via separate recording to ponder how audio methods can disrupt conventional approaches to the research process. This allowed her to engage in a more democratically informed practice with her respondents and uncover different things about their reflections on sex workers. Together, these provocations make the case that various aspects of sensory experience offer a suite of important analytical tools to more effectively excavate and unsettle assumptions about how we know. These better equip us to explore how we define power, danger, harm, and what it is to pursue research with a sensorially attuned ethical ear, concluding with a consideration of future directions.